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Event Seminar: Your Organisation in Their Hands

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Managing User Generated Content

Overview

This seminar looked at the challenges and opportunities of user generated content.

The level of engagement with user generated content across the third sector is highly varied. Some organisations have thriving online communities, others have made costly investments which have failed to live up to expectations, and some have yet to dip their toes into this area.

The seminar, held on 24th November 2010, looked at the practicalities organisations face when implementing user-generated content and the dangers of choosing not to engage at this level.

Presentations

Mike Seery

Mike Seery – Telegraph Group CIO – Introduction

application/pdf iconIntroduction to Managing User Generated Contents

Some key points:

  • UCG can be very cheap and require relatively little effort
  • UGC ranges from most popular stories to discussion boards/forums
  • Understand and plan for the worst
  • There need to be guidelines and controls in place

Steve Dale

Steve Dale – Encouraging communities to share knowledge and creating a trusted environment

application/pdf iconSharing Knowledge and Building Trust in Online Communities

  • The difference between a Community of Practice (CoP) and social media is that a CoP has a defined purpose
  • Social media sites such as Facebook are not trusted, so people are considerably less willing to share knowledge on social media sites
  • Creating an initial "critical mass":
    1. Hold an initial physical launch in which potential contributors are invited and can register
    2. Use facilitators (different from moderators) to drive the CoPs, these should be selected from active participants
    3. Mix online activity with offline e.g. if no one is responding to an particular thread contact them physically (e.g. by phone) and ask them to contribute

Find out more about Steve's award winning local government communities platform: cops-public-service.gif

Neil Kleiner

Neil Kleiner – Social engagement – the implications for your business and brand

application/pdf iconPower to Your People

  • It is hugely important that brands (and companies) get the approach to social media right
  • Social media has driven a change in people and how they behave as consumers
  • Need to focus on conversations, not on marketing campaigns or technology - conversations are key
  • It is important to adopt the right tone and not to patronise
  • Need to engage with people and entertain them
  • It is important to manage your social media groups as well as on-site communities

Neil's Slide 22 is particularly interesting, giving a process for social media engagement, including having an Agile Strategy and measurement - there are huge parallels with Agile Methods.

Paul Massey

Paul Massey – Key points of social media law and governance

application/pdf iconLegal Aspects of Social Media

  • "If it is illegal offline, it is illegal online" ... including on websites and social media
  • Don't let legal issues stop people contributing
  • There need to be policies and staff need to be aware of those policies
  • Disclaimers don't necessarily help

Steve Bridger

Steve Bridger – Turning staff into your most passionate community and engaging fans and critics

Family illness meant that Steve was not able to attend to give his presentation, but he has shared his slides:

application/pdf iconYour People are Your Brand

  • Charities need to trust their staff to build relationships online
  • Relationships lead to commitment
  • Staff from across the organisation should engage, not just from marketing
  • If you can recruit supporters to run communities, all the better
  • Trusting your staff to use social media appropriately = trusting your recruitment decisions
  • Need engaged, enthusiastic staff for social media and communities

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Comments and feedback welcomed:

Comments

Steve Dale was asked on our LinkedIn group whether it is advisable to control to group access and if this increases trust?

He responded:

"I think you can establish trust more quickly within a closed group (i.e. a 'request to join' process). But the downside is that it eventually becomes one more knowledge silo, with limited information flows with and between other groups. There's also the issue of how you select who's 'in' and who's 'out'. It is advisable to have some clear (and published) criteria as to who would qualify for membership, or who might be specifically excluded, in order to avoid any dispute from those who are refused access.

Having an open membership brings it's own risks (you may not get your ideal cohort), and trust takes longer because of the randomness of people joining. But on the plus side, you'll get a better mix of skills, experience and knowledge, which can fuel more group/community activity. It's even more important with open groups to have a published charter describing what the group is about, or what it's objectives are, and the rules of acceptable behaviour. You could of course include this in the Ts and Cs, but you can use less formal language in a charter, and make it more contextually relevant to the group. All of this gives you some protection should you need to eject someone from the group - i.e. in the sense that they have broken one or more of the rules.

What I've done in the past is to start with a closed group (i.e. limited to people you know and trust) until such time as a method of working has been established and conversations are seeded, and then make the group open (but make sure your current members know that this is part of the strategy). The original (and trusted) members of the group will support each other, and provide a foundation for taking the group forward as well as supporting the induction of new members.

It's never a black and white issue with open or closed groups, but hope this helps."

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