While waiting in the “emergency” room at the local hospital the other evening I noticed this sign inviting customers to provide feedback to the hospital by completing one of the feedback survey forms below.
Unfortunately, the form holder was empty.
The lesson to be learned here applies to social media generally but with my experience with social media in government I think it’s especially relevant to Government 2.0 because of the somewhat unique challenges of a massively complex, risk-averse, culture-rich, distributed monster of an organisation trying to move to be open, transparent and engaging.
I’m lucky where I am situated within Government currently as we have fairly loose and free clearance procedures and are trusted to do the right thing with our engagement – but there are times when we have been unable to respond to comments on blog posts and feedback as completely as we would like, if at all.
This is acceptable in the transition and will probably be an ongoing issue that for probity or national security reasons information is withheld or embargoed. But it needs to be understood that neglecting your social media channels in this manner can be like this customer feedback form shown in the photo. If people perceive that your engagement is insincere, that you’re broadcasting and not listening then it may affect the image and perception of your organisation worse than if you hadn’t bothered trying to engage at all.
// purecaffeine.com, UX, design, social media and Gov 2.0 blog by designer Nathanael Boehm, Canberra, Australia. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.
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Your article is very informative. It discusses social media and how it affects a business if it’s neglected. People have got to know the various ways of maximizing social media because in the long run it will be essential in growing their business.