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Draft guide: Social media monitoring and interaction

Social media:

Tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. These include wikis, blogs, micro-blogging, video sharing, photo sharing, podcasts, social networking tools, and other "user-generated content".

Purpose

The purpose of this guidance is to help government agencies and State servants make decisions on the appropriate monitoring of, and interaction on, existing social media. The primary audiences of this guidance are communications managers and advisors, and State servants interacting on social media.

Scope

This guidance covers the monitoring of social media, and interaction on social media sites.

This guidance does not cover the setting up and hosting of your own social media sites.

Background

Government is in the information business – that business is changing dramatically.

All social interactions include some exchange of information. The World Internet Project New Zealand (PDF, 1.2mb) found that 78% of New Zealanders use the Internet. Of these users, 27% have posted messages online, 34% have posted images online, 10% keep a blog. 28% participate in social networking sites at least on a weekly basis.

Social media is another tool for reaching New Zealanders regarding government services, usually best considered as a supplementary yet potentially powerful interactive channel.The use of social media is part of the transformation of bureaucracy from one built for the industrial age to one meeting the needs of the information age.

The structure of this guidance

This document has been divided into two sections:

Social media monitoring and interaction - guiding principles

Social media monitoring and interaction - implementation guide

Your feedback

This document is draft guidance and we welcome any feedback or suggestions for improvement. You can do this by email, post your comments to the State Services Commission's blog or by adding to the Your thoughts and suggestions sections on this wiki.

Contact:

Matt Lane

State Services Commission

DDI: +64 4 439 6396

Matt.Lane@ssc.govt.nz

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Social media monitoring and interaction - guiding principles

This page is a subsection of Social media monitoring and interaction. See also Implementation guide.

Principles for agencies

Government agencies should listen

Government agencies can reasonably be expected, by both their responsible Minister and New Zealanders generally, to be aware of what is being said about them on the Internet.

Government agencies should consider conversing and giving feedback outside of their own realm

Consider responding to any comments, posts and bloggers that mention your organisation and its activities when and as appropriate (see Gauge the environment). Consider participating in online communities that are interested in your activities. Recognise that your organisation is only part of the solution and can benefit from public input. If you are going to interact, do so in a timely manner.

Government agencies must ensure interactions online adhere to relevant laws and policies

There are several pieces of legislation, as well as policies, mandates and principles of administrative law, that must be considered when government agencies interact online. This could include the consideration of the Public Records Act. Depending on the context, it may be appropriate for an agency to consult its legal team.

Principles for State servants

Adapted from

In Development's Staff Contribution Guidelines

The Principles for Online Participation

The State Services Standards of Integrity and Conduct

Jason Ryan's Principles for public sector social media

The Standards of Integrity and Conduct apply to conduct online just as they do to conduct offline. All conduct must be fair, impartial, responsible and trustworthy.

The specific principles below reflect the letter or spirit of the Standards but have been made express to confirm their application to various aspects of conduct online.

Be fair

Respect your colleagues and audience

Be thoughtful and accurate in your contributions and respect how your public audience, colleagues and organisation could be affected.

Be clear, accurate and transparent

Take care to ensure that any facts in your contributions are accurate, particularly those relating to your organisation. Be open and transparent about the objectives, limits, resources and potential impacts of your interaction online. Be clear whether you are, or are not, speaking on behalf of your organisation.

Be impartial

Avoid or disclose conflicts of interest

If you are discussing another person’s story, product or service in which you have or could be perceived to have an interest, consider whether you ought to be discussing it online and, if so, whether you should be disclosing your interest.

Be responsible

Accept personal responsibility

You are personally responsible for your behaviour online.

Take care with personal information

Do not disclose personal information about staff, your friends and family or any other person unless you are certain that you have their consent to do so and, even then, only to the extent that such information is integrally related to your activity. Do not disclose any personal information, whether your own or relating to others, if such disclosure could create a risk to any person’s welfare or safety. So, for example, do not publish information about your or other people’s movements or addresses.

Prioritise regular work commitments

Ensure that interacting online does not interfere with your regular work commitments. Those commitments come first.

Avoid surprises

Ensure that no activity that you engage in online, on behalf of your organisation, will cause surprise to your communications team or your manager.

Adhere to existing rules and legislation

There are several pieces of legislation that must be considered when you interact online. This includes considering the Public Records Act.

If in doubt, seek guidance

If you are uncertain about the implications of any of your actions online, seek guidance from your legal team, communications team, web team, or manager.

Be trustworthy

Respect confidential and privileged information

Respect the confidentiality of information of your organisation, wider government and any third party. Do not disclose such information online (note that improper use of official information can constitute an offence). Never disclose legal advice online without proper authorisation.

Respect copyright and trademarks

Respect the intellectual property of others. Do not reproduce copyright material or others’ trademarks without permission. Comply with licence terms and attribute authorship whenever required. Be careful about disclosing novel, inventive ideas of your agency, particularly if there is any prospect of your agency applying for a patent.

Be yourself

Identify yourself, be yourself and write in the first person. While you are encouraged to let your personality come through, remember you are posting as a representative of your organisation. You should use a tone that reflects that. It may help to think of how you would present if speaking to a public audience.

Social media monitoring and interaction - implementation guide

Social media 101: Listening

"Atom" or "RSS" web feeds:

A web feed is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content. Among other things, this allows a user to keep track of changes to website content, automatically, without visiting the websites themselves. Each feed has its own URL.

"RSS" (most commonly said to stand for Really Simple Syndication) and "Atom" are competing file formats of web feeds.

