I spent yesterday at the European Parliament in Brussels running a training session for MEPs and their staff about Wikipedia and best practice. Most of what I said was based on the CIPR’s Wikipedia Best Practice guidelines that we produced last year in co-operation with Wikimedia and I had a small hand in helping to create.

On the Eurostar home I discovered that the training I delivered might already be out of date as yet another PR and Wikipedia ‘scandal’ had erupted this time about BP’s Wikipedia page. However, this time it appears that the ‘guilty’ parties probably aren’t BP’s PR team who appear to have followed all the best practice, but the online ‘chattering classes’ and some Wikipedians who’ve taken offence at PRs at a ‘big, bad’ corporate following Wikipedia’s own guidance.

Basically the story is that Arturo Silva, a member of BP’s corporate communications team in Houston, created the Arturo at BP Wikipedia user account and used it to interact with the Wikipedia community in order to improve the BP Wikipedia page.

His user profile is fairly comprehensive, explains what the account is for and makes it clear he will only contribute to BP’s Talk page:

“Welcome to my user page. I have established this account to help improve BP-related articles in line with Wikipedia standards and guidelines. In the interest of full transparency, I chose “Arturo at BP” as my username so that my affiliation with BP is abundantly clear to all parties I may interact with on Wikipedia. Per WP:ORGNAME, I believe that this username is appropriate, and I should point out that I will be the only person to use this account.

Out of respect for guidelines on conflict of interest and the importance of a neutral point of view, and in recognition of the ongoing debate regarding companies’ involvement on Wikipedia, I will only be editing Talk pages and will not make any edits to encyclopedia articles. My primary goal in being active on Wikipedia through this account is to improve the overall quality of BP-related articles in line with Wikipedia guidelines.

Any delays in responding to inquiries are due to my other roles and responsibilities at BP which take up a significant amount of my time, so I appreciate your patience with me. I do look forward to working with other editors, and welcome any questions you may have on my Talk page.”

Most of this is inline with Wikipedia’s own guidelines and the Chartered Institute of Public Relations Wikipedia Best Practice Guide that was created last year by the CIPR’s Social Media Panel in conjunction with ‘Wikipedians’ and Wikimedia.

I’d have recommended that the user profile stated absolutely that he worked for BP’s corporate communications team and there is question mark over if the company name should have been included in the user name, but apart from that it is all pretty good.

Arturo Silva then used his ‘userspace’ on this account to draft improvements to the BP page which he then pointed to on the BP talk page. He wrote everything from a neutral point of view and importantly always provided credible third party references for everything he wrote. This is precisely what is recommended in the CIPR guidelines and the idea is that this information is then checked by independent ‘Wikipedians’ and eventually incorporated into the actual Wikipedia user page by those independent third party editors.

Where it appears to have gone wrong is that despite Wikipedia’s commitment to a ‘neutral point of view’ the reality is somewhat different. The CIPR guidelines state that the definition of a neutral point of view is:

“All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopaedic content must be written from a neutral point of view, representing significant views fairly, proportionately and without bias. Fundamentally, where there is a contentious issue associated with a topic, Wikipedia content should be a good reference for the debate. In a few words, neutrality means this: report the debate, don’t take part in it.”

The problem is that people don’t agree what “representing significant views fairly, proportionately and without bias” actually means. However, for some Wikipedians, and some member of the social media chattering classes, big business is always suspect and they would prefer for it not to be included as a ‘significant view’. It’s fine for an environmental activist to actually edit the page (as long as they don’t actually work for Greenpeace), but not for a ‘big, bad’ company to follow Wikipedia’s own guidelines.

On reflection I think my training yesterday is still valid as I caveated the CIPR’s Wikipedia Best Practice guidelines with the advise that it was always best to err on the side of caution. There are some brilliant, sensible people who devote hours of valuable time to editing and improving Wikipedia. But, as in any community, there is also a minority (who are always the most vocal) who aren’t reasonable and want their personal micro-view of the world to be inflicted on everyone.

It’s that minority you need to be careful of and reflect in your dealings with Wikipedia which is why I advised “Just because you’re allowed to do something, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea”.

