Monday, June 18, 2012

Prime Minister starting to leverage the influence of bloggers

Refreshments at #pmtea
Photo by
Last Friday Prime Minister Gillard sat down with a group of influential female bloggers, online women's forum managers and journalists in, what I hope, is the start of an active engagement with online influencers by the Australian Government.

As a blogger I have been on the receiving end of irregular random unsolicited emails from Australian advertising agencies, that sometimes spam bloggers in the hope that some of them will talk about their latest client's products.

I don't know what they charge their clients for this 'service'.

However, to my knowledge, governments and government agencies in Australia have, with a few exceptions, largely ignored the existence and influence of bloggers.

There's also been limited research by governments in Australia into understanding the reach and influence of bloggers, and few attempts at integrating co-ordinated or long-term blogger outreach into communication and stakeholder engagement strategies.

That is what made #pmtea so exciting.

Gillard met with a group of online influencers for an hour or so. She had tea and refreshments with them and generally chatted.

There was no express policy goal or message, and it wasn't a focus group. However what it did was establish a relationship that will help the Prime Minister and govenment in the future.

A photo of #pmtea attendees from www.mymummydaze.com
The Prime Minister established personal connections with influential commentators. So now, whenever she has a message her government wants to get out to large numbers of Australian women and families, her office can include these bloggers in the 'media' distribution, even ask them for help in appropriate circumstances to counter inappropriate spin from traditional media.

When there is negative press coverage on something the government has done, will do (or has decided not to do), these bloggers will think twice before buying into the hype, balancing their views with their experience of her character and their personal connection with her.

This form of soft influence is vital for blunting criticisms aimed at governments and government agencies - just as it is for commercial organisations. Having reporters think twice and reflect, based on a personal relationship, before reporting, is how media advisors have influenced journalists for years, often resulting in more accurate and balanced stories.

Part of the breakdown between governments and media outlets has been due to the breakdown of these traditional relationships, which help commentators understand why decisions are being made and humanise the participants in every debate.

The challenge today for governments, Ministers and agencies alike, is to rebuild this type of relationship with a new form of commentator - influential bloggers. People who command directly, or indirectly, audiences in the tens or hundreds of thousands, making them potentially larger and more actively engaged audiences than those of many traditional magazines and newspapers.

I hope that now the Prime Minister has shown that it is possible and acceptable for (elected) government officials to meet and interact with influential bloggers we'll see agencies more willing to have their (appointed) officials doing the same.

Bloggers are not traditional stakeholders or lobbyists. They generally only represent their own views and are rarely backed by powerful commercial or religious organisations. However they directly interact with, reflect and influence the views of their audiences. They have reach, and they have a platform.

Agencies need to consider inviting them to their conferences, bringing them in as part of their stakeholder groups. involving them in their research and providing them with stories (not media releases) and content they can share.

In other words, agencies need to recognise the influence of bloggers, just as they do traditional media commentators.

And, most importantly, agencies need to read what influential bloggers write.

Here's a list of some of the coverage of #PMTea by blogs, forums and news outlets.
News outlets

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By Craig Thomler at 1:06 PM 9 comments Bookmark and Share
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Thursday, June 14, 2012

Are our Federal politicians 'connected' enough online?

In my copious spare time, I've been pulling together a list of social media channels used by our Federal politicians.

The question I wanted to answer was "Are our Federal politicians using social media effectively to connect with their constituents?", particularly given the level of activity by government agencies, lobby groups and media online.

Surprisingly it wasn't easy to find a comprehensive list of social media accounts operated by Federal politicians. Both the Liberal party and ALP websites were very inaccurate (20-30% incorrect) as well as hard to search - which surprised me considering the electoral value of making it easy for citizens to connect to their local member. It also surprised me that individual MPs were not checking that their information remained accurate in these sites.

Independent services such as MyPolitician, TweetMP and MPTweets were also inaccurate (10-20% incorrect) although they remain fantastic statistical services. Considering these are labours of love I can appreciate the struggle to maintain the currency of information. (However if I were a member of parliament I'd ensure my details were submitted to these and other directories when I first joined each social media network.)

The APH also doesn't provide this information - which isn't really surprising, however they do provide links to websites and email contact forms for members (and fantastic downloadable files which I used for much of the rest of my information). Should social media accounts still be treated differently to email contact information?

