Event Seminar: Your Organisation in Their Hands
Managing User Generated Content
Overview
MailThis 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 – Telegraph Group CIO – Introduction
Introduction 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 – Encouraging communities to share knowledge and creating a trusted environment
Sharing 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":
- Hold an initial physical launch in which potential contributors are invited and can register
- Use facilitators (different from moderators) to drive the CoPs, these should be selected from active participants
- 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: 
Neil Kleiner – Social engagement – the implications for your business and brand
- 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 – Key points of social media law and governance
- "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 – 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:
- 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
Future Seminars
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Comments and feedback welcomed:
SPEAKERS
Mike Seery
Mike has led IT at some of the UK's largest media and membership companies. He was the first media CIO to implement a cloud CRM solution at the Economist Group. As CIO at the Telegraph Media Group he was responsible for providing the technology that continues to keep the Telegraph at the forefront of innovation. He enhanced Telegraph Media Group's ability to create innovative digital consumer products, introduced Agile development processes and delivered significant operational efficiencies. Mike is currently consulting with Which? as their interim head of Digital.
Steve Dale
Steve Dale is the architect of the award winning Community Platform – the local government online community of communities. Communities Platform currently has over 96,000 registered users and 1,500 communities. Steve will talk about how you encourage a community to work together to share information and create a truly dynamic website.
Neil Kleiner
Neil is UK Head of Social Media at Havas Media.
His background (after giving up trying to be a music journalist for his own independent music magazine) is with digital agencies and digital consulting.
He advises leading brands on the effective use of social media and the level of engagement needed.
Paul Massey
Paul Massey is a social media lawyer and sits on the Industry Standards, Public Awareness and Computer Games working groups of the UK Council of Child Internet Safety.
Steve Bridger
Steve Bridger helps some of the UK's biggest charities to trust their own people to build relationships online that support collaboration, transparency, advocacy & philanthropy. He is an experienced online community builder and mentor, and encourages organisations to release authentic voices in their organisations, particularly through storytelling. An award-winning blogger and a contributor to several reports on online fundraising, for the past six years he has also managed a thriving benchmark online community for the CIPD.
WHAT WE'RE SAYING
I get asked the question ‘who is your favourite 19th century Prussian Field Marshal’ quite a lot, as I suspect you do as well. There are of course several great contenders for this title, but my vote has to go Helmuth Von Moltke the Elder. Why? Because of his contribution to the concept of dynamic planning! Trying to convince people that planning is a continuous and never ending process and not something that’s completed at the start of a project is a constant challenge for me and I will grab any support I can get.
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Comments
09 Dec 2010 16:40
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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