Using ʻweb 2.0ʼ and social
media tools to support small
projects
30 April 2009, Old Trafford Football Ground
Alan Holding
Manchester Digital Development Agency
manchesterdda.com

What Iʼm going to talk about
1.Examples from two small projects
2.Using this stuff to support research
3.Day-to-day administration
4.Some things weʼve noticed using this stuff

Examples from two projects
1.Manchester Book Award
www.manchesterbookaward.com
2.Wythenshaweʼs Got Talent
www.wythenshawesgottalent.co.uk

Use of comments and
building trust

Comments / reviews
Approx 2,500 published reviews in the four years
of the project (400 this year).
There was an incentive to leave comments.
Though comments were moderated, we didnʼt
edit them for bad spelling, etc.
First year was a bit of work as the project was
new, and had to do more offline work to get
people to leave reviews.
We were asking for comments on a very specific
subject.

Use of photos

Use of Flickr – good things…
Value for money – approx £32 for two years –
unlimited number of photos, etc.
Lots of ways to organise and display photos.
ʻWeb 2.0ʼ stuff like RSS feeds, comments (more
on them in a second) and the Flickr Application
Programming Interface (API).
Easy to use, so project officers not ʻthe web
teamʼ could administer the Flickr account.
The project could get limited statistics on the
photos – useful for funders / audit, etc.

Use of Flickr – other things…
Turned comments off.
Didnʼt name children, though we did name
schools.
Needed permission to use photos of children –
this affected the more ʻsocialʼ aspects of using
Flickr, such as children contributing photos to a
group.
Due to council policy, we have to remove any
photos older than two years.

Use of video hosting websites

Use of video hosts…
Check how much control you have over where
the video will appear.
Consider using short clips on services like
YouTube, but donʼt ʻpromoteʼ them – just use
them as ʻcalling cardsʼ to drive visitors to your
project website.
Keep an eye on the features. Things change!
You usually need to pay a small fee, e.g. Vimeo
Plus is approx £40 for 1 year.
Keep the original files so you can move hosts.

Use of captioned videos

MovCaptioner
MAGpie
Hi-Caption Studio
Aegisub
…and loads of other captioning applications

Use of captions…
The software is out there to do it, so learn how to
do it and make it part of your workflow, and
contractual arrangements.
Itʼs a legal requirement in the U.S., so we can be
fairly confident that the more established video
hosting services will support captions.
Regardless of the legal requirement, itʼs a good
thing. You can communicate with more people.

You are here
Wythenshawe

wordpress.org

1
2 3
1 - Site launched
2 - Comments turned off
3 - Award ceremony

In the three days the
comments were on…
Approx 720 published comments.
Approx 6,000 visits.
Approx 46,000 page views.
Average time on the site was 5 minutes.
Almost the same figures as the following month
when the comments were off.

For small focused projects…
Comments are hugely useful.
Gets people involved.
But you need to have a comments policy. What
happens when someone complains?
Ideally, train the people whoʼs project it is to
moderate the comments.

Using this stuff for research…

Day-to-day admin
Think about using one email account for a
projectʼs social media accounts.
Make that email account accessible by more
than one person. Holidays, sick leave, etc.
Strong passwords, please!
Keep a spreadsheet of the usernames / accounts
of the services you are using.
Find and subscribe to the alerts about the
statuses of the services you are using.

In closing… some things
weʼve noticed
Itʼs about people talking to people, not faceless
buildings talking to people.
Be honest when things go wrong.
You are your organisation, so be prepared for
that if you start using this stuff. Councilʼs A-Z
guide to services by your desk, etc.

Thanks for listening
Alan Holding
a.holding@manchesterdda.com
manchesterdda.com
twitter.com/mdda
vimeo.com/mdda
delicious.com/mdda