You still meet many politicians who are sceptical about the value of Facebook. A familiar story is that they are too busy in their day-to-day life as a local councillor doing case work, attending community meetings, leafleting and door knocking to bother with Facebook. Many also see Facebook as being for young people and they don’t bother to vote anyway.

This new video from Facebook has some interesting insights that prove how wrong the sceptics are and how it is as foolish not to connect with constituents on Facebook as it would be never to deliver leaflets or knock on doors.

If (like me) you don’t have time to watch videos then some of the key statistics you need to know are:

• 27 million people in the UK use Facebook every month
• That’s more than two-thirds of the British internet population
• On average they spend seven hours a month on Facebook
• One in five minutes online is spent on Facebook
• 25% are under 25…
• … but 30% are over 50 – so it’s definitely not just young people
• People act on the recommendations of their friends e.g. 16% have bought something and 37% have listened to new music
• 60% of people use Facebook most at night – so that’s when they are most likely to see your updates

And one of the best ways for local councillors to start connecting with people on Facebook? Good old-fashioned leaflets through the door directing people to your Facebook page.

In contrast the UK government has made just 11 such requests, but Twitter has complied in just 18% of cases (that’s about twice). Japan has made the second highest number of requests with 98, but Twitter has only complied with 20%.

Rather alarmingly Twitter has complied with 0% of requests from many democratic countries including Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, France, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey.

Personally I find it rather alarming that Twitter appears to respect requests from the US government, but treat other governments with contempt. In countries where Twitter doesn’t have a local office I can understand (although not agree with) why Twitter doesn’t comply with requests from that country’s government. However, in the UK Twitter does have an office and therefore I’d very much like to know the reason for the discrepancy in how helpful it is to the US government compared to the UK government.

It’s rather bizarre that the blog post simply publishes the figures, but with no attempt to explain them.

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To mark the first two years of the UK’s Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government the bright folks at Insight Public Affairs have put together a great mind map infographic of the policy issues. Insight has mapped out the:

‘headline policy drivers spanning: the economy; public service reform; localism; welfare reform; and, the international agenda.’

The mind map is a useful tool not just for public affairs and corporate communications professionals, but anyone who is interested in UK politics.

You can also download a PDF or contact John Lehal at Insight for an A2 poster.

Online political monitoring company Yatterbox has created an infographic of reaction by MPs to the Queen’s Speech on Wednesday.

Browse more data visualizations.

 

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It’s presented by Russell Goldsmith of Marketiersdc and guests are Iain Anderson, of Cicero Consulting and Tamasin Cave, director of Spinwatch and leader of the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency.

BDO has published an interesting report into the current use of social media within local government in the UK. BDO worked with Municipal Journal (MJ) to conduct a survey to find out how 67 local authorities are currently using social media to support a range of services.

The report Updating your status: From housing and litter to Facebook and Twitter (PDF) contains the result of the study. It also ‘explores how social media can work within a local authority context, identifies its specific benefits and offers our recommendations to enable councils to overcome common barriers and have the confidence to ‘own’ the channel.’

BDO has also produced this video which aims to make it easier for those in local authorities to share the report with their colleagues:

I particularly like the pie chart to illustrate that people spend more time on social media and social networking sites than they do on council websites. Quelle surpise. Although I think they should have has a big pie for social sites!

Some of the key findings of the report are (the remarks in italics are my thoughts):

• 24% of councils have reduced face to face visitors by using social media – In the current financial climate this is good because face to face contact is the most expensive form of customer contact for a local authority – £7.40 for face to face, £2.90 telephone and 32p for online.
• 60% of councils block social media on internal PCs – Local authorities are frequently conservative (with a small c) and change is difficult, but if the right social media policy is in place then councils can make massive gains by removing this absolute ban (controls are guidance are still fine and can actually be empowering.
• 82% think council staff are confused about how to use social media – That’s because they are! And its not just how to use social media professionally. Although most people use social media personally many don’t know how to use it well or safely. That’s another reason why councils need social media policies and training in place. Even if they aren’t proactively using it to improve services and reduce costs they need that policy as an ‘insurance policy’ in case things go wrong because most of their staff and residents are already using it.
• 79% of local authorities said that the comms team was ‘currently responsible for social media’ with only 15% saying it is dispersed, 3% customer services and 3% services – This is potentially quite alarming as it implies that most local authorities still haven’t grasped the broader strategic implications of what the social web means to providing services to residents.

