Launching a social media experiment and piloting a metrics model: Aiming High for Young People

Aiming High WebsiteIf all goes well, I should be posting this just as we soft-launch the next of The National Youth Agency's* forrays into social media with the Aiming High for Young People: sharing, learning and developing action website. It's a companion website running alongside a series of regional events which are unpacking and exploring the recent Ten Year Strategy (Aiming High for Young People = Ten Year Youth Strategy) for young people launched by the UK Government.

The site, which should evolve and increase in interactivity over the course of the next three months, is based around three core elements:

  • A team blog – offering input from different staff members across The National Youth Agency – designed to capture and share insights and ideas from the events and from work within The National Youth Agency around the ten year strategy.
  • Reporting from regional events – where we will be capturing and sharing video clips, and slide-share powerpoint presentations on the site – and creating space for discussion around these. The video clips will offer narrative insights into examples of best practice. This will start next week after the first regional event (Tuesday 30th October).
  • Discussions space – based around free discussion and, drawing uponDiscuss the Youth Strategy the work of Comment On This, around a copy of the strategy itself. We've chunked the government strategy document up into small sections, each commentable upon – to encourage visitors to offer their commentary, examples of good projects and practice, shared learning and experiences relating directly to parts of the strategy. I'll write a little more about this soon…

As we progress we will hopefully make use of further social media tools. This exploration on social media builds upon earlier work with Youth Summit Live – a live-blogging experiment at a two-day event.


Social Media Metrics

It is, of course, no point making new steps into the social media space, if we don't know what it will achieve. This current launch isn't 'radical social media', but over time, through this project, and others, we will be adding new social media tools to our toolbox, and we need to be able to measure their impact and work out whether they are essential tools for everyone, or ones to 'keep in the cupboard' until we have a project they could really add to.

Beth's post that sparked this postSo to aid thinking around this, I've worked through Beth Kanters proposed model for Social Media Metrics below and filled in under the five headings what the goal, outcomes, metrics, measurement and map for the 'Aiming High for Young People: sharing, learning and developing action' website might be. And of course, in the interests of sharing and learning – I've shared that thinking here:

>>Goal: What is your most important organizational, business, program, or project goal?

The overall mission of The National Youth Agency is: supporting young people to achieve their full potential. The NYA works with organisations and services to improve the life NYA information leafletchances of young people and also works directly with young people themselves to develop their voice and influence in shaping policy and securing social justice.

With respect to this particular project – our aim is to provide information, insights and a space for dialogue that can support individuals and organisations across England in putting recent government policy for young people (Aiming High for Young People) into practice in the most effective ways possible. We're providing information, insights and space for dialogue in order to see services learn from each other, and work together, to provide the best for young people.

>>Outcomes: What changes? What happens? What would success look like to you?

The project and events sub-title provides a good framework for measuring outcomes. We want to see:

  • Sharing – not just from The NYA 'publishing' content on the Aiming High blog, and publishing videos on regional event write-ups. Rather, we want to see sharing from the field. Practioners sharing their own examples of best practice, their stories of challenges and ways they have overcome them, and their insights into steps that can be taken to improve services for young people.

    In that not much of this takes place online at present, encouraging practioners to engage with online spaces for sharing stories, challenges and sollutions will be a change.

    Success in terms of sharing would be to see the majority of content agregated through the Aiming High for Young People website originating not from The National Youth Agency, but from managers and practioners from across the country.

  • Learning – for both The NYA and managers and practioners in the field. Through gathering together stories, insights and discussion we should see new ideas highlighted, and areas for further investigation and work highlighted also.

    We should see a change in terms of how widely the captured learning from regional events is shared. Instead of just being available to delegates at each event, much of the learning should reach a far wider audience.

    Success would be sharing the learning opportunities around Aiming High for Young People with at least double the number of people who are able to attend the physical events.

  • Action developed – that makes a difference to the lives of young people. The sharing and learning that takes place through our social media work around Aiming High for Young People should impact on action.

    Change should be seen in the design and delivery of services for young people. Success would be being able to identify the impact of social media interactions on concrete actions.

As well as sharing, learning and developing action – we also look towards outcomes around networking. Helping develop and maintain further links between The NYA and organisations across the country – links that can be activated and drawn upon when The NYA can offer support to organisations in the future. And creating space for, and fostering, links between front-line organisations who can support each other with ongoing sharing and learning.

