I keep hearing people talking about how they’ve written a ‘set of Twitter protocols’ or ‘a social media policy’. They cover things like what to tweet and what not to tweet, how often to tweet it and the ‘right way’ to use Twitter. (If you think you know the answer to that last one please keep it to yourself.)

Do we really need policies and protocols for every aspect of our job? If so, why are people employing us? Surely we use social media tools only if appropriate, if doing so helps deliver our communications goals and in compliance with our organisation’s existing codes of practice? Just like any other tools for communicating. When was the last time you saw a six-page document detailing how to use a telephone, what not to say on it and how often you should ring people? (Ok, in some lines of work (such as call centres) there will be protocols for using the phone, but you get my drift.)

I tried writing a social media policy myself recently. I started with the intention of providing broad concepts to help people communicate confidently online (such as ‘think about your audience’ rather than ‘don’t tweet more than fourteen times a minute’), and abandoned it when I realised I was simply reiterating what was already in our contracts and organisational policies; and what was, on the whole, common sense borne of experience.

Instead I wrote a guide to blogging and social media that aims to give colleagues some advice but tries to avoid a ‘right way’ of doing it (it is a document of good practice, not a policy). If communicating is part of someone’s job then we should trust them to do it appropriately; if they don’t then there are management protocols already at our disposal for dealing with them.

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In Smart Swarm Peter Miller explains how lessons from the natural world have already changed dramatically the way we work. These lessons illustrate how our individual interactions with our local environment can have a profound effect on the behaviour of society as a whole.

The author shows how an understanding of swarms (that is, groups of independent individuals aware only of their immediate neighbours) has saved the lives of hundreds of Muslim pilgrims, increased efficiency at Boeing and demonstrated that physical town meetings can be far more beneficial than virtual ones, even if they are less convenient. ’Citizens who talk to one another,’ he writes, ‘Give themselves a better chance to make smart decisions.’

I’m often wary of books like this. They come packed with kudos from the forward-thinkers in communication, which can give them an aura of game-changing brilliance (or at least the impression that they provide remarkable new insight into human behaviour). Often though they seem simply to be expounding common sense, backed up by examples and seasoned with the occasional ‘wow!’ moment. So, if I’ve been expecting a greater intellectual challenge from a book I can be left feeling underwhelmed.

What’s refreshing about Smart Swarm (to me, at least) is that, while it’s part of the discourse around developments in human communication, it’s not written by a ‘social media guru’. Instead Peter Miller, who is in fact senior editor of National Geographic, demonstrates how lessons from nature justify some of the theories posited by those gurus.

He shows us how ants are better than we are at planning business travel, how successfully bees use dancing competitions to decide the best nesting spot, how termites can teach us a thing or two about air conditioning and why locusts suddenly change from shy individuals into massive, marauding swarms (apparently it’s because they’re cannibals).

I enjoyed this book; it was engaging, entertaining and thought-provoking. Miller narrates the extraordinary discoveries of scientists and their application to complex logistical conundrums with a lightness and craft that makes them intriguing and easy to understand.

I haven’t figured out yet if this book has had a more profound effect on me than providing a few hours of pleasurable reading, but that really doesn’t matter. And besides, maybe I never will; perhaps I’m too small a player to be able to see the bigger picture. Maybe, in a hundred years or so, an anthropologist will argue that profound changes in human behaviour can be traced directly to the group of individuals who read Smart Swarm. And for that reason alone you should read it.

This was written for the good folk at Delib, who very kindly supplied the book.

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"Many of the fundamental, underlying principles of effective public relations remain unchanged by this emerging world without newspapers.

"But make no mistake, the revolution is indeed here.

"And that fact makes it all the more imperative that every institution affected by this revolution not miss the boat in adapting its communications capabilities to this new reality."

Visit A world without newspapers

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Since nothing happened the first time I tweeted, I suspect that Chiltern were not using Twitter then. However, when I tweeted again recently…

“I’ve asked before & I’ll ask again: whose stupid idea was it to put a fixed, redundant arm on the window side of Chiltern Train seats? Grr.”

they were quick to respond:

“@citizensheep I’ll find out. Do you have a direct email address so I can get an answer for you?”

Wow. I felt quite ashamed by the tone of my tweet, and I made that clear in our subsequent email exchange. I was briefly in contact with Emma, who was personal, friendly and helpful; she offered to take my enquiries to colleagues and promised to keep me informed, even though it could take a while.

Today I got another email from Emma, with a helpful response about arm rests:

“This was standard on the refurbished fleet. The twin seats have three arm rests, one at each end, and one between the two seats. I believe that the aisle-side arm rest and the central arm rest are moveable to allow for easy seat access for people of reduced mobility, or those who are of a slightly larger disposition. The window-side arm rests are fixed as this is not a requirement in this position.  Essentially, it is a copy of the original train seating – we have not changed it, but your comments about the fixed arm rests have been noted by our engineering department.” [my bold]

So, Chiltern Railways, today you win at communication.

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Take Quark Xpress, an industrial-strength tool for graphic design professionals. Professionals. In other words it’s for people who have an understanding of the underlying concepts and principles of typography and graphic design, and not simply a ‘good eye for it’. If we don’t have that understanding we may as well use Microsoft Word. And I don’t mean that derogatorily: with a basic understanding of typography – grids, leading, kerning, proportion, space, etc – an awful lot can be achieved in Word.

