16 August 2011

How to help Katy Gallagher online?

| johnboy
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I’ve had a variety of people I don’t know who aren’t using government email addresses ask me to repost tweets of Katy Gallagher around her social media strategy musings.

So before offering my own advice the questions are:

1) What should she do with a blog?
2) How should she run Twitter community cabinets?

Fire away in the comments.


Now my advice.

Short answer to both:

Don’t.

Longer answers:

1)

If you don’t have a strong vision for what you want to do with a blog you shouldn’t start one. This applies to everyone. A blog for the sake of a blog is a waste of pixels and electrons.

Do however publish media releases about what you’re doing.

And if you do have an idea about things you want to blog about knock yourself out, don’t worry what anyone else thinks.

But if you must have a blog because it’s the in thing and still lack inspiration you could do worse than to model it on what Andrew Leigh does. For mine it’s the gold standard in politicians blogging, but he’s a very smart dude with interesting ideas.


2)

You can’t run a public meeting without someone being in control of the microphone.

If you must run a community meeting via Twitter (rather than, say a moderated comments section of a website) get a trusted community figure to run the @ACTVCC twitter account. They can retweet selectively and reading that account’s page would give a coherent discussion.

No different to QandA using only a miniscule fraction of the tweets of all Australia’s attention seekers.

Everyone wanting to see the raw insanity can still use #actvcc .

Trusted community figure could be anyone, with a heavy heart I’d be willing to do it, but I’d prefer to drop Danielle Post or Virginia Haussegger into this one.


Ok Rioters, over to you now…

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I-filed said :

Outrageous that they run these things during working hours when most of us aren’t allowed to access social media at work. And most of us don’t actually have iphones, believe it or not. I am completely cut out of this process.

Hold your whinge – there is a Virtual Cabinet in the Community on tonight (Tuesday) from 7-8pm #actvcc

hlawatsch said :

yea kate –so there

and droping vergina house singer is not a good idea– twitter is harder to use and face book well that can be hard to keep up aswell but only if your kate gallagar its not apolo 13 15 16 17 every day i guess, i,m not sure if that gallagher name is a nice name or a very sad name -she is nice but ,nearly stuffed up on the spelling there did,nt i —nurseing home reveiws can difiate across the channel or channels

…deletage…

really good luck kate gallagher– i know a good way to help her its simple–DON,T –over to the yert ert club–

Of all the truly whacky posts I’ve read on RiotACT, this was one of them.

hlawatsch said :

yea kate –so there

and droping vergina house singer is not a good idea– twitter is harder to use and face book well that can be hard to keep up aswell but only if your kate gallagar its not apolo 13 15 16 17 every day i guess, i,m not sure if that gallagher name is a nice name or a very sad name -she is nice but ,nearly stuffed up on the spelling there did,nt i —nurseing home reveiws can difiate across the channel or channels

hang in there kate apart from a bit of messy concreate and locking divices on gov flats and the misuse of australian post your doing ok your doing good this so called two year trial period your takeing shouldn,t be a realstate issue with the gov flats in civic it should be delt with amedately realastate blackmail is a crime in the A.C.T , , i may talk again when i get back from NSW , have a tinnie cup of tea from dover its almost sold out- guess im dunn graving ha ha and i guess your done selling afgan carpet what do you want us to say to you kate – rice rice give me call i don,t drink tooheys five seed thay do,nt drink it in tasmania either some of your promotions are outrages white t shirt day is over rated -thats a fars from a crow -dafodils are not the flower for you thats a aqa marine rose misread even if we have to smoke from tobacco packets with every else,s problem but there own on them, about the daffaddils tin tin snowy is a flower with much power and secrets of the institue are confidebal expecally if your a water carrior -nathan pauletto 200 BC

really good luck kate gallagher– i know a good way to help her its simple–DON,T –over to the yert ert club–

I think this is how Gollum would respond to a post….

Outrageous that they run these things during working hours when most of us aren’t allowed to access social media at work. And most of us don’t actually have iphones, believe it or not. I am completely cut out of this process.

DUB said :

hlawatsch said :

yea kate –so there

and droping vergina house singer is not a good idea– twitter is harder to use and face book well that can be hard to keep up aswell but only if your kate gallagar its not apolo 13 15 16 17 every day i guess, i,m not sure if that gallagher name is a nice name or a very sad name -she is nice but ,nearly stuffed up on the spelling there did,nt i —nurseing home reveiws can difiate across the channel or channels

hang in there kate apart from a bit of messy concreate and locking divices on gov flats and the misuse of australian post your doing ok your doing good this so called two year trial period your takeing shouldn,t be a realstate issue with the gov flats in civic it should be delt with amedately realastate blackmail is a crime in the A.C.T , , i may talk again when i get back from NSW , have a tinnie cup of tea from dover its almost sold out- guess im dunn graving ha ha and i guess your done selling afgan carpet what do you want us to say to you kate – rice rice give me call i don,t drink tooheys five seed thay do,nt drink it in tasmania either some of your promotions are outrages white t shirt day is over rated -thats a fars from a crow -dafodils are not the flower for you thats a aqa marine rose misread even if we have to smoke from tobacco packets with every else,s problem but there own on them, about the daffaddils tin tin snowy is a flower with much power and secrets of the institue are confidebal expecally if your a water carrior -nathan pauletto 200 BC

really good luck kate gallagher– i know a good way to help her its simple–DON,T –over to the yert ert club–

I will spend a week deciphering this.

o well decyphon then keep your dafodils if you want and dilete what i siad if you must it s ok , i can olmy speed read or short read whatere is put in front of me such a information hiway

sarahsarah said :

DUB said :

hlawatsch said :

** incoherent ramble **

I will spend a week deciphering this.