>>Metrics: What are the attributes or evidence you will measure?

Google analyticsIt's tempting to look at our metrics in terms of 'Access, Empowerment and Quality' (the three themes in the Ten Year Youth Strategy) – but probably Access, Engagement and Action are more suitable. Here are a few of the metrics we may look to track.

Access – How many people are accessing content provided by this project? Where are they accessing it? How are they coming to find it? What is the demographic of users?

Engagement – How many people are engaging with interactive features (and who?). What percentage of content is user-generated?

Action – What are the anecdotal 'stories of change' and case studies of change that can track some of their inspiration back to this project?

>>Measurement:
How will you measure? What data? What source?

Below is a quick list of the measurements that we may use to assess against these metrics.

  • How many people are accessing content provided by this project? Where are they accessing it? How are they coming to find it?
    Google Analytics and statistics from the Content Management System (Drupal)
  • What is the demographic of users?
    We can use a combination of user registration information. We should be able to infer some information from working out how many users access accessing from Local Authority Networks / National Government (usually have a reverse DNS for a .gov.uk address). However, we will probably want to look at using some sort of small survey later in the project to gain a deeper insight.
  • How many people are engaging with interactive features (and who?)
    I could look to set up a goal in Google Analytics for users adding comments, and can then track at-a-glance how interactive features are performing.

    Using the Content Management System I should be able to pull out information about the average number of comments each user is adding, and to build up a picture of whether interactive features are being used very actively by a small minority, or more evenly by a larger group (we may need to think more about which of these is more desirable if any).

    It may be possible to use user segmentation features in Google Analytics to track activity from registered users according to their organisation and region (they provide this information at sign-up).

  • What percentage of content is user-generated?
    For this also the data will come from the Content Management System .
  • What are the anecdotal 'stories of change' and case studies of change that can track some of their inspiration back to this project?
    This is more of an evaluation question than an ongoing 'metric' – and finding data to make an assessment in answer to this question will require more than online statistics.

    We will need to look at building in questions about our Aiming High for Young People social media work into future case study gathering processes and in guidance to staff for facilitating sessions around the Ten Year Youth Strategy in future.

    By seeking to build strong ongoing networks on the back of this one-off social media project, we should also be able to open up channels for gaining more informal data about the impact of the project on concrete action.

Map: What social media strategies will you use to reach your goals?

We're started off with blogging, encouraging RSS subscriptions, and allowing comments. We'll be looking at different platforms for video and photo-sharing soon. We will have to see whether we can add social networking to the mix or not, but we're certainly open to trying different tools and strategies responding to metrics, measurements and our developing goals along the way.

 


 

Reflections on the draft model
Beth's Social Media Metrics model is at the draft/pilot stage at the moment – and part of my motivation for taking the time to work through it (as above) has been to help try it out and generate some reflections on how it works. So, on reflection:

  • Pyramid of measurementsThere is very much a pyramid at work here. I can write one goal, which leads to a number of expected outcomes, each of which could be assessed against a range of metrics, each of which can be measured by a range of measurements. It could easily become unmanageable at the measurements level if you're not careful higher up. Should I have a pyramid? Or should it be a neat chain of measurements, metrics and outcomes.

    Perhaps it I hadn't been working 'from the top down' I would have ended up with a different story. In my outline above each outcome has it's metrics, each metric has it's measurements – where quite possibly one measurement could tell me something about more than out outcome.

    This said, working from the goal does mean I've not limited myself to easy-to-get measurements only.

  • I'm not clear enough on the difference between metrics and measurements in the model. This is likely down to me not spending enough time reading Beth's post and working on this from the train with very intermittent internet access that has prevented me from following links… but the distinction between 'the attributes I'll measure' and their 'data' and 'source' seems fairly slim in some cases.
  • The model hasn't asked me to think enough about 'when' I'll take measurements. That might be the next step, but working out which of my measurements should be taken regularly and which should be ad-hoc would help me in breaking the bottom level of the pyramid into managageable chunks.