Anyway - onto the important bits....

As I've discussed before, my FOI request (which is still in progress) found that about 73% of Australian Government agencies use social media for official purposes. The 2012 Yellow Pages Sensis Social Media report indicated that 62% of Australians use social media - so how did politicians do?

Quite well I am glad to say.

I found that 72.12% of Australian Federal politicians used at least one social media channel, with slightly more of our male politicians (72.67%) than our female (70.77%)  having a social media presence. This is the reverse of the normal statistics for the Australian population, where women are generally more likely to use social media (particularly Facebook) than men.

The Senate did far worse than the House of Representatives, with only 58% of Senators using at least one social media channel, compared to 78% of Reps MPs. I found this quite intriguing given that Senators cover entire states rather than smaller, more easily visitable, electorates. Perhaps it reflects their term length, or a lower level of direct citizen engagement. I can't see a link based on age or gender.

By party, the Greens win on percentages, with 100% of their 10 elected parliamentarians using social media and all of them on Twitter.

The Liberals outpaced the ALP, with 76.60%, or 72 of their 94 elected parliamentarians using some form of social media and 61 on Twitter. The ALP only had 67.65%, or 69 of their 102 elected parliamentarians on social media, with 57 using Twitter.


The Nationals sit on 50%, with six of their 12 elected parliamentarians on social media - and all five on Twitter. Of the eight independents, six use social media (75%), with five of these on Twitter. The two holdouts are Nick Xenophon and Tony Windsor - probably for very different reasons.

Looking at specific social media services, Facebook (133 accounts) and Twitter (132 accounts) dominate with an almost equal number of accounts at about 58% of parliamentarians. This is interesting when you consider that 97% of social media users in Australia are on Facebook, however only 14% use Twitter. In this case I think it can be explained by the theory that Twitter is far more politically influential as it is the haunt of most of Australia's journalists and many influential stakeholders to whom politicians wish to connect.

Female politicians are slightly ahead on Facebook (60% to 58.39% of males) while males lead on Twitter (59.01% to 56.92%). Note that percentages are not absolute, that 60% of females on Facebook represents 39 accounts, whereas the 58.39% of males represents 94 accounts.

Next comes YouTube with 15.49% of parliamentarians having personal accounts (I didn't count party accounts). Here males are well ahead, with 30, or 18.63% of male politicians having accounts compared to only 5, or 7.69% of females.

Flickr follows with 4.42%, or 10, parliamentarians, and bringing up the rear was MySpace - where I could only find 2 politicians still claiming to use the service.

As you'd expect from the Senate vs House of Representatives comparison above, Senators were far less likely to use all of the services. Facebook was used by only 39.47% (30) of Senators compared to 68.67% (103) MPs and Twitter was only used by 50% (38) of Senators, compared to 62.67% (94) MPs.

The type of electorate was a factor as well. Unsurprisingly 85.37% of MPs in Inner Metropolitan seats used a social media channel, compared to 78.72% of those in Outer Metropolitan and 69.05% in Rural seats. Provincial seats, however, bucked the trend, with a 85% usage rate. For an explanation of these terms refer to the bottom of the AEC's party codes page.

Overall I think our Federal politicians have done a decent job of establishing social media channels - although Senators have some way until they catch up with the lower house.

Finally, I am very surprised that Australia's Minister for Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy (Senator Stephen Conroy) appears to not use social media at all, doesn't have a personal website, and even the link to his Parliamentary website is broken.


The way in which our politicians are using social media channels is a post for another occasion, requiring far more analysis over time.

In case you want to see for yourself what our politicians are saying online, I've established a Twitter account to follow all Federal politicians and created listed based on their house and party affiliations. You can view these as follows:
A final caveat - people join and leave social media networks all the time, so these figures are 'point in time'.  Also, although I did spend a lot of time searching for social media services used by politicians, I might have missed some, so the figures are representative, but unlikely to be 100% accurate.

Note that as I did spend more time looking than a regular citizen would, I'm not prepared to take all the blame for not finding a politician's Facebook page when they've hidden it from sight really well (or locked their Twitter account as several politicians appear to have done). Politicians who want to engage online need to make these channels very easy to find - as should their parties.