I think it has to be like one of those spam emails you get that are made up of random words strung together. Honestly – messy concrete, afghan carpets and daffodils?

What?

yea well get roit act to take my post of then if you do,nt like it sareh sareh incoherent ramble is handed into police as false evidence 3- 4 times a day and defamtion by princess sareh and princess ann happens just far to often expecially if your 2 years old and still learning to speak

Gungahlin Al1:04 pm 29 Aug 11

The beauty of the Twitter initiative is exactly that it isn’t a sales pitch – they don’t have time. Just the facts, almost spin free.

(I assume here that the media will be present there again to see that it is the ministers doing the responses – no army of bureaucrats and minders on the side.)

I think it’s a good initiative to give it a go. As to the quality of questions and responses – it is what you make of it. And the last thing any user of it would want is someone acting as gatekeeper.

As for the blog, it looks OK, although I can’t see it on my RSS reader list. But I can understand why any pollie would want one – that’s where you can say exactly what you want, unedited, and without needing to consider public funding considerations, as is the case with for instance anything published under the official act.gov.au site.

Gungahlin Al12:42 pm 29 Aug 11

DUB said :

hlawatsch said :

ramble–

I will spend a week deciphering this.

Why bother?

DUB said :

hlawatsch said :

** incoherent ramble **

I will spend a week deciphering this.

I think it has to be like one of those spam emails you get that are made up of random words strung together. Honestly – messy concrete, afghan carpets and daffodils?

What?

hlawatsch said :

yea kate –so there

and droping vergina house singer is not a good idea– twitter is harder to use and face book well that can be hard to keep up aswell but only if your kate gallagar its not apolo 13 15 16 17 every day i guess, i,m not sure if that gallagher name is a nice name or a very sad name -she is nice but ,nearly stuffed up on the spelling there did,nt i —nurseing home reveiws can difiate across the channel or channels

hang in there kate apart from a bit of messy concreate and locking divices on gov flats and the misuse of australian post your doing ok your doing good this so called two year trial period your takeing shouldn,t be a realstate issue with the gov flats in civic it should be delt with amedately realastate blackmail is a crime in the A.C.T , , i may talk again when i get back from NSW , have a tinnie cup of tea from dover its almost sold out- guess im dunn graving ha ha and i guess your done selling afgan carpet what do you want us to say to you kate – rice rice give me call i don,t drink tooheys five seed thay do,nt drink it in tasmania either some of your promotions are outrages white t shirt day is over rated -thats a fars from a crow -dafodils are not the flower for you thats a aqa marine rose misread even if we have to smoke from tobacco packets with every else,s problem but there own on them, about the daffaddils tin tin snowy is a flower with much power and secrets of the institue are confidebal expecally if your a water carrior -nathan pauletto 200 BC

really good luck kate gallagher– i know a good way to help her its simple–DON,T –over to the yert ert club–

I will spend a week deciphering this.

yea kate –so there and droping vergina house singer is not a good idea– twitter is harder to use and face book well that can be hard to keep up aswell but only if your kate gallagar its not apolo 13 15 16 17 every day i guess, i,m not sure if that gallagher name is a nice name or a very sad name -she is nice but ,nearly stuffed up on the spelling there did,nt i —nurseing home reveiws can difiate across the channel or channels hang in there kate apart from a bit of messy concreate and locking divices on gov flats and the misuse of australian post your doing ok your doing good this so called two year trial period your takeing shouldn,t be a realstate issue with the gov flats in civic it should be delt with amedately realastate blackmail is a crime in the A.C.T , , i may talk again when i get back from NSW , have a tinnie cup of tea from dover its almost sold out- guess im dunn graving ha ha and i guess your done selling afgan carpet what do you want us to say to you kate – rice rice give me call i don,t drink tooheys five seed thay do,nt drink it in tasmania either some of your promotions are outrages white t shirt day is over rated -thats a fars from a crow -dafodils are not the flower for you thats a aqa marine rose misread even if we have to smoke from tobacco packets with every else,s problem but there own on them, about the daffaddils tin tin snowy is a flower with much power and secrets of the institue are confidebal expecally if your a water carrior -nathan pauletto 200 BC really good luck kate gallagher– i know a good way to help her its simple–DON,T –over to the yert ert club–

Sadly all the journalists in Canberra are on Twitter, making up over 50% of canberra’s active tweeting population by my estimate.

The chattering classes become the tweeting classes.

I think your comments are spot on, Johnboy and EvanJames.

I wonder how many people actually use Twitter in the ACT? In the US, only 9% of the Internet-using population use Twitter (according to this: http://mashable.com/2011/02/24/facebook-twitter-number/)

Anyway, I have no intention of using Twitter to get a sales pitch (because that is what they end up being) from the Chief Minister, or any other politician or government agency.

Maybe though, the CM could do a weekly post on the RiotACT?

All ministers should abandon media releases and start informing the media only via self-written blog posts.

That’d sort the wheat from the chaff PDQ.

I’d prefer the Media Release page actually reflected reality. Too often you see the same phrases in different media reports on a actgov matter, its obvious someone has been sent a group email from the actgov, yet when checking the media release page (because sometimes i prefer my media unfiltered) there is nothing there which reflects topic du jour.

I also dislike blogs/website under peoples names when its obvious they have had little involvement in setting up the blog or making posts.

My pet hate, people and businesses setting up websites because they think they should have one. Having an online forum to debate issues is a nice idea, but they need to have a good think about how it will work and how they propose to use the information that comes out of it.

and they need to remain mindful that the people using it will be a small proportion of the entire population, and not representative of every group in it.

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