I’ve been a bit busy over the weekend and for the last few days so here is a belated post about my presentation on Digital Engagement for Local By Social at Ewood Park in Blackburn. I have posted the full presentation below, but I want to pick out a couple of bits that caused some excitement during the presentation.
I’m not anti Blackburn, at the start of the presentation I highlighted that as a visitor there was no visible FaceBook presence for Blackburn & Darwen. I learnt during the keynote speech by Tom Stannard, that there was in-fact quite a lot but it is all designed for people in Blackburn, who obviously know how to find it. It was pointed out to me by @loulouk (who works tirelessly at trying to get Blackburn & Darwen more engaged), that people don’t visit Blackburn,
which is a shame.
I also made a statement about Twitter.
I stand by each one of these points:
- You can waste hours playing with Twitter
- It is good for broadcasting messages, I imagine a great number of you will pitch up here to read this because you have seen this tweet:
- It is a really good way of getting an answer to a question from your peer group
- It can be difficult to manage conversations
This final point probably caused more excitement than me asking if there were any racists in the room. Prolific tweeters like @dominiccampbell & @ingridk disagree with this, I stand by it, if you are a newcomer to Twitter then following conversations can be a bit overawing and difficult. From experience an awful lot of people sign up to Twitter then stop using it because they just don’t get it. If they persevere some people will get it and become adicts like the rest of us, but when you are talking to an audience where 50% didn’t tweet it would be folly to say it’s easy.
While we are talking all things Twitter, it was quite nice to see that Blackburn Rivers and the Blues bar actually use Twitter quite well and monitor their brand.
I tweeted this
while I was arranging going for drinks with my mate @s3tok and got this back from Ewood Park
Nice to see that people actually do monitor their brand and keywords on Twitter.
Anyway that is a bit of context around the slides any questions feel free to stick them in the comments below.
Sadly, as you had to leave early, I didn’t get a chance to talk to you about this on the day, so text shall have to suffice.
Blackburn and Darwen may very well get visitors. I am not concerned with them. It is not my job to be concerned with them and frankly, the amount of things outside my remit stacking up on my rather underpaid desk is mounting by the day, therefore this will not be being added to the pile.
Tourism is for Culture Leisure and Sport to worry about. Except when it comes to social media. Then it’s actually the English Tourist Board who dictate to our local tourist centre what they will and wont do on social media.
Not local gov.
Local gov is for local people. Hyperlocal is something you are right about – local relevant information for local relevant people.
We provided Facebook pages for people who know the area. Our residents. Who know to search for Darwen Leisure Centre, or Waves, or the Blackburn Library. I know they know we’re there, they comment. We don’t have Likes, we have communities or pages where people ask for info and get it, or where people suggest alterations and get listened to. Sometimes they even get an apology.
What you should have done was tell us our signposting is appalling. Which it is. As SOCITM also pointed out, but much more gently.
loulouk(Quote)
The thing is I didn’t know your signposting was bad because I couldn’t find anything as a visitor. For the record I have been back to Facebook and found:
Waves Balckburn
Blackburn Libraries
Have a look at Coventry who do Facebook exceptionally well.
If I were sitting and advising and having a conversation I would perhaps be more gentle but in a short presentation when I am trying to make an impact it is more difficult.
Michael Rawlins(Quote)
Signposting is awful, generally, if you can’t find something.
You couldn’t find something. Suggest the signposting is broken ;o)
loulouk(Quote)
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