Many people take a ‘Field of Dreams‘ view when jumping head-first into social media without checking out the basics: if you build it, they will come.
The simple truth is that if you build it and then choose not to promote it, they won’t come. Almost none of them. This has been discovered by Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council, a Local Authority in the north-west of England.
Stockport’s Facebook page has attracted just six ‘fans’ in the six months since it was launched. The local newspaper, the Evening News, outed the council today as an “online pariah”. In my opinion, that is very harsh and also pretty rich coming from a local newspaper.
The lack of fans attached to Stockport’s “mateless” Facebook page is obviously of concern, but actually only tells half the story. The real value in having a council Facebook page is to be in touch with residents of the borough and share content regularly. The Stockport page can do all this without those residents necessarily becoming fans.
The trouble is it doesn’t. Between 7th November 2008 and 5th February 2009, nothing was added to the page. The latest video was posted six months ago. In short, it’s pointless. But not for the reasons given by the Evening News.
The moral here is, of course, that social media tools are only useful if they’re social, which means they must be populated. Promotion, therefore, is a must.
Compare and contrast with Councillor James Cousins, a Twittering local politician showing careful mastery of the social benefits of Twitter. I discovered Cllr Cousins’ excellent practice after tweeting about the icy roads around my flat in Wandsworth, London, and was so impressed that I felt compelled to write a blog post about it.
Facebook, Twitter