Facing up to Facebook
by Andrea Ferris*
There is no debate that social networking is here to stay. Just take a look at the Facebook statistics:
- more than 200 million active users
- more than 100 million users log on to Facebook at least once a day
- the fastest growing demographic is those 35 years and older
- more than four billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day worldwide
- there are more than 30 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices
- the average user has 120 ‘friends’.
What’s a little disconcerting for me is that I am a Facebook statistic. I fit into five of the six categories – and that’s giving my age away!
I recently felt moved to post a comment on my Facebook wall about how amazed I am at technology. There I was sitting on a train logged on to Facebook through my 3G PDA reading about the minutiae of my ‘friends’’ lives while listening to a CD played through the laptop – truly amazing.
Perhaps I was feeling somewhat buoyed by the social networking experience after recently returning from my 30-years on school reunion (giving away my age again), which had been successful largely due to the class being able to ‘find’ one another via Facebook.
Social networking cannot be ignored by any sphere of government, although I suspect there are many switched on IT types in government wringing their hands in despair at Australia’s snail like pace of uptake of Web 2.0 technology compared with the UK and US.
Local Government, because of its ability to streamline approval processes in comparison to State and Federal institutions, should, and no doubt will, be the forerunners of social media in the public arena.
But, beware the we-must-have-a-social-network-site-because-we-want-to-be-seen-as-progressive syndrome!
Simon Wakeman, a very progressive guy and head of marketing at the, equally progressive, Medway Council in southeast England recently blogged about this very subject.
He said that councils create social network sites, like a council Facebook page, because they ‘believe it will create a group of people who are willing recipients for messages about their particular service’.
Usually these sites have very few users, performance rates badly in the eyes of council and the experiment is canned. But if Facebook is so popular how can this be?
Wakeman says the key reason is that ‘just because you create a platform for a community doesn’t mean a community will form’.
In the world of social networking, just because you build it definitely doesn’t mean they will come.
There are lots of online communities out there already. New mothers, cultural groups, arts, young people, green advocates, fishers, skaters … the list goes on.
Wakeman uses the logic that there is no reason to use council resources when you can utilise existing sites in an innovative and creative way to engage with people in their own space.
Given the pace of the ‘revolution’ I believe there are two things that every council communications team should be doing:
- first, apply serious resource time to dedicated research and study to get up to speed on what’s happening in social media, particularly in the local community
- second, join a social networking site for Australia’s Local Government communications community to share ideas (when or if there is one) – I guarantee you’ll find more than 120 ‘friends’ there!
Simon Wakeman’s blog can be found at www.simonwakeman.com
*Andrea Ferris is a freelance marketing and communications practitioner specialising in Local Government. Contact Andrea on 0407 449 270 or visit www.yourprdept.com.au
