Engagement in the digital age
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These slides were part of a workshop on digital engagement held at the RTPI Wales Planning Conference in Cardiff on 9 June 2016
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Engagement in the digital age
- 1. RTPI #walesplan16 / @pps_wales Engagement in the digital age cc: luc legay - https://www.flickr.com/photos/49503019876@N01
- 2. The core principles of engagement haven’t changedcc: marc falardeau - https://www.flickr.com/photos/49889874@N05
- 3. certainly has The way people communicate cc: deep_schismic - https://www.flickr.com/photos/94982604@N00
- 4. The reality
- 5. The challenge Trust in our leaders and institutions is fallingcc: muffinn - https://www.flickr.com/photos/26445715@N00
- 6. The opportunity Authenticity - done well - is hugely important cc: muffinn - https://www.flickr.com/photos/26445715@N00
- 7. Taking an approach that focuses on the audience can help you reach the silent majority cc: Z Carlos - https://www.flickr.com/photos/81522259@N04 What are we waiting for?
- 8. Doing social Where the conversation usually starts... cc: Jilligan86 - https://www.flickr.com/photos/73001873@N00 What tools shall we use?
- 9. Doing social Where the conversation usually starts... cc: Jilligan86 - https://www.flickr.com/photos/73001873@N00 What tools shall we use? Who’s going to do the work?
- 10. Doing social Where the conversation usually starts... cc: Jilligan86 - https://www.flickr.com/photos/73001873@N00 What tools shall we use? Who’s going to do the work? What if we’re criticised?
- 11. A better place to start cc: Jason A. Howie - https://www.flickr.com/photos/40493340@N00 What are we trying to achieve?
- 12. A better place to start cc: Jason A. Howie - https://www.flickr.com/photos/40493340@N00 What are we trying to achieve? Who are we trying to engage?
- 13. A better place to start cc: Jason A. Howie - https://www.flickr.com/photos/40493340@N00 What are we trying to achieve? Who are we trying to engage? What networks are they part of?
- 14. A better place to start cc: Jason A. Howie - https://www.flickr.com/photos/40493340@N00 What are we trying to achieve? Who are we trying to engage? What networks are they part of? Where do they ‘hang out’? Answer these questions first…
- 15. Digital engagement tip #1 Listen to what people are saying cc: Marc Wathieu - https://www.flickr.com/photos/88133570@N00
- 16. Digital engagement tip #2 New networks abound – build links with them cc: Biker Jun - https://www.flickr.com/photos/69223375@N00
- 18. Digital engagement tip #3 Others will tell your story well
- 19. Digital engagement tip #4 Use data to shape your work
- 20. Digital engagement tip #5 Post content frequently. And aim for your target audience
- 21. Summary Good engagement principles still apply Get to know your audience Be human, helpful and respectful Get involved! cc: Bert Kaufmann - https://www.flickr.com/photos/22746515@N02
- 22. ben.lowndes@ppsgroup.co.uk / @blowndes / ppsgroup.co.uk Thank you cc: Fey Ilyas - https://www.flickr.com/photos/28968923@N08
Editor's Notes
- Thanks for coming to our workshop today about digital engagement. I’m Ben Lowndes and I’m an Associate Partner at PPS Group and we’re here at this event (Deb Campbell is with me) because of our interest in planning and development in Wales across all sectors. We have worked across Wales in recent years on projects which include Tata Steel in Port Talbot, wind farm applications in mid Wales and residential schemes. My background is in print journalism, which is about as un-digital as you can get. I wouldn’t say I’m a social media guru – or a ninja. And I’m not going to preach about how digital media will be the answer to any engagement challenge. But I am fascinated by how organisations can engage people in creative and relevant ways and how this can be applied to the work we’re all involved in. This session will touch on those points and will highlight areas of good practice. There is some good stuff happening in Wales at the moment, although too often we hear stories of IT departments banning staff use of social media and teams applying old systems promotional thinking to new channels. Those prepared to challenge this mindset are demonstrating digital’s importance to the business mix. And many of you guys are using social every day according to the responses you gave to the research, which I will touch on too: really interesting stuff so thanks for taking the time to respond. Anyway, we less than an hour and I’m keen to leave time for some discussion, so I’ll go through the presentation. If anyone has any questions shout and we’ll be happy to respond. If anyone wants to tweet a question using the event hashtag we’ll be keeping an eye on that and will go through the key points at the end, so do tweet your thoughts.
