Social Media Case Studies: A collaborative approach to developing a social media strategy

Transcription

1 Social Media Case Studies: A collaborative approach to developing a social media strategy NHPP Number 5C1.114 (6774) Author: Peter Insole, Archaeological Officer, Bristol City Council Summary The City Design Group at Bristol City Council is one of the first local authority teams to begin a constructive and co-ordinated use of social media. The creation of the Design Bristol social network site using the Ning platform was an experiment that aimed to encourage wider discussion about the creation of better quality places. The Historic Environment is an important factor in these design processes and the HER officer is part of the editorial group that helps support Design Bristol. Design Bristol currently has 317 members and although only a small number contribute to the blogs on the site the resource has begun to create an online environment that promotes urban design events and exhibitions. The network is also connecting to a wide range of partners and encouraging a shared understanding of effective placemaking. Background The Bristol Historic Environment Record (HER) sits within a multidisciplinary team (now known as the City Design Group) of Urban Designers, Conservation Officers, Landscape Architects, Public Art Officers and Archaeologists. The mission statement for City Design Group (CDG) is to positively contribute to the creation of quality places. This role involves everything from placemaking projects and public realm improvements to site specific planning responses. Challenges & Aims The creation of quality places requires the participation of communities and an appropriate response to the historic environment. The history of an area is often the ankle bite that draws communities into the placemaking process as stated by Andy Gibbins at the Localism and Heritage Conference 2012 ( 1

2 This means that the HER has relevance for the majority of CDG projects and also promotes a wide participatory approach as exemplified by the crowd sourcing initiative of Know Your Place, To ensure successful participation from a wide variety of partners both within the council and external stakeholders it has been essential to make the most of the wider reaching opportunities social media offers in conjunction with other communication channels. For this reason the HER was involved with City Design Group s creation of Design Bristol ( a social media forum that uses the Ning platform ( This resource allows a more open communication channel that when coupled with the use of Twitter and Facebook enables a more fluid approach to community dialogue than the traditional council web pages and press releases. The website aimed to provide a dynamic environment which supported the promotion of good quality design and encouraged a wide involvement regarding the design process. The Design Bristol website was intended to establish an online community that would contribute to and support the placemaking agenda. Other social media channels were to be developed alongside the website to help drive traffic to the site (for example, Twitter, Facebook and Flickr). Budget, funding and resources We had an initial design and set up budget of 1000, but this can be achieved for less. One hour per week was set aside for managing the site. This was to be undertaken by an urban design officer, although an editorial group formed from other team members including the HER officer was established to help support and evaluate the success of the web resource. Delivery Other social media platforms were considered including Facebook, but Ning allows greater flexibility of the design and appearance of the resource and tighter editorial control. Obstacles to overcome The use of Ning for a local authority resource was a departure from the standard web communication practice and therefore required a robust business case and methodology to gain support from senior officers and executive members. 2

3 The business case focused on both the need to communicate with a wide range of stakeholders and the use of Ning as a cost effective means of achieving this. We also argued that City Design Group would ensure that interesting, pertinent content was regularly placed on the site (including debates, seminars, consultations, live webcasts etc) while also allowing members to upload content and in turn comment on content provided by others. We ensured that the resource would have an editorial panel that would pre moderate any content from members. We also created six golden rules by which any contributor (particularly contributors from within CDG) would have to abide: 1. Time Efficient: Make sure that officer work time is kept to the absolute minimum. Creating a brief blog entry or event post on the site should only take a few minutes and often users of the site only need a link and a short description to highlight the relevance of the content. 2. Appropriate and Relevant: Content must be professional, appropriate and relevant to the urban design and placemaking agenda. If in doubt leave it out. 3. Avoid personal opinion: The purpose of the website is to generate, and learn from, the opinions of others. The intention of CDG content should be to seed and develop conversations. It is important that we avoid expressing personal opinions which may later come to compromise Bristol City Council and City Design Group. Design Bristol is not to be confused with personal social media like Facebook. Do not use terms that express personal opinion like I like the trees that they have planted at or Bob hates the new roads at If in doubt seek guidance from the CDG editorial group before uploading and publishing content. 4. Plain English: Use clear, unambiguous sentences. Avoid jargon. Aim for 20 words per sentence or less. 5. Introduce Your Content: Links to other content should be introduced with a short descriptive preface. E.g. "The Design Council have published some new research/ interesting work on... It's available to read here... What do you think?/ Would this work in Bristol?/ Would Bristol people welcome this sort of development? etc.". 3