It’s an interesting report, but my main criticism is that the case studies are quite weak focusing more on the outputs achieved rather than outcomes which is rather surprising given that the report is produced by a firm of accountants (and yes I know that they now prefer to be business advisers and consultants!)

Many of the case studies featured won’t be new to anyone whose familiar with how the public sector uses social media (many of the examples are actually from police, rather than local authorities) and there are some notable examples missing – none of the award winning social media work from Monmouthshire.

BDO is trying to get an online conversation going using the hashtag #litter2twitter.

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Edelman and StrategyOne, its global public affairs team, has just released the 2011 Capital Staffers Index which ‘analyses top trends in global public affairs and communications.’

It’s the third such annual report and is based on interviews with more than 500 senior staffers (legislative directors and above – not sure what job title this translates into outside of the USA) from cities in 11 different countries around the world including Washington DC, Brussels, London, Beijing, Ottawa, Mexico City, Paris, Berlin, New Delhi, Buenos Aires and Brasilia.

‘It tracks many baseline public affairs metrics first established in our 2009 benchmark study.

Although traditional public affairs components, such as grassroots outreach and fact-based messaging, remain critical to advocacy success, the results also demonstrate a meteoric rise in social media channels in shaping and influencing policy worldwide over the past year.

Specifically, policymakers have shown a dramatic increase in their use of Twitter, Facebook and mobile technology which underscores the importance of social media and the Internet in educating policymakers and galvanizing them to support a policy issue.’

I’m on limited power at the airport so don’t have time to pull out the UK and European figures, so take a look for yourself in the SlideShare deck:

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It seems a month can’t go by without Bell Pottinger, the UK’s self-styled ‘leading’ lobbying company, embroiling itself in a scandal. Today’s Independent article has certainly sparked off a plethora of criticism and commentary, much of it ill-informed and ill-conceived. It’s important to try and separate fact from fiction and cut through the spin on all sides of the debate.

Is it right for a public affairs or public relations company to represent a state like Uzbekistan?

Absolutely not, it’s a disgrace to even talk to a country that is run by such a despicable regime appears to be the thrust of the Independent’s article. But if you actually stop and look at what Bell Pottinger said then you’ll see that the first few slides of its presentation (embedded at the end of the post) are all about how a communications and influence campaign won’t work to improve Uzbekistan’s reputation unless the government makes real steps to improve its behaviour.

‘If, however, the government is committed to real and lasting reform then there are many things that Bell Pottinger could do’

‘… change is essential in order to change international attitudes.’

‘But we must be able to show our target audiences that change has begun, that long term goals have been defined…’

‘Once we have the assurance that genuine, verifiable reform is being introduced, we can put in place a communication and media strategy that tells the story of how Uzbekistan is changing for the better.’

That’s pretty unequivocal about saying that Bell Pottinger will only work for the Azimov Group if the government of the Republic of Uzbekistan cleans up its act. Surely that’s what we want it to do, therefore this is a good thing, isn’t it? The fact that Bell Pottinger’s strategy is to ‘tell the story of how Uzbekistan is changing for the better’ recognises that the communications must acknowledge previous bad behaviour, otherwise logically it will be impossible to show improvement.

If the UK government under John Major and Tony Blair had taken the attitude of you don’t talk to or help bad people because they are beyond redemption, then we’d never have had peace in Northern Ireland. This is practical, real world politics. If you want to make the world a better place then you have to engage with people.

It appears in this case that Bell Pottinger was acting correctly. What isn’t so clear is how well it has behaved in the past with some of the clients it has represented. Looking at its track record it could be surmised that this is Bell Pottinger turning over a new leaf. If so, then surely a company improving its behaviour is something we should welcome.

Is it wrong to claim that you as a public affairs company can influence government?