All the information I've collected, and the statistics generated, are embedded below. If you see anything that is incomplete and want to help populate the spreadsheet, drop me a line via email or my @craigthomler Twitter account. I'll even populate it for you if you add comments with the missing information.

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Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Ten tips for social media engagement by government (from the UK Cabinet Office)

The UK Cabinet Office recently released Social Media Guidance for civil servants.

The guidance goes far beyond the level and sophistication of material I've seen from many other jurisdictions, offering support and useful advice, not just rules and warnings.

It also provides advice to CTOs and CIOs on how to oversome some of the technical barriers to accessing and using the internet and social media that still plague many agencies, stating that,
Social media is likely to become as ubiquitous as email with many more, if not all, staff eventually needing to use it in some form as part of their work.
The guidance provides an excellent model for governments in Australia. In fact it could almost be reused wholesale as most of the information holds true here as well.

As Francis Maude, Minister for Cabinet Office, states in his introduction to the guidance,
When civil servants, policy makers and service delivery units alike, open themselves to dialogue with the public they can glean a much better understanding of the real needs and concerns of citizens. They can keep up-to-date with the latest thinking as well as being a listening post and avenue for real time reassurance and information.
In particular, the ten tips for social media engagement are sound advice I'd recommend agencies in Australia follow to the letter.

These are:
  1. Have a clear idea of your objectives in using social media (behaviour change/service
    delivery/consultation/communication)
  2. Learn the rules of each social media space before engaging
  3. Abide by the Civil Service Code and ask for advice if you are not sure
  4. Remember an official account belongs to the Department not the individual
  5. Communicate where your citizens are
  6. Build relationships with your stakeholders on and offline – social media is just one of many
    communication channels
  7. Try not to channel shift citizens backwards (move from email to telephone for example)
  8. Do not open a channel of communication you cannot maintain
  9. Understand when a conversation should be taken offline
  10. Do not engage with users who are aggressive/abusive


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Thursday, June 07, 2012

Is the internet a force for good or evil in the eyes of government? And what does that mean for democracy?

We've often seen contrary positions taken by western democratic governments on the value of the internet - whether it can be used for good, or is a pit of evil.

The US government, for instance, has promoted freedom of speech on the internet internationally, supporting the use of Tor and other tools to allow bloggers and other online commentators to post and access information censored online in their countries.

However at the same time the CIA has launched a crackdown on US-domiciled websites that *may* illegally host copyright material, without the presumption of innocence. The US government has repeatedly broadened the legal scope of online snooping by government agencies and has even been revealed to be behind a major viral attack that affected tens of thousands of computers around the world, targeting a nation with which the US was not formally at war.

Australia has seen similar doublethink - with politicians supportive of the growth of the internet, and the Australian Government's largest infrastructure project thus far for the 21st century being the National Broadband Network.

At the same time the Minister responsible for the NBN has advocated for internet censorship (contrary to the US government position) and the Attorney-General's Department has held secret talks regarding having all ISPs keep the internet histories of all web users for two years. This action is supposedly to support law enforcement efforts, however opens doors to future privacy abuses, the end of the presumption of innocence and effective 24-7 digital surveillance of the activities of all Australians online.

Last week while presenting at FaHCSIA's information week, one of the public servants in the room asked me about this seeming contradiction, asking "how can governments work to militate against the use of social media for evil without resorting to paranoia and risk aversion?" 

This is a hard question to answer for me - or indeed for anyone - at this time. Australia, and the world, is still in a transitional period of rapid change. Every week there's new online services, new viruses and new threats that circumvent existing laws and processes to facilitate different ways to communicate, engage, share and co-create.

The internet, like the telephone, is a neutral tool made more effective by low barriers to use and widespread adoption. The tool itself is neither good nor evil, however it can be put to both such uses (and many gray shades inbetween) by individuals, organisations and nations.

I am certain that we cannot stop the internet - it already drives too much of society's interactions to abandon without severe economic impact and civil unrest. Nations that have attempted to 'turn off' the internet have not been successful and, largely, are no longer led by the same political parties - or even the same political systems.

It looks contradictory for a government to build and advocate for the internet, while other parts of government advocate for restrictions on its use, however these are the inherent contradictions in any large organisation - individuals hold a wide range of views and approach the topic from very different perspectives, influencing the behaviour of different parts of government in radically different ways.

