This document provides an overview of social media and its use by Australian governments. It begins by defining social media and listing various types of social media platforms. It then discusses Australia's use of social media, noting that 62% of Australians use social media and that the most popular platform is Facebook. The document also outlines how Australian governments are increasingly using social media, with 73% of agencies reporting official social media use in 2012. It discusses tools governments use for different levels of engagement and the importance of selecting the right tools based on objectives. Finally, it covers best practices for managing social media risk and building a future-proof social media structure within an organization.
3. Many definitions for social media
ProPR Social media are online communications in which
individuals shift fluidly and flexibly between the role of audience and
author. To do this, they use social software that enables anyone
without knowledge of coding, to post, comment on, share or mash up
content and to form communities around shared interests
Fresh Networks Social media is people having
conversations online. These conversations can
take a variety of forms; for example, blogs and
comments or photo sharing
Health is Social Social Media is the
meeting place between people and
technology
About.com Media is an instrument on
communication, like a newspaper or a
radio, so social media would be a social
instrument of communication
Optimize Your Web Presence Social media are online
venues, such as social networking sites, blogs and wikis that
enable people to store and share information called content, such
as text, pictures, video and links
BlackBox Social Media Social media is any online media platform
that provides content for users and also allows users to participate in
the creation or development of the content in some way
CubixDev - Social Media is the new term for socialising
online. It allows people to freely interact with each other
online where-ever they are and whenever they want
Michelle Digital Social
media is life online
Webgeekly - Social Media is generally any
website or service that uses Web 2.0
techniques and concepts
Relationship Economy
Social media is
communications
Get a Social Boost
Digital word of mouth
Affilorama - Social media is content created and shared by individuals
on the web using freely available websites that allow users to create
and post their own images, video and text information and then share
that with either the entire internet or just a select group of friends
Wikipedia - Social media are media
for social interaction, using highly
accessible and scalable publishing
techniques
The Financial Brand Social
media isnt about the media, its
about being social
4. Social media has in common
Facilitates user-generated content
Facilitated by social connections
Distribution is zero or low cost
Supports flowing discussions (low barriers to
participation)
Allows the community to do for themselves
Use open frameworks that support integration &
extension
5. Social media includes
Blogs (Over 50 government blogs at Govspace)
Groups and Forums (Whirlpool, Google Groups)
Wikis (Wikipedia, Wikispaces)
Social networking (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Google+)
Social bookmarking (Delicious)
Social news (Digg, Reddit)
Micro-blogs (Twitter, Yammer)
Community Q&A (Yahoo Answers)
Multimedia sharing (YouTube, 際際滷share, Scribd)
Ideas markets (Dialogue App, Ideascale, GetSuggestion)
Collaborative budgeting (Budget Simulator)
Product and service reviews (Epinions, Yelp)
Emerging tools (Group buying, Pinterest, Crowd funding)
Each has different uses
6. What social media is not
Just for teenagers and young adults
All low quality content
An independent study in 2005 by Nature Magazine found Wikipedia and
Encyclopedia Britannica had about the same rate of errors
Since then, reviews in 2007, 2008 & 2012 have found Wikipedia is at least
as, if not more, reliable than commercial encyclopedias in a range of topics.
Unproductive
50+ age group is the fastest growing on Facebook and Twitter
30% of Facebook users are aged 35-49
Average age of Twitter users is 31, of LinkedIn users 39 years old.
People who surf the Internet for fun at work - within a reasonable limit of
less than 20% of their total time in the office - are more productive by about
9% than those who dont.
Dr Brent Coker, Dept of Management & Marketing, University of Melbourne
Going away
9. Australias social media use
62%
Use social media
62%
38%
Never
38%
2011
2012
Source: Sensis Social Media Report May 2012
10. Australias social media use
30%
Everyday
36%
24%
Weekly
Less than weekly
19%
9%
6%
38%
38%
Never
2011
2012
Source: Sensis Social Media Report May 2012
11. Facebook in NSW
Based on residents aged 15+
2,620,620 (72%)
Sydney
1,020,701
3,599,380 (63%)
NSW
2,109,315
Use Facebook
Don't use Facebook
Source: Facebook March 2013 / ABS Census 2012
14. The social media majority
In mid-2012:
73%
of Australian Government agencies
reported using social media for
official purposes
15. What the Australian Government is
using social media for..