One of the roles of politicians is to listen to what people want, weigh up the arguments and make decisions based upon the evidence available. A good public affairs consultancy simply helps to make the case on behalf of companies, trade organisations, charities, pressure groups and trade unions. It is an entirely legitimate process and helps to ensure that legislation and policy is effectively scrutinised and that the end result is better than if a decision had been made without the full facts available. It is a similar process to going to your local MP’s advice surgery to ask them to do something to support your favourite charity or special interest group. Frankly, I’d be alarmed if a politician said they weren’t influenced by the people they are meant to represent.

What Bell Pottinger does appear to be guilty of is making exaggerated claims about and over-inflating the importance of contacts. Any really good professional public affairs professional will tell you that contacts aren’t as important as the uninformed like to think. But, let’s be honest what company, organisation or even individual hasn’t been guilty of that to some extent at sometime or other?

What is quite surprising is that Bell Pottinger’s major claim appears to be that it ‘got’ the UK prime minister to raise the issue of intellectual property theft with the Chinese prime minister. My main thought on this is that it isn’t a very big achievement, as surely it’s David Cameron’s job to stand up for British manufacturing.

Now that my quick defence of Bell Pottinger is done, let’s move on to what I think it got wrong.

How could self-proclaimed digital experts miss the lack of a digital footprint?

It is standard business practice to do some basic due diligence on potential new clients. It’s inconceivable that a ‘magical’ team of digital reputation experts would miss the fact that the Azimov Group, and the people meant to be involved in it, wouldn’t have a bigger digital footprint than its own website which is just a holding page on Google Sites. Ironically the proposal even highlights that ‘Google searches for ‘The Azimov Group; brings back only one relevant website.’

Given the history of journalist stings that should have set alarm bells ringing – especially if you claim to be media relations and reputation management experts. It’s kindergarten stuff.

Did Bell Pottinger offer the right counsel?

It is on the digital public affairs counsel provided that Bell Pottinger really comes unstuck. The first mistake is that it doesn’t appear to have done even the most basic digital due diligence. But its presentation includes even worse as it appears to advocate ethical malpractice and potentially even illegal behaviour.

Bell Pottinger’s recommended ‘Actions’ include:

‘Create and maintain third-party blogs which are used to seed positive content containing popular keywords that ranks highly in Google search results’

If this means what I think it does – that Bell Pottinger will create and run fake blogs pretending to be from genuine people, then it is not only unethical it is potentially illegal. It could be perceived that this would be pretending to be a consumer, which is illegal under the Consumer Protection Regulations 2008. It’s certainly not within the spirit of the law, even if it is within the letter of the law.

Creating fake blogs like this also doesn’t work that well! You can buy crude software tools that will automate the process for you so there is absolutely no need to pay a substantial retainer for a technique that doesn’t even work. It’s a technique that is used by unscrupulous and usually ineffective SEO companies.

‘… we would create a dedicated and independent website e.g. www.uzbekistancottonreform.org…’

Let’s give Bell Pottinger the benefit of the doubt on this one and assume it would be 100% transparent about who was running and funding this ‘independent’ website, although given the previous recommended action it’s hard to be certain. If it was a genuinely open and transparent site then the recommendation could be seen to make sense.

The Bell Pottinger team presenting didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory by sounding rather clueless about what digital reputation management and online public affairs actually is. Talking of a ‘magical’ digital team and a team that could ‘sort’ Wikipedia made them sound rather amateurish, rather than the professional image I’m sure they were trying to portray.

The lack of specifics when talking about ‘search’ also make the proposal appear amazingly amateur. What terms are people actually searching for to find the negative coverage about Uzbekistan, what is the volume of searches? Both of these matter a lot and effect how easy or difficult it will be to achieve the desired result. Although even if search volumes are low it can still be very important if those searches are being conducted by key influencers such as policy makers, politicians, special advisers, political researchers or think tanks.

It also doesn’t make clear quite how Bell Pottinger would ‘sort’ Wikipedia, but one would hope that it wouldn’t involve violating Wikipedia’s codes and best practices which would prohibit the team from making the changes directly themselves or masquerading as third parties to do so. A legitimate and effective way to ‘clean up’ Wikipedia entries is simply to use your own online properties such as a blog or multimedia newsroom to point out the inaccuracies and link to evidence. Legitimate Wikipedia editors and users will then almost certainly ‘clean up’ the entry for you. The Independent has already covered PR people unethically manipulating Wikipedia (including a quote from me).

