Hurrah! I just published my 100th example of social media use in local government. I’ve been collecting examples of social media use in local government for probably a year and a half.  I published a slide deck of examples using slide share last year.  And although it got tons of views showing that people wanted information like this, it’s not easy to update.

So since January, I’ve been sharing examples of social media and open data use in local government – as I come across them – through a blogging service called posterous.  Here it is.   I like it because it has a neat little button I can install on my browser – click – and I can slurp images or text right into my post.  I collect examples across any kind of social media platform or tool or application of open data, and from anywhere in the world but it has to be local government.  I also include examples of state, province or regional government and occasionally other public services, too – but central gov examples are strictly verboten.

Social collation

It seems to me that single-issue blogs are actually a pretty good way of collating content around good practice.  And social media or web-based practice is clearly really well suited for this, but I think you could use it for anything. (Here’s Jon Harvey’s innovation and improvement focused blog Small Creative Ideas, for example) The benefit of doing it in a blog, and particularly through a service like Posterous or Tumblr is that it’s got a nice easy interface, (you can even email stuff in).  You can tag items to categorise them, (e.g. Flickr or data or West Midlands) and others can be updated as you add stuff through RSS or email update.

Promotion

And posterous lets me automatically cross-post my content onto other platforms – for example this WordPress blog (though I’ve only just started doing that in the last month – and I’m still viewing it as a bit of an experiment). Unfortunately, I can’t cross-post into my Communities of Practice blog – but I have added the blog’s contents to the Social Media Community of Practice by adding its RSS feed to the community news feeds and I’ve just added it to the customised search of external websites in the CoP, too (you can choose to search across external sites from the search box within the community).

I also use HootSuite a multi-account social media management tool, to pick up the feed from the blog to post to my Twitter account and the twitter stream of the community of practice. I could auto-post to twitter directly from Posterous, but by using HootSuite, it’s delayed slightly which gives me a chance to make sure the links work or I haven’t made a disastrous spelling mistake.

Even in the early days, it was quite helpful in sharing examples for Local by Social and Connected Councillors and it’s helped me when I prepare for talks, etc.  So just as personal tool, it’s definitely been a success.  But I hope that it’s a valuable resource for others, too and that it’s been helpful to the folks who’ve had their examples featured.  It certainly seems reasonably popular (you can see page views on individual posts – and these range from a couple hundred to well over a thousand).

Where I get the examples

Some come from word of mouth, some I get from the social media CoP, some come from GovLoop (the sort of US equivalent of CoP).  I pick up some from my RSS feedreader (I use Google Reader), but I definitely pick up a lot from Twitter.  Since I’m working with the LG Group transparency programme, too – I’m also arranging for colleagues to share examples of innovative use with me to help us celebrate emerging practice.   Usually, when I see stuff I blog it straight away – as I usually am just providing a link and a couple paragraphs at most – so it doesn’t take me much time.

But if I’ve already done an example recently and I spot a new one, I bookmark it with the delicious tag socialgov.  If you have an example, I’d love to hear about it – drop me a line at ingrid.koehler AT local.gov.uk or tag it socialgov if you use delicious or even better Tweet me!

Why not case studies?

Case studies are great, but they’re a bit retrospective, so not so good for capturing emerging practice or innovation in its early stages.  But an example blog offers no such promise, it’s just examples.  Sometimes I do feature case studies when I find them.   And an example blog gives me the opportunity to catalogue those ideas which might make good case studies later.