- It’s worth kicking off by making the point that the principles of good engagement – particularly the need to listen and respond meaningfully – are evident across the digital landscape. This is what good engagement looks like; it’s part of a two-way process that gives people the opportunity to genuinely engage in a discussion, which organisations must respond to. This principle is part of the Planning (Wales) Act 2015, which makes consultation a central part of the planning process. As a result developers have to carry out pre-application consultation on all outline and major applications submitted on or after 1 August. This includes any application for 10 houses or more. So the principles - or what we are trying to achieve through engagement - haven’t changed. If anything, they’re more apparent now than they ever been.
- But people are communicating differently, and organisations are struggling to adapt to this. Digital technology seems to be part of everyone’s life in some way. And this makes social media a critical part of what we do – even the output from everyday traditional PR campaigns, which focuses on media relations as a route to wider audiences, tends to have a digital component. I will come onto this in more detail on the next couple of slides. Worth noting here that smartphone use is of particular importance and is increasing significantly across the board. This places pressure on your content to be available to people in a mobile-friendly format.
- So why does digital matter? I guess you’re already of the view that it does in some way, but may have colleagues who are sceptical or don’t see the business benefit in using it (it’s only cat pictures after all). I find this slide – from Google’s own research – is quite helpful in explaining what it should matter to any business who wants to interact with the public.
- Meanwhile, trust in business and civic leaders, journalists and other influential pillars is falling. We’ve seen this clearly in the recent EU referendum debate and Welsh government elections, where UKIP has made progress. It highlights one of the biggest challenges organisations face in this 'new era' of engagement: they are battling a real and vivid decline in trust in those people who have traditionally been spokespeople for campaign activity. And the harder they try to spin things, the worse it gets. People don’t trust our leaders, or the media, like they used to – and they’re quick to point this out. Look at how #Brexit is playing out at the moment; despite an avalanche of information and stories appearing day after day, the key finding from pollsters is that people are confused. They don’t know who to turn to for advice they can believe in. This is highlighted in Edleman trust barometer, which suggested that less than half of people surveyed said they trusted government. The research marks Britons out as being only marginally more distrustful of its politicians than countries like Argentina, Turkey and Russia. This poses a challenge for campaigns and political groups, who did not fare well on social media, although I should point out the situation is perhaps not the same for local councillors who are talking about local issues that people in their area identify with. A more open, trustworthy approach would certainly help to address this! But there are other things to consider too.
- Here are a couple of different examples of local organisations which are helping to build goodwill in their communities in a human and real way. #Hatsoffnewport – successful campaign based on the ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’ to celebrate people who do good things in Newport. These examples break the traditional command-and-control approach to communications that simply doesn’t work on social media and they use digital first to connect with people directly. More widely, it can also be seen to explain the rise of politicians like Corbyn and Trump. At a time when our trust in the 'party line' is at a low point, there is a real need for content to be authentic, relevant and honest. It’s something to think about with engagement activity: how authentic or human are organisations prepared to be?
- And perhaps most importantly, digital can help organisations reach that fabled ‘silent majority’ who are so important to consultation activity. Those people who wouldn’t ordinarily cross the street to attend an exhibition about development in their area, but will be talking to their friends about it on Facebook. There are some great examples of where this is happening, which I will come onto later in the presentation.
