#whatwedo

Perhaps it’s a bit if an indictment about me and what I find exciting but I am very excited by the #whatwedo event on Twitter today. In case you don’t know all of Scotland’s local authorities are taking part in a one day exercise where they will tweet about what they do. For someone who has an interest in the power of social media I feel that this is an exciting and worthwhile event.

My own local authority like almost has a Twitter feed. It is used as far as I can see to make announcements and as a platform to share information. If your dog gets lost and you live in the same place as me check Twitter because it is likely to be on it. During the storms last year my kids were glued to it to find out if their school was open or closed.

Some of the local councillors tweet, one in particular will share relevant information from the council as well as advertising his surgeries and sharing what he does on a day to day basis. Perhaps not interesting for some but for others this insight into the work of a councillor is invaluable in letting the electorate know exactly what he does. Wouldn’t it be equally interesting if individual Chief Executive’s and Director’s of departments did so as well?

I strongly believe that Twitter is much more than an announcement platform. The Third Sector and in some cases some social entrepreneurs seem to have captured the market in using Twitter in increasingly more imaginative ways. Social Media Week in Glasgow provided powerful evidence of a vibrant social media community that is making great advances in sharing and generating new and informative ways of engaging using the internet. Let’s hope we can capitalise on the momentum.

Equally let’s hope that today’s event is rendered more worthwhile by being part of a longer term strategy for local authorities to engage with social media in different and exciting ways. Understandably local authorities need to be mindful about the sensitivity of information that they deal with as well as being able to ensure that what goes out on social media is “safe” but it does seem that these considerations can hamper local authorities in their use of a dynamic and exciting new means of communication.

Twitter seemed to me to reach a high point during the general election with political parties seeing the value of this form of engagement, some MP’s are regular’s on Twitter (Cathy Jamieson and Tom Watson) while some organisations and individuals are pushing hard for Twitter to have a greater use in dealing with those who are in receipt of particular council services

For me Twitter offers another opportunity for engagement for those who find engagement a challenge, local authorities need to embrace this method of engagement and communication in a more sophisticated way rather than using it solely as another platform for making announcements. The possibilities are endless but if councils make information available to Twitter and encourage debate and conversation using this medium I cannot see how this could be anything other than a valuable and exciting development in how councils work with and share their approaches with the residents of their area.

Finally in my own field of social work the possibilities are there to be exploited. Local authorities need to develop meaningful social media policies that start form a strengths based approach and do not get bogged down in issues around governance and information sharing protocol, to do so would detract from what is a powerful and exciting opportunity that is there to be exploited.