The rest of Bell Pottinger’s claims, offers and recommendations are more or less what you’d expect although the Independent article tries to spin some of them to make them sound sinister. Simple search engine optimisation (SEO) activity is described as attempting to ‘manipulate Google’.

In conclusion, this episode once again hasn’t left the public affairs profession covered in glory, but neither is it as shocking or disgraceful as the Independent is trying to spin it. What is does highlight is the need for far greater transparency and openness about what is being done on behalf of clients. That way not only do we help to reduce and hopefully eliminate unethical behaviour, but we also start to rid the profession of amateurism and over hyped claims of what can be achieved.

UPDATE: The Independent now has a transcript of the video in which Bell Pottinger MD boasts “”We’ve got all sorts of dark arts. I told him he couldn’t put them in the written presentation because it’s embarrassing if it gets out because he’s so good at it.”

BellPottpresentationtoAzimovGp1

Thanks to Harry Cole for the embed.

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Portcullis House, Westminster. Image via Wikipedia.

Building an effective social media campaign was the theme of a Hansard Society and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) roundtable I attended in Portcullis House at Westminster last week. It was a two part event with the first half consisting of campaign ‘insiders’ and the second of campaign ‘observers’.

The first half was chaired by independent digital strategist, Dr Andy Williamson, who was previously the director of the Hansard Society’s Digital Democracy programme. The panel consisted of Mark Pack, LibDemVoice editor and head of digital at Engine’s MHP Communications; Cambridge Liberal Democrat MP Dr Julian Huppert who claims  to be the first MP on Twitter (having started in May 2007 when he was still a Cambridge don and before he was elected); Baroness Deech; and Elizabeth Linder, a politics and government specialist at Facebook.

Part two was chaired by Professor Rachel Gibson from the Institute of Social Change at the University of Manchester. The panel was Matthew Eltringham who set-up the BBC’s User Generated Content UGC Hub and is now editor of the BBC’s College of Journalism website’; Alberto Nardelli, co-founder of Tweetminster; and Professor Andrew Chadwick, professor of political science and co-director of the New Political Communications Unit in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London.

It was a fascinating and thought provoking afternoon with some particularly useful contributions from the two academics who both presented results of studies and also hearing first hand from the BBC’s Matthew Eltringham.

As the presentations from the panel were long and interesting there was limited time for questions or contributions from the floor. One recurring theme was that of how representative social media conversations actually are of real life and society and the issue of digital exclusion which was a particular concern of the two politicians on the first panel.

Personally, I’m slightly more relaxed about it than they were. It’s a ludicrous notion that social media can be a replacement or alternative to traditional forms of political communication such as mass media, leaflets and newsletters,  public meetings and events, and telephone and doorstep contact. Any politician or professional communicator who ignored traditional channels would be guilty of gross negligence. Equally, the internet and social web is now so important and all pervasive that they would be equally negligent to ignore it.

Just as there are many people who will be excluded if you just rely on the internet and social media, there are also large numbers of people who will be excluded if you rely on traditional channels and ignore social media.

There were several references to the ‘echo chamber’ and the Westminster village so that people engaging in conversations online aren’t reflective of ordinary people. However, that’s not so different to the ‘usual suspects’ who attend community meetings and respond to traditional consultation. Any local councillor or MP will be able to tell you that it’s frequently the same faces that turn up at public meetings. The most vocal people by traditional channels aren’t representative, it’s no different online.

One of many good quotes was Matthew Eltringham telling of the surprise of a BBC colleague when he found out that ‘most people spend more time on social media sites than they do traditional news sites – even ours!’

The second area that I would have liked to have been able to develop is around the issue of education, rights and responsibility. One reason for exclusion is a lack of understanding and expertise in new social media channels. Even frequent users of social web sites don’t always have a good understanding of how to use them safely and effectively. We’ve been socially conditioned for generations how to have a conversation in person, but we’re still learning the etiquette and norms of what is good behaviour online.

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