Too often we presume that it’s easy, that the tool will do it for us: at best this is naiive; at worst it is disrespectful and undermining both of the professional designer and of the integrity of our own work. We wouldn’t presume that simply learning to use Microsoft Word will make us write good novels: by the same token we shouldn’t presume that learning to use Quark Xpress will make us produce good leaflets.

More of us than ever are using the written word and images to communicate, so we need to start appreciating the hard-won skills required for good graphic communication. Instead of spending £500 on a two-day Quark Xpress Essentials course, people would be much better advised to spend £400 on a week-long basic typography or graphic design course. Then they can choose which tool is right for them: be that Quark, InDesign, Scribus or even Word.

We should be learning the skills to make our communication more effective, not how to use a tool that we won’t appreciate.

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A group of us wanted to help the process of engaging public opinion, because we felt the documents produced by Birmingham City Council were difficult to understand. So we took it upon ourselves to re-write it in plain English, make it available online for comment on www.bigcitytalk.org.uk, and liaise with the Council on how best to feed back to them any information that we gathered.

I’ve been putting off writing this post because I was uneasy about voicing my opinion. I wanted to be positive and encouraging, but my experiences were leaving me tired, deflated and deeply discouraged.

But now the public consultation is officially over.

That’s right: the citizens of Birmingham, whether they knew it or not (probably not; who ever takes notice of a poster on a lamp-post, let alone takes down the web address?), have had their chance to feed back on the Work in Progress (pdf) document that outlines the Council’s plans. Hark! Can I hear alarm bells already? Surely that extensive document should have been written after a consultation, not before: otherwise what is there to consult on?

Indeed, when we started re-writing the document it became quickly apparent that the thinking behind it was very muddled. For a start, in each section is a bit of background information followed by a number of options. Who are these options for? If they’re for the reader does that mean we’re going to be asked to vote on which of them is implemented? Probably not, because actually the options appear to be nothing more than a wish-list dependent on budget. In which case they’re not ‘options’ at all and so should not have been included in the document in the first place.

Then there’s the language. Remember that we were re-writing this in our free time, voluntarily: we are intelligent, enthusiastic individuals, unusually keen to engage with civic life. Yet even we found it incomprehensible, jargonistic and alienating. And there were only six of us. How on earth do they expect to enthuse the other million residents of Birmingham?

And then there are the acronyms that weren’t explained, and the inconsistent numbering of sections in different documents (a consultation leaflet was also produced which, confusingly, didn’t match the structure of the Work in Progress document).

The crazy thing is that it’s not hard. Producing a consultation document that the average member of the public can understand is easy, if you really care. Birmingham itself has plenty of top class graphic communicators, journalists, copywriters and sub-editors. The Big City Plan is such a massive undertaking that there are, presumably, the financial resources to make sure the public is consulted properly. It seems that it’s just the will that isn’t there.

Add to this the disturbing disdain shown by Birmingham Council Leader Mike Whitby, and you could be forgiven for thinking the council actually wants to alienate its citizens.

The truly depressing bit is that it isn’t a conspiracy. I truly believe there are lots of people in the council who really want this to work. But the bureaucracy of Birmingham City Council seems incapable of understanding how public engagement works.

Instead of talking and listening to people, they want to control. Take for example the Council recently banning its employees from using Facebook, which the Post reported by singling out two members of the Communications team. If a communications team isn’t allowed to use the popular methods of communication, then it’s being prevented from doing its job. Yet rather than encourage understanding and best use of these new technologies and methods of working, the council simply seems to try ignoring them.

So we’ll just have to see what happens. I hope they know what they’re doing, and that they’ve learnt some lessons for next time. At least they have now acknowledged, and taken custody of, the information we gathered through the bigcitytalk website.

Note

This post was originally drafted two weeks ago. Since then there have been a few public consultation meetings (although after the official closing date).

A number of other people were involved in the Big City Talk project, in particular Nick Booth, Jon Bounds, Julia Gilbert, Nicky Getgood and Stef Lewandowski.

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The poster seemed to want two things. Firstly, to “leverage the strongest, most engaging elements of online campaigning and communications and transport them to the offline world”.

This is interesting but flawed. ‘Online’ and ‘offline’ are two different realms; replicating the benefits of one within the other would at best be a waste of effort, and would in fact probably be impossible. It would certainly seem to defeat the object of operating in two different realms in the first place.

To me, his second point is the key one: to “make finding relevant content easier, not harder”. However, the answer is not to make content available in as many formats as possible so as to give every potential user exactly the same experience.

Rather, we should be understanding our audiences (who are we targeting and why) and ensuring we are as accessible to them as we possibly can be; audience first, content and delivery second.

This is not simply about the presentation of our content, but about the whole design of our organisations.

For example, when someone phones our switchboard can we guarantee the call will be answered immediately? Will that person be able to provide a satisfactory answer? Will they have the initiative, for example, to offer to post a DVD or a web page transcript? Are they able to do that at no cost to the recipient? If not, are there systems in place to manage the transaction?

So how we organise and present ourselves is at least as important as how we present our information. Moreover, it’s about how we understand and manage our internal processes. (It’s a no-brainer really, but surprisingly ill-understood.)

In order to give the best service to our users – not just those in the extremely broad categories of ‘online’ and ‘offline’ – we must understand our target audiences; and we must strive to appreciate fully their experience of the points at which they interact with us.

*The forum cited is members-only, so I haven’t included links to it. If you’d like to know more about the post referred to please do contact me.

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Thus I urge all those who also suffer these headaches to get involved (or at least keep up to speed) with the good work underway at campaignmonitor.com (see their post ‘Help us form a baseline for standards support‘).

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