The BIS Digital and Policy Working Group has had 2 very well attended and successful meetings now and one of the first tasks we gave ourselves was the development and dissemination of some “Top tips” and “Myth busters” about the use of digital channels and methods. We are starting to share these now via Yammer and the Digital Blog so that individually, and as a department, we can all start to use all of the tools available to us when making policy. Our first contribution is from Craig Belsham so thank you very much to Craig for making the time to share this with us:
Making time for Digital
When do you, tweet? If you are anything like me most of your twitter feeds are at events or en route to or from work. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that but are you and your audience getting the most out of your input? One of the Digital Principles is “Digital is about listening to what people are saying or doing online.”
So if you are tweeting at event have you given yourself time to check what others have been saying?
Best place to do this I have found is when circulating a note of the event. 15 minutes spent assessing the takeaways of others using twitter search or netvibes and the overall response can give a powerful flavour of an event – much more than “x people retweeted and y favourited my tweet – though I admit there is a sense of achievement from that! Better still you don’t even have to type it – just cut and paste a few items!
That’s fine for events but what about other listening. Now I have to admit if I don’t timetable this it often won’t get done but one idea that came to me was including a digital feedback in my one to one catch-ups with my boss. If it’s part of my regular feedback then its something I’ll have to do but even better it will help educate my boss on my wider contribution and begin the process of bringing them up to speed with Digital. Am going to try it at my next catch-up – I’ll keep you posted on how I get on!