Is WEM for Local Gov? (January 4, 2011)

I've been thinking about this WEM stuff (Web Engagement Management). And I want to know more: what is it? and who's it for? 5 May 2010, Brice Dunwoodie defined WEM this way on CMS Wire's website.

The 5 Pillars of WEM

Web Engagement Management is a composite concept. These are the 5 parts we consider its core:

  1. Content Optimization
    This include native or tightly integrated analytics, content and experience personalization, multi-variate testing and optimization and SEO.
  2. Multi-channel Management
    Consistency is important and WEM maintains it by delivering the same message/experience to customers across devices and channels both online and offline.
  3. Conversational Engagement
    WEM supports this through communities, user generated content, commenting, trackbacks, micro-blogging, social media integration, analytics, social media monitoring and sentiment analysis.
  4. Demand Generation
    Targeted marketing is huge. With an overall goal of increasing the number and quality of relationships, WEM comes to the aid of demand generators through need recognition, relevancy enhancements and engagement triggers.
  5. Sales Automation
    Love isn't the only two-way street, and as social media analyst Jeremiah Owyang put it, "real-time isn't fast enough." This idea is manifest in WEM in areas like two-way CRM integration, social CRM and e-mail or other campaign integration with the content platform.

Let's do some analysis to better understand if WEM is for Local Government.

Scenario 1

North Somerset Council, my local authority want web-engaged audiences because these audiences can self-serve and therefore reduce contact costs.

Content Optimisation

— Web analytics will confirm what the council knows to be the busy, useful, frequently-used parts of the site.
— Personalisation won't be terribly helpful as assumptions made about my visit could be wildly inaccurate.
— Multi-variate testing? Well this ain't no Tesco or ASDA website and anyway, MV testing is seen as an ongoing exercise, not just a project. And budgets won't stretch even if the benefits were proven.
— SEO? Well North Somerset doesn't have any competitors so SEO, though important, isn't going to get the lion's share of budget.
— UX is not listed under content optimisation, yet it can be treated as a project cost and will yield useful results even if the study is heuristic.

Multi-channel Management

I take issue with the assertion that WEM delivers consistency of message/experience both on- and off-line. Please tell me how that's going to happen? Unless organisations adopt a web-first publishing model I cannot understand how WEM will orchestrate offline publishing or say, an above the line campaign.

Conversational Engagement

The statement: WEM supports this through communities is woolly. Would a WEM solution involve building a community? Or, is this a Facebook connector for example? Put this issue of community definition to oneside and I have to say the remainder of the list is bang-on. For me, conversation is the central pillar of Engagement. The term engagement should as much about conversation as it is about conversion if WEM is to benefit an organisation as much as its audiences. I'd like to think of this pillar as *real conversations between real people* and I hope they occur where the people choose.

Mchannel

Demand Generation

Don't know about this one. Anyone from local government care to comment?

Sales Automation

In a local authority context, Sales Automation could be renamed integration. Systems such as WCM, CRM, Email and Analytics need present a dash board of information about the #topics being discussed, about the citizens involved in discussion and the sentiments of conversations.

Qs

Conclusion

WEM is relevant to local authorities in part. These organisations don't sell and neither do they compete for your business. But they do provide vital services funded by tax payers and they are accountable for the services they provide. A joined-up engagement strategy, under-pined by a sensible collection of joined-up systems will help local government engage with its citizens.

Further scenarios to follow…

 

Tweeting authorities (December 19, 2010)

The Influence Metric

Some local authorities have opted to focus on Twitter rather than Facebook, others have managed to develop both. This analysis concentrates Twitter activities exclusively. I've used klout.com to produce this set of numbers. It offers another useful insight into how local authorities use social media to engage with citizens.

Read how to understand the Klout Influence Metric here: klout.com/kscore. Influence is determined by a variety of factors including retweets, @messages, follows, and lists. The Klout score is highly correlated to clicks, comments and retweets.

My previous analysis can be found here:

1. How social is your Local Authority?

2. Local Authorities on Facebook

 

Observations:

Some Twitter @names are indicative of the perceived need for a Twitter channel but may become a limiting factor as the purpose of Local Authority Twitter streams becomes clearer. For example, my hometown, Southampton, has named it's stream "sccevents". It's not memorable and its scope in future will become more about citizen engagement, going beyond an events listing service.

@camdentalking <-- demonstrates the need to be an early adopter. (@camden and @camdencc already taken)

General note:

1. I'm not sure why local authorities choose not to follow-back? It's a kind of arrogance in my view. If you're worried about being overwhelmed by tweets; use lists to categorise your followed folk.
2. Use Twitter to engage, discuss, win-over. The announcements about bins, road closures etc are all good but there's so much more to be achieved. Set-up and stick to #hashtags. Exampe: #bypass, #bins, #abandonedcar, #citizenpraised.

Table key:

T = true reach: is the size of your engaged audience and is based on the followers and friends who actively listen and react to your messages.
A = amplification: is the likelihood that your messages will generate actions (retweets, @messages, likes and comments) and is on a scale of 1 to 100.
N = network: indicates how influential your engaged audience is, also on a scale of 1 to 100.
S = style: there are 16 Klout communication types, typically local authorities fall into 3 styles: Thought Leader, Specialist, Explorer. Lewisham is a notable exception, it's listed as a Feeder. For further explanations of these styles, see below the table or visit www.klout.com.

