Monday 4 July 2011

The power of social media in highways services

Here he goes again, another wacky idea. Can we not we just stick to Ceefax I hear you say?
Well no.
Social media is going to be vital to our market place in the years to come. Why?
Because we are going to have no money to do, the things we have done before and we need people to do it for us.
That's Localism I hear you say!
Correct – localism is about letting people do stuff and the power of social media is letting the public do stuff for you too. Let me give you an example…
What's the fastest way to get news these days? BBC? No. SKY? No. MSN? No.
Twitter
Seriously, if you want to know what the latest things going on around the world are – look at twitter.
Why is this?
There are 6 million members of twitter. That means there are 6 million news reporters working free for it. The result (as long as you can see the wood through the trees) is instant news.
Now how is that relevant to us?
Well… Our business is generally about keeping the public satisfied with public services. So what's the best way of figuring that out? Interact with them - ask, understand, listen then act.
If the public are happy with public services, councillors are happy which means officers are happy which means we get praised for doing a good job.
So what can we do?
Listen – use tools like twitter, Facebook to interact with people and find out what they want and what their problems are.
Tell – use tools like twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogger to tell the public what we are doing and why. It is psychologically proven people won't complain if they are told what will happen – even if it's bad!
Assist – use Yahoo Answers, wiki's, to help people find out about what they want to know- then they won't come and ask.
A number of opportunities we are working on have an increasing role for us in customer services, if you want help or advice please get in touch. I'd be happy to help you trial these tools.