Pre-Conference Workshop: How to implement effective Social Media strategies in the Public Sector

Workshop led by UK Public Sector social media authority Simon Wakeman
Chartered Marketer, CIM, CIPR www.simonwakeman.com/
Head of Communications and Marketing at Medway Council, Greater London, UK

Monday, 15th November 2010
SkyCity Convention Centre, Auckland

9.00am
Introduction / warm-up exercise

  • What is the scope and opportunity for public sector organisations in social media?
  • What is the potential of social media to contribute to the essential functions of government?
  • Grasping the future implications of social media for accountability and responsiveness
9.30am
Getting the basics right – Mastering the essentials for successful public sector social media strategy and implementation

  • The seven types of social media and how they can be made to work for public sector organisations
  • Communicating, engaging and consulting
  • When and how to engage – using behaviour, emotion and attitudes to direct strategy
  • Understanding the network effect
10.15am
Managing social media use within the organisation – mitigating risk and striking the personal/professional balance

  • Stakeholder engagement – developing a business case to ensure social media can be used as part of the communications mix
  • Harnessing employees enthusiasm for social media while making sure it is used responsibly
  • Protecting your organisational ‘brand’ and voice
  • Allocating responsibility for implementing and policing the organisation’s use of social media – developing a social media policy that employees understand and will follow
  • How can social media help with internal communications and engagement.
10.45am
Morning tea
11.00am
Monitoring and auditing – Effective social media listening

  • Conducting a social media audit as a basis for developing an integrated offline/online communications strategy that incorporates social media.
  • What when, where and why to listen
  • What to do with what you hear
  • Cost effective monitoring tools and practice
  • What to monitor and how to achieve effective results.
  • Reporting for elected stakeholders
11.45am
Focus on Facebook and Twitter within an integrated communications and marketing mix

  • What are the best ways to put these popular platforms to use?
  • How to use different types of presence on Facebook
  • How to develop an effective and sustainable presence with interesting and engaging content that your audience will want to share
  • Platforms you may not have considered and how they could be made to work
12.30pm
Lunch
1.30pm
Engaging and consulting – Incorporating social media into policy development and service delivery processes

  • Using social media to shape policy and meet community needs
  • Platforms and formats, what works, what doesn’t
  • Factoring social media response into the process
  • Organisation support and resourcing for social media engagement at policy level
2.15pm
Social media relations – Managing outrage and other responses

  • Risk management and mitigation through planning and social media choice
  • What to do when people mention your organisation or service online
  • How to deal with criticism or negative comments
  • Deciding whether to respond and how to respond to conversations about your organisation or service
  • Managing the potential negative impacts of social media coverage and the links between social media and the mainstream media agenda
  • Looking at and discussing a range of case studies of social media in practice; what can learn from examples in Europe, US and NZ?
3.00pm
CASE STUDIES: Handling the social media reputation firestorm – the good, the bad and the ugly

  • Social media presents new challenges for reputation management in crisis situations.
  • Find out how to manage in a social media crisis situation and how to prepare beforehand.
  • Hear public sector case studies of how crisis situations have been well and poorly handled.
3.30pm
Refreshment break
3.45pm
Putting it all together

  • Writing your social media strategy – the essentials
  • So you’ve already started? Evaluating and incorporating existing activities
  • What roles should the communicator play in getting the organisation ready for social media?
  • Resourcing – building expertise
  • Ten truths and myths about social media.
4.00pm
Developing a personal action plan for social media
Delegates will take part in an exercise which will enable them to develop a personal take-away plan for implementing in their own organisations.
5.00pm
Closing remarks and wrap-up from facilitator



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