Answer choice
Response
Share
For stakeholder engagement or collaboration
32
54.24%
Operating an information campaign
25
42.37%
Responding to customer enquiries/comments/complaints
25
42.37%
For engaging with journalists and media outlets
24
40.68%
For engagement or collaboration with other government
agencies
24
40.68%
Monitoring citizen, stakeholder and/or lobbyist views and
activities
17
28.81%
For a public consultation process
16
27.12%
For a stakeholder or other restricted access consultation
13
22.03%
Other type of activity (i.e. recruitment, crowdsourcing, staff)
11
18.64%
For policy or services co-design
7
11.86%
16. NSW government has
At least:
173 Twitter accounts
75 Facebook pages
50 YouTube accounts
21 Flickr accounts
9 Google+ accounts
30. Support systems
Engagement hub
Blogs
Groups
Polls
Monitoring suite
Forum
Web reporting
Idea market
Archiving
Social media monitoring
Your website
Outreach activities
Blogs
Forums
Enabling services
Social media publishing
Groups
URL shortener
File transfer
Social media presence
Facebook
LinkedIn
Twitter
Yammer
YouTube
Groups
Foursquare
Forums
Survey
Email
Email
Storage (image, video, docs)
Mapping
Apps
33. Social media risk
The biggest risk for agencies assessing social
media risks is when the people assessing the
risks dont understand
and/or use the social
mediums involved.
34. Awareness threshold or risk level?
Avoid confusing awareness with risk.
Becoming aware of something doesnt necessarily
mean the level of risk associated with it has increased.
Aware
Unaware
35. Top areas of social media risk
Conversational what people say
Reputational how agency is seen
Privacy/security what information exposed
Administrative How policies are followed
Technological how systems operate
Risks should be owned by the business owner
with advice and support with Communication,
Legal & IT groups depending on approach.
Recommend: http://www.egov.vic.gov.au/pdfs/vmia-risk-insight-12-11-2010.pdf
36. Risk varies by audience, goals and
content
Theres no standard risk level plus levels vary
as an online channel matures
Risk area
Likelihood
Consequence
Conversational
High - very high
Low - very high
Reputational
Low very high
Low - very high
Privacy/Security
Low very high
Low - very high
Administrative
Low high
Low very high
Technological
Low very high
Low very high
37. For example.an online community
Size/engagement
Technological
Conversational
Security
Technological
Reputational
Privacy
Conversational
Administrative
Technological
Reputational
Time
38. So how to mitigate?
Assess versus comparable existing social media
channels
Have risk assessments done by people who
understand the social mediums AND organisational
context
Review risk plan regularly over time and when
environment/context changes
Develop agency and project social media guidance
documents and review them regularly as well!
Test your risk mitigation strategies
39. Key documents to develop
Social media strategy how your organisation will
use social media to help it meet its goals (including
risk mitigation)
Social media guidelines/policy how your staff are
expected to engage officially via social media and
advice for personal use to help staff avoid issues
Escalation plan How you will escalate incidents,
including decision trees
Moderation policy how you will moderate user
comments via appropriate social media
40. Intels social media guidelines:
Source: http://www.intel.com.au/content/www/us/en/legal/intel-social-media-guidelines.html
41. YMCA Chicago escalation plan
Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/43118383@N00/4668895145/sizes/l/in/photostream/
42. Areas to pay attention to
Negative comments & misinformation
(workflow, context, moderate, engage)
Inappropriate comments
(set context, limit rich content, moderate, block & report)
Overwhelming level of responses
(employ management tools, resourcing, broaden responses)
Hacking & spamming
(integrate spam control, complex passwords, moderate)
Privacy (users AND staff)
(Strong policies and clear guidelines to users, test tools first)
Inappropriate use by staff
(social media guidance and training)
43. Prepare your social media channels
before you need them
Such as:
Twitter (for real-time news distribution)
Blog hosted externally (for long-form updates)
Facebook page (for community building)
Flickr group (for photo capture)
Ushahidi instance (for geomapped incident reports)
Youtube (for video footage and reports)
Provide context and user guidance for all, set right
settings per channel (ie: no commenting on YouTube)
44. Use appropriate social media
management tools
Such as:
Hootsuite/Measured Voice
(for social channel management, approvals
and auditing)
Backupify
(for archival/storage)
A social media monitoring service
(for tracking externally reported
incidents/issues/sentiment)