- So, before I go into some tips about good digital engagement, I want to touch on some fundamentals which ultimately form the basis for any decent engagement strategy you are looking to create. Those fundamentals won’t be found on this slide, but this is where many conversations about social media usually start.
- So, before I go into some hints and tips about good digital engagement, I want to touch on some fundamentals which ultimately form the basis for any decent engagement strategy you are looking to create. Those fundamentals won’t be found on this slide, but this is where many conversations about social media usually start.
- So, before I go into some hints and tips about good digital engagement, I want to touch on some fundamentals which ultimately form the basis for any decent engagement strategy you are looking to create. Those fundamentals won’t be found on this slide, but this is where many conversations about social media usually start. All important questions, and there’s nothing wrong with them, other than the fact that they’re not the right questions!
- A much better place to start is here….
- “The key with social listening—just like listening in real life—is to identify and analyse the meaningful parts of a discussion.” For organisations to respond to their audiences in a genuine way, they must first excel at listening. They tune in to the right conversations, by using the right tools, and then are able to respond and engage. Social listening platforms provide the basic capability of systematically collecting online conversations about a specific phrase, word, or brand. This can be done on a local area if required and is able to provide insights through the analysis of those conversations. You can also use the basic search functions on Twitter, Facebook and other platforms to look for what’s being spoken about a topic or in an area. Track conversations by geography or keyword Identify conversation leaders and influencers within a local area. I’ve done this recently on big consultation projects in the West of England, where we put in place systems to track and respond to local conversations, which has helped to drive an increase in engagement.
- New patterns of influence emerging beyond our traditional offline stakeholder groups. These could be people with big social media followings, bloggers, Instagrammers or YouTube artists. There are plenty of ways and tools for you to start to scope these out. The line between external and internal is blurring and the old established networks may not be plugged into these important conversations about your campaign or maybe bypassed altogether. The ability to understand these dynamics and build relationships with these emerging and changing networks matter. There are tools than can help you to do this.... Make sure this is part of your engagement plan.
- Some examples of vibrant online communities that could be relevant to your project.
- Data can be used in many different ways to shape your activity – to understanding more about your stakeholders to analysing the impact of your work. Use analytics platforms to look at who’s engaging with your content – what sort of things are most popular? Probably images and video but it depends who you’re trying to reach and this is where some initial research will serve you well. For example: Ofcom say that 66 per cent of UK adults have a smartphone 65 per cent of homes have a laptop. 72 per cent of people watch short form video When you’re running a consultation, you can automate some processes using various applications to ensure that any @mention or use of a campaign #hashtag is logged on a database, which can then be analysed after the event. We did this for a planning consultation in the West of England and were able to categorise the feedback we had as a result.
- An important aspect of a consultation is keeping the content frequent and relevant. If you’re setting up an online consultation from scratch, with no followers, you need to put some effort into it. Posting a tweet every other day and expecting people to respond is likely to disappoint. Again, there lots of data here to help shape your approach. Some suggestions tend to be: Twitter: at least five posts a day Facebook: two posts a day LinkedIn: one post a day With a recent consultation in the West of England, we posted at least 10 tweets a day from a dedicated account, supplemented with third party content sourced from Twitter, our influencer lists and searches. This kept the consultation in front of people and gave us a basis on which to assess our performance. Also, because we had data about how our content was performing, we adapted our approach and tactics to suit. We were able to understand what worked best (videos, questions and tweets with pictures) and tweaked our approach to reflect this. Video and content to read after 9pm (when most people are at home) worked particularly well towards the end of the consultation. In addition, for organisations looking to consult, putting great content out there is only going to be effective if people are able to see it and that’s where a paid element comes in. Promoting posts on Twitter and Facebook and targeting by postcode, age, gender and area of interest can result in your content being seen by thousands of people, rather than a handful. This is particularly true on Facebook at the moment… Worth saying however, that even with a paid element, the content still has to be relevant and genuine, otherwise it won’t work.