Web feed readers/aggregators:

A feed reader/aggregator is a software or a Web application which aggregates web feeds.

Create an RSS (web) feed reader/aggregator account:

To efficiently monitor several feeds, you will need a feed reader/aggregator. In most situations, an online feed aggregator will likely be a sensible choice. You can use desktop aggregators (such as Mozilla’s Thunderbird), but their disadvantage is that they are tied to a single machine and thus not accessible from any computer with an internet connection.

Some of the available services

http://www.google.com/reader/

Watch a video on how to register for Google Reader

http://www.bloglines.com/register

Watch a video on how to register for Bloglines

Populate your aggregator with feeds

Once you have set-up your aggregator, you will need to populate it will relevant feeds.

Create feeds for searches on technorati.com

Technorati is a search engine for most blogs on the internet. Use it to search for your organisation in quotation marks.

After doing this, right click on the “Subscribe” button…

…click “Copy shortcut” (which is the URL of the web feed for the search) and add this to your aggregator. Repeat this for as many searches that you can think of. For example:

“ssc”, “state services commission”, “state services comision” (sic), “state services commissioner”, “Iain Rennie”, “Ian Rennie” (sic), “State Services Development Goals”, “www.ssc.govt.nz”, “John Ombler”, “People Capabilities Branch”, “Kiwis Count”, “igovt”, “DevCon”, “jobs.govt.nz”…

After you do this, you will have your ear firmly to the ground.

Identify peers blogging

If you suspect there is value in your organisation using social media, chances are some other similar/related organisation or interested individual here in New Zealand or overseas is already way ahead of you. Try to identify leading peers (perhaps from your Technorati searches), keep up with what they’re doing (set up feeds), and consider interacting with them. Learn from their experiences.

Create feeds for searches on Twitter

Twitter:

Twitter is a free micro-blogging service, that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Twitter's search service can be used in the same way as the Technorati search:

search for your organisation (and other key terms),

right click on the "Subscribe" button,

paste url into your aggregator.

Create a feed for your organisation’s Wikipedia page

After locating your organisation’s page on Wikipedia, click the “history” tab. You will see the button for “RSS” and “Atom” in the sidebar. Once again, right click, “Copy shortcut” and paste into your aggregator.

Create a feed for any other social media, or non-social media, you can think of

Blogs, Twitter, and Wikipedia are not the totality of what can be monitored through feed aggergators. Try to identify others, and create web feeds for them also.

Some suggestions are:

Collectively, these feeds may replace media monitoring services that your organisation may already be paying for.

Social media 201: Interacting

Check the content and ensure the accuracy on Wikipedia^†

^{† or anywhere else where your target audience may be gathering
information about your organisation}

When Google became the most popular search engine on the web, it made sense to focus effort into affecting your Google search results. Nowadays, Wikipedia has become a common result for many searches on Google. People will often gather information about your organisation from third parties, and currently Wikipedia is a popular place to do this. Also, Wikipedia will be one of the largest referrers of traffic to your websites, and Wikipedia is increasingly being used to update other third party sites. This means you have a vested interest in ensuring the information is up to date and accurate.

There have been many stories in the press about individuals or sometimes government organisations from around the world embarrassing themselves or their organisation by editing their own pages. It is important to note that while editing your own Wikipedia page is not strictly uncouth, deleting accurate criticism is. The most important thing is to be open, transparent, and personable.

Almost all Wikipedians do not want to harm or help your brand, nor do they want to provide a platform for you to shamelessly promote yourself or for your critics to shamelessly attack you. They just want a complete, accurate and neutral encyclopaedia.

Check who has been editing your organisation’s page

Before you make any edits, check through the “history” tab to check that you don’t recognise any names that are already editing your article. There may be employees at your organisation or in fact the IP address of your organisation (see next paragraph).

Create an account and be transparent

Every edit on Wikipedia is attributed to an author. If an edit is “anonymous”, it is attributed to the IP address of the author (the irony being that this is often much less anonymous than creating an account).

It is recommend that if you are making edits within work hours for work purposes that you have a single unifying account for your organisation. On the profile page for this account clearly explain yourself (not necessarily identifying your name, as this could put you at unnecessary risk of harassment) and your motivations. Be as open, cooperative and transparent as possible. Recognise that the Wikipedia article on your organisation belongs to the Wikipedians not to your organisation.

Collaborating versus storming in

As opposed to editing the article itself, you may consider proposing changes on the articles "Talk:" (discussion) page, or on the WikiProject New Zealand "Talk:" page. This way, you are collaborating with Wikipedians, rather than storming their territory.

Commenting on blogs

Following the instructions in the Social media 101 section, you should now be informed when your organisation is mentioned on a blog. The question is: when is it appropriate to comment.

Gauge the environment

When interacting on other people’s blogs, it is essential to gauge the environment you are entering. Reacting to criticism on a blog that does not take kindly to outsiders nor engage in reasonable discussion is likely to be a fruitless endeavour. Using a corporate tone on an informal discussion is also likely to be less successful. Read some posts, comments and responses on a blog before determining that commenting will be the most constructive course of action.

If possible, have your subject area expert react to their subject area

As more and more conversations are happening online, it is less and less feasible that an organisational communications manager will be in the best position to react to all conversations. Identify subject area experts and encourage them to interact. Recognise that some staff will not be comfortable with this.

Consider creating organisational policy for social media

All organisations should already have a “media relations” policy. Your organisational policy on social media should be an extension/evolution/complimentary to this. A useful starting point may be the SSC’s Staff Contribution Guidelines v1.0 for In Development, especially paragraphs 14-27.