Overall – however – I've certainly been encouraged to do a lot of thinking here… and thinking that, I hope to be able to blog soon, will really add to our ability to make the most of the opportunities for social media to support 'Learning, sharing and developing action' around Aiming High for Young People.

—-
*Context: I work in a consultancy capacity with The National Youth Agency on youth participation and introducing social media into the organisations work.

Social bookmarking on one page of A4

Social Bookmarking in one pageI've had more free time than I expected this evening, so here is the second of my one-page guides to social media tools, prepared for a training course I'm currently running.

This time, social bookmarking with del.icio.us in one page of A4.

Each of these sheets aims to:

  • Introduce a social media tool
  • Provide quick instructions on getting started with it
  • Suggest one or two uses for the tool

I've found the contraints of one page to provide an interesting challenge in making me think really carefully about how to communicate the essence of each tool. Sue Waters post on 'hitting the bulls eye' has really helped me in thinking about ways to escape my general propensity to want to write in depth on everything.

On it's way fairly soon should be one page on NetVibes, and one page on Blogging… all feedback is, of course, welcome.


Attachment: 3 – Social Bookmarking.pdf
Attachment: 3 – Social Bookmarking.doc

Flickr in one side of A4

Flickr in one side of A4I've recently started creating a series of 'Social media in one side of A4' mini guides as part of an online course I'm leading to introduce social media into one of the organisations I work with.

I'm planning to tidy up the first few for a general audience soon, but, as I noticed mention of Flickr on the Fairtrade Towns Yahoo Group this afternoon (thanks to Stafford Area FT Group who have set-up a Flickr group here) I though I would get a copy of the guide to Flickr online now.

So, here is Flickr in one side of A4.

Flickr is an online photo sharing too – and a very powerful one at that. So, if you're interested in how you can make the most of your photos, do take a look.

The guide is Creative Commons licenced, so feel free to take it and adapt it if it could be useful to you (original word version attached below). I'd also be really interested to hear responses to the format of the guide – as I'm looking to produce, and soon share, quite a few more…


Attachment: 5 – Flickr in one side of A4.pdf
Attachment: 5 – Flickr.doc

Living generously

One No - Many YesesI've just returned from a weekend catching up with friends, and have been struck again by how important the movement of One No, Many Yeses* is.

Social change requires co-ordination that takes place not (just?) through the market, but through individuals taking action because it is the right action to take. That means deeper conversations to creatively work out how we each play our part. That means understanding the real nature of our relationships with others and not leaving the £ sign to mediate in all our interactions.

It needs communities. And I've just been reminded by the loose community of bloggers whose work I read and on occaision interact with, that today is 'Blog Action Day'. A chance for a community to come together around On No (killing the planet) and Many Yeses (ways to live more environmentally friendly lives) and to reflect on environmentalism in their individual areas.

Generous Banner

So as my contribution to promoting some enviro-wise things to say yes to, I though I would point in the direction of the Generous Community, an experiment that arose from Greenbelt Festival as a way of taking small actions as part of a bigger group. You can see all the environmental actions suggested on Generous here, and if there's some that you're already trying, or that grab your attention – do sign-up and join us. You can find my Generous household over here.

Is it always easier to blog about blogging?

If I write a post about some facet of social media or reflecting upon blogging (like this one), two things seem to be the case:

  • There are a lot of bloggers reading blogs (or a lot of blog readers blogging). This offers a shared experience.
  • The 'objects' and 'spaces' I might refer to when blogging about social media are available online. I can pepper a post with links that you can follow for context. There offers shared space.

When I want to reflect or ask questions on learning or action which lacks an online component it is, it seems, far more difficult to do that through blogging.

I can't link off to the context on some other site. And without there being shared experience or shared space between blogger and reader, I either need to write in a lot of context for a post, or to risk it failing to capture the essence of the reflection or question.

What's the sollution? Must I stick to subjects with an online component? Bring my own 'social objects' along (which can be tricky when reflecting after the event if you forgot to take photos etc.)? Try and pursuade my 'sector' to live online a bit more so that it can develop a more lively blogosphere?

Most of those I think… but what would your sollution be?

No election – the good and the bad

Ok, so we're not going to have an election this autumn. capture2

That's a good thing. It means the project I've been snowed under with that has kept me away from blogging doesn't have to be scrapped because of political purdah*.

But it also means I've