I’ve been thinking about using some new ways of providing training on digital engagement stuff to those working in public services – in tandem with the traditional approach that we are taking in our workshop tomorrow.
Webinars are something I’m looking into, and I’ve written about my experiences of running them previously. What I am looking at doing is something a little more structured over a period of time.
So, how about a twelve week course on digital engagement? One webinar per week on a chosen topic, with a private discussion space so everyone can talk to each other about the topic afterwards.
Here’s a draft list of weekly topics:
- Introduction to digital engagement
- Designing your strategy
- Designing a policy
- Operational engagement plans
- Managing risk
- Developing a Facebook page
- Effective organisational use of Twitter
- Blogging for organisations
- Crowdsourcing and online open innovation
- Social media for events
- Social media in a crisis
- Community building and sustainable engagement
Would this be something you or people in your organisation would be interested in?
Also… would you (or your organisation!) be willing to pay for it? How much?
I think the public sector is waking up to providing a more human element to their services whilst being cautious about it. The topics you have outlined certainly seem to make sense. I wonder thought, with all the managing of risk etc, how human the digital engagement will be.
Have you come across 23 Things (http://cpd23.blogspot.com/) It is a self-directed, no cost (other than time) route to professional development in all things social media over several months, using blogs (set up in the first couple of weeks of the programme) as a forum for discussion. You might find ideas and overlaps with what you outline above.
oooh, that looks really interesting! Thanks Laura!
Our libraries staff have gone through this programme and have found it very helpful.
I’m looking at this as an option to support internal social media training as part of developing a “digital passport” for staff – It is early days though so am still thinking.
I’d love to see this available for all staff here. I’m sure the horse would drink, but we need to get it to the water first!
A few points:
- 12 sessions is quite a commitment though if it were possible to pick and choose that would help
- might be best to title one of the sessions something like “your customers’ use of social media is leaving you behind”
- separate session on opendata?
- basics should be compulsory for all councillors
- would you do a buy now pay later option?
Hi Peter
Thanks for the positive feedback!
Agree that 12 sessions is a big committment, but hopefully the pricing would be so that attendees wouldn’t feel they *had* to attend everything, even the ones they weren’t interested in.
I guess the ‘being left behind’ bit would feature in the introductory session. I also think some coverage of hyperlocal sites would be good too, so need to fit that in somewhere.
Open data – yeah… just need to find someone who understands that stuff to help with the content
I could easily do a version which would be dedicated to councillors if there was an appetite.
Hmm. Key to making this work is getting the cash in early, if I’m honest. Hence the relatively low pricepoint – somewhere around £100, certainly for the first run which would be rather experimental.
Hi Dave,
This sounds like a good idea and format, at the moment the headings seem right to me, but without knowing the content it is difficult to know if you’ve covered all the bases.
A few observations and questions
In terms of cost, that is a harder question….my experience is that I think people would look to get webinars for “free” but might expect to pay for the added value around network and support…the cost of access to a network could be dictated by the quality of the people in the network and how much someone thinks they would get back. If i had to put a price on it it would range between £50 to £150 for the 12 week package from an organisational and personal perspective.
I wonder whether weekly is too rapid if you are looking to provide a support network alongside it….It might make more sense to go over a year or 6 months to allow time for people to experiment and share lessons along the way much like an action learning set – I just wonder whether a 12 week offering will stimulate constructive dialogue that someone would want to pay to be a part of. What would be different to reading blogs, the PSF community, web community in the CoP for example.
Hope these comments are constructive and I look forward to hearing more about what you do.
Thanks Carl…
Cost – I was thinking £100 max, probably closer to £50, certainly for the first run.
Weekly might be too rapid – but when I considered a year, I thought it might frustrate people to have to wait 6 or 7 months for a session on Twitter!
All the webinars would be recorded and posted online with the discussions for that week, and of course the discussions could carry on past their weeks, if that makes sense. So people could miss bits out and come back later if they wanted to.
I think the difference with the blog/CoP/PSF approach is the structured nature, plus the fact that you’re paying to have someone (me) curating and responding.