Engaging Children and Young People Online - CluedupinHull.com

November 30, 2009 by Ian Cuddy · 1 Comment 

Children and young people are notoriously one of the most difficult groups for councils to engage with online.  The history of initiatives aimed at the young generation has seem a long line of well-meaning councils try, and fail, to ‘get down’ with the ‘kids’.  So how do councils engage successfully with this ‘hard to reach’ group and earn their trust?  How can they use the web to reach this audience in a way that isn’t patronising, preachy or terminally embarrassing?  Can councils be cool and fun?

Fortunately, one local authority has some answers.  Leading the way in this field is Hull City Council and its award-winning project, CluedupinHull. com.   Launched 18 months ago, CluedupinHull has proved an outstanding success. Targeting two age groups, 12 and under, and the over 13s, the site provides a trusted online source of information designed for and by children and young people in Hull - and one they actually want to use.

PSFbuzz met up with Debra Coombs, Integrated Content Manager at Hull City Council and her team to talk about CluedupinHull and the secrets of its success.   We discussed how the project was set up, how users are engaged, the issues and challenges involved, as well as what advice the team would offer to other local authorities looking to venture down this route.  See below for a video of our conversation.

Our thanks again to Debra and her colleagues Patrick O’Malley, Martin Brabazon and Gary Hass for their time.

Filed under: Live blog
Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,

And Finally, Mr Briggs’ Presentation

July 9, 2009 by Ian Cuddy · 1 Comment 

A superb presentation on the ‘Four Steps to Social Media Success’ from our conference chair, the masterful Dave Briggs, topped off a great day at PSFBuzz North East!

Beginning on how at a personal level, Dave explained how social media had ‘changed his life -  taking him from working at a Benefits Office to suddenly being called up by Downing Street for advice. His anecdote served as an example of the “frankly scary” pace of change in which the web is altering the world around us and the way we live.

Here’s the slides:

Four Steps to Social Media Success

And here’s his four steps for how councils should get into social media:

1. Listen >>  2. Acknowledge >>  3. Create  >>  4. Share.

Meaning (Thanks again for Sarah Lay’s indispensible notes of the session):

  • Listen: part of the reason ppl say horrible things about you is because they think you’re not listening and they can get away with it!
  • Acknowledge: even just realise there is conversation - step in!
  • Create: incremental process, try stuff
  • Share: open up data - more back to Stuart’s presentation.

The underlying philosophy, according to Dave, goes something like this: Start small, create a community, test, learn from mistakes and then move on. Learning Pool highlight this important message from his talk:

“Those that do it well will create a community with their followers; getting people to care about you is the absolute key. And if social media tools can help you to get people to care about their community, that can’t be a bad thing.”

And finally, don’t forget it to make it fun. Which brings us nicely to the final message of the day: JFDI!

Filed under: Uncategorized
Tagged: , , ,