 

Local
Authority
 Twitter name

Klout
score
T
AN
S

Glasgow

 GlasgowCC 69 870 50 74 Thought Leader
Edinburgh Edinburgh_CC 68 551 50 73 Thought Leader
Brighton & Hove BrightonHoveCC 62 968 45 67 Thought Leader
East Renfrewshire* EastRenCouncil 61 170 39 66 Thought Leader
Walsall walsallcouncil 58 797 41 62 Thought Leader
Belfast belfastcc 57 698 35 64 Specialist
Sheffield SCCPressOffice 56 626 35 64 Specialist
Southampton sccevents 54 367 33 58 Specialist
Swansea SwanseaCouncil 53 986 31 58 Thought Leader
Devon DevonCC 53 927 31 59 Thought Leader
Kent kent_cc 52 1000 30 58 Specialist
Newcastle upon Tyne NewcastleCC 51 378 28 56 Specialist
Christchurch dorsetforyou 51 654 28 58 Specialist
Kirklees KirkleesCouncil 51 248 29 57 Specialist
Nottingham nottinghamnews 50 605 26 57 Specialist
Derbyshire Derbyshirecc 49 295 23 58 Specialist
Solihull SolihullCouncil 48 50 27 51 Explorer
Lewisham LewishamCouncil 46 848 21 55 Feeder
Leeds leedscc 46 742 22 55 Explorer
Salford SalfordCouncil 45 544 22 54 Explorer
Camden camdentalking 44 205 21 55 Thought Leader
Lincoln lincolncouncil 42 267 20 48 Specialist
Norfolk NorfolkCC 41 738 18 49 Specialist
Lambeth lambeth_council 37 882 16 46 Explorer
Derby DerbyCC 29 209 12 34 Specialist
St Helens sthelenscouncil 22 243 11 34 Specialist

*Apologies to East Renfrewshire for missing you off the list. If your local authority outperforms any of those listed above, please contact me.

Klout Twitter styles (from klout.com)

Thought Leader

You are a thought leader in your industry. Your followers rely on you, not only to share the relevant news, but to give your opinion on the issues. People look to you to help them understand the day's developments. You understand what's important and what your audience values.

Specialist

You may not be a celebrity, but within your area of expertise your opinion is second to none. Your content is likely focused around a specific topic or industry with a focused, highly-engaged audience.

Feeder

Your audience relies on you for a steady flow of information about your industry or topic. Your audience is hooked on your updates and secretly can't live without them.

Explorer

You actively engage in the social web, constantly trying out new ways to interact and network. You're exploring the ecosystem and making it work for you. Your level of activity and engagement shows that you "get it", we predict you'll be moving up.

Local Authorities on Facebook (December 13, 2010)

Since my last post on this subject I thought it worth revisiting the data. Why today? Today (13 December 2010) was the day English Councils discovered just how much they had to save as the waves of cuts begin to hit. Local government is required to deliver services, some funded by central government, others through community initiatives. And it's the latter a.k.a, Big Society or pay-for-it-yourself that means these organisations need to engage with citizens to:

— sell ideas
— explain choices, cuts and options
— ask for input and help
— gain commitment

Today was the day some lost their jobs while others had budgets cut to such an extent it will make tomorrow's challenge a whole new ball game. An interesting side effect of hard times is that strategic intelligence is driven up as hardships increase. This is the age of austerity, the age of doing more with less. And it's the age where councils seem to be engaging with their citizens using with social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Will it enable them to do more with less? Only time will tell…meantime, some have joined the race to be liked.

In this post I've refreshed the date and concentrated on PERCENTAGE INCREASE IN FACEBOOK LIKES since my last post. Coventry County Council is still the notable leader in terms of Facebook success with more that 16,000 Likes!

Local Authority
 Pos. FB Likes (orig.) FB Likes (current) Incr. %
Darlington BC
 1 427 2,977 597%
Belfast CC
 2 611 2,565 320%
Tameside Metropolitan BC
 3 114 316 177%
City of Edinburgh
 4 171 438 156%
Brighton and Hove CC
 5 220 560 155%
Stratford-on-Avon 6 94 240 155%
Manchester CC
 7 172 425 147%
Sunderland CC
 8 577 1392 141%
Carmarthenshire 9 171 391 129%
London Borough of Brent
 10 118 264 124%
Wrexham County BC
 11 156 344 121%
Torbay Council
 12 387 814 110%
Bracknell Forest Council
 13 294 602 105%
Cambridgeshire BC
 14 92 186 102%
London Borough of Lewisham
 15 139 271 95%
Stockport Metropolitan BC
 16 138 269 95%
Stevenage BC
 17 141 262 86%
London Borough of Barnet 18 351 647 84%
Wakefield City Metropolitan DC
 19 109 192 76%
London Borough of Southwark
 20 432 738 71%
Rotherham Metropolitan BC
 21 104 175 68%
Maidstone BC
 22 158 258 63%
Allerdale BC
 23 140 218 56%
Coventry CC
 24 10,896 16,589 52%
Hart DC
 25 89 129 45%