Governments will, therefore, continue to simultaneously advocate for the use of the internet for 'good' purposes, and decry its use for 'evil'. As most adults realise, governments are diverse organisations capable of being both 'good' and 'evil', frequently at the same time.

So while we live in a society striving to cope with rapid change, while our institutions act under laws and procedures designed for a paper-based world and while our politicians and senior leaders struggle to understand and adapt to new technologies, nations will continue to be dysfunctional in the face of the internet.

To manage this dysfunction without destroying our democratic traditions, politicians and public servants need to keep uppermost in their mind that their role is to serve the state and the community. The spirit of democracy needs to be nurture and preserved regardless of the mediums used for communication, engagement or activity.

The internet is only a tool. The issues and illegal activity they seek to control or prevent are acts by individuals, rarely by communities, and the spirit of laws, not merely the words of laws need to be upheld.

Citizens interacting online are still citizens and deserve the same rights and freedoms as they are allowed in physical space.

Australians would not agree to laws which made them all suspects, to be followed by personal spies through their daily lives. They would not agree to all their phone calls being recorded and mail being read and copied, just "in case" some of them may, at some point, commit a crime.

They would not agree to massive fines, or gaol time, for individuals sharing their personal books, DVDs, videos or artwork with their friends.

They would not agree to individuals being banned for life from driving on public roads after three speeding fines.

For us to remain a liberal democracy, Australia's politicians and public servants must preserve these values and translate them appropriately for new technologies and channels.

Provided governments follow a social values-based approach we will preserve our way of life. It is only if we allow ourselves to subvert freedoms due to fear of the evil that a few individuals may commit online that we will all end up caged and subject to future regimes that don't reflect our desired social values.

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Wednesday, June 06, 2012

How Aussies are using social media - latest Sensis report

Thanks to a tip off from John Sheridan at GovCamp yesterday, I'm happy to report that the latest Sensis figures on social media use by Australians are out - and the numbers have continued to increase.

Sensis reports that 62% of online Australians are using social media, with 97% using Facebook - roughly the same numbers they reported last year.

However use of LinkedIn (16%) and Twitter (14%) has surged - with some interesting state-by-state results, particularly in the ACT where we're above average Twitter users (25%) but below average LinkedIn users (8%) - compared, for example to NSW where 19% used Twitter and 26% used LinkedIn.

There was also interesting information on the engagement and expenditure by business on social media channels - with 82% of large businesses having a Facebook page, 71% having a Twitter presence and 30% and 29% respectively using LinkedIn and YouTube (though a disappointingly 13% had a blog) and spending on average 4.5% of their marketing budget (or around $100,000) per year on the area.

If you consider the expenditure of the Commonwealth Government on advertising alone for 2010-11 was $116.9 million dollars (from the Parliamentary Library report, The administration of Commonwealth Government advertising), then the Commonwealth, to reflect the expenditure of large Australian companies, should be spending at least $5.2 million on social media.

59% of large businesses expected to spend more in social marketing over the next twelve months (an average 12% increase in spend), with only 2% planning on cutting their investment. The funds for increasing social marketingwas coming from print (38% - sorry newspapers!), TV advertising (10%), radio advertising (10%) - though 29% indicated nothing would be cut and 24% were unsure where the funds would come from.

Of course, as comms budgets are often reported by program rather than by agency, the amount spent on communication is generally much higher - as would need to be the social media spending to compare.

It was also interesting to see that 53% of Australians accessing social media were doing so on mobile phones - compared to 54% on desktop computers, indicating how quickly Australians are moving to mobile devices for their social interactions - no surprise considering that social is mobile, for all intents and purposes.

It was also good to see that social media engagement and activity was being controlled predominantly by marketing (64%) and communication (17%) areas, rather than IT (5%). Government still has a way to go in this space to find the most effective balance of control and management, reflecting the skills and the security required for effective online engagement.

Social media success is still largely being measured by likes/followers/subscribers (67% of large businesses), while positive social media conversation (17%), usage (11%)  and brand sentiment (7%) remain quite low. Only 39% of large businesses reported measuring return on investment for social media and only 28% of large businesses were using third party statistics providers with another 11% using in-house statistics, indicating there's still a great deal of ad-hoc or non measurement going on.

You can see the full report and statistics from the Sensis media release The Yellow Social Media Report 2012, and I have attached the infographic to the right (or view the larger version).

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