4 6. Photographs: Photos should be titled and summarised with an appropriate caption. Credits should be added where necessary, such as image courtesy of. The business case went on to say that with increasing pressure on City Council financial and staff resources it will be critical that we minimise design effort and maximise the quality of delivered schemes within our available funding envelope. Design Bristol enables CDG to be more responsive to community/ neighbourhood engagement and reduces the level of time spent responding to , telephone, letters and face to face traffic that can often result from poor design processes and failure to recognise the needs of diverse user groups. The financial benefits are: Improved value for money, through a more efficient and effective design process and use of City Council resources Promoting long term sustainability of designed solutions The greater likelihood of getting design solutions right first time; reducing the need to revisit and amend schemes post construction The opportunity to encourage public and private sector investment in local areas The non financial benefits are: Design expertise is developed and nurtured within the council, its professional partners and community representatives The high levels of community interest in design quality that currently exist are more effectively harnessed, with opportunities for collaboration better understood and exploited Urban design is embedded at the outset in the Council's major projects and procurement processes with built environment decisions being based on more rounded understanding of value other than cost Proactive engagement of developers unlocks the barriers to design and ultimately helps officers and developers work better together Ongoing learning and evaluation helping to inform and improve design and planning processes Developers commissioning schemes in the city progressively adapt their approach to design quality and sustainability Regional housing developers are sent consistent messages on housing quality and Bristol s expectations

5 The importance of quality placemaking is more widely understood, with a greater appreciation of the social, environmental and financial benefits of good design Buy-in for the City Design Initiative as a joint campaign brings together the Neighbourhood Planning Network, developers, architects and their teams The design agenda is increasingly seen as relevant to all parts of the city, not just the city centre and the conservation areas Achievements Our aim is to create a network of 'design advocates' in all neighbourhoods, whose role is to protect and promote design quality at a local level, disseminate best practice on urban design, undertake design audits and liaise with relevant council officers on design related matters. There are groups that we still need to encourage to become part of the conversation particularly the Neighbourhood Planning Network, but the active participation of the Bristol Civic Society is encouraging. In addition to Design Bristol on the Ning platform we have set up a Flickr account mainly for image storage for the CDG team. The Ning site is linked to Twitter and Facebook, although more could be made of these subsidiary channels in terms of creating further links and driving more content to Design Bristol. Lessons learned The development of Design Bristol has led us to five key lessons that we are still working through: Time - It was clear early on that a dedicated officer was required to maintain the site particularly with moderating the content. We also need an editorial panel to continue to evaluate what was working or not on the site. Ideally we would like to have invited guest editors and to commission specific content like blogs from critical friends, but we have not been able to encourage this without further dedicated resourcing. There was a noticeable drop in activity on the site when the dedicated officer was absent. This also led to a lack of editorial group meetings. Many of the initiatives that we wanted to take forward such as guest editors and pressing external stakeholders for content has not been possible as our resources have diminished. Going forward additional external support particularly from our external partners will be essential. To actually get blog entries requires chasing of potential participants to encourage them to engage. Even with a dedicated officer in place this is a big challenge partly because we are pressing people who already have other time commitments, but also don t necessarily engage with social media. In the absence of the dedicted Design Bristol editor this 5

6 encouraging of people to participate became near impossible and content from outside the group dropped to virtually nothing. Sustainability the above raises the question of just how sustainable the approach is at a time when council resources are reducing. The online conversations about placemaking in Bristol are generally happening on Twitter which also raises the issue about Design Bristol s relevance (see below). Ideally we want to move to a shared resource with an organisation such as the Civic Society, but this is reliant on a member or members in the society having the capacity and wanting to get involved. This in turn places a requirement on City Design Group of further advocacy and promotion about the value of Design Bristol followed by training. With the current resources this might prove to be a challenge. Link to existing conversations - Design Bristol works best in conjunction with other activities that provide a focus for discussion. One thing that hasn t taken off is actual discussions between members. These discussions are going on on Twitter and we need to link to these more effectively. We will introduce a twitter feed to the main page so that Design Bristol becomes the hub for Bristol s placemaking discussions. This will allow for wider promotion of events and blog topics with mentions When the web resource, Know Your Place, was approaching its third anniversary we were able to tweet a series of regular messages using the hashtag #KYPis3. This proved to be a successful way of promoting the resource, but also encouraging other partners to engage with the conversation through either retweets, replies or new messages. This chain of tweets could then be captured in a Storify for further promotion. The use of twitter in this structured and focussed way increased page visits to Know Your Place from the monthly average of to a total for the month of over 10,000. Embed the approach within a general communication strategy - This appreciation of the existing use of social media within Bristol raises the question can I afford not to use social media? The conversations will be going on anyway so an initiative like Design Bristol can help with our general communication strategy, but as mentioned above the resource needs to connect with and make better use of existing social media platforms where the conversations are happening. Stick to the rules - Always stick to the rules you set yourself so that you present a consistent voice that the community want to engage with. Next steps Although Design Bristol works alongside Know Your Place there is no direct spatial component on Design Bristol which is not ideal for a placemaking 6

7 platform. We hope that as other spatial initiatives develop such as the Our Place project that we can build this type of content into the resource. As mentioned above being able to feature a twitter feed on the main page will hopefully encourage wider content and participants in Design Bristol. Each member on Design Bristol has their own twitter account so when relevant tweets these will feature on the feed. This will create a feed that is updated more frequently than the current blog and news feed on the site. In addition, if this feed maintains its relevance this should attract more people to the placemaking dialogue. Further information Social media offers the opportunity to enable various groups to connect and allow them to share their experiences and best practice. To date Design Bristol has 317 members. It allows richer content to be shared with our partners and from the point of view of the HER it keeps heritage high up on the placemaking agenda. Peter Insole Archaeological Officer City Design Group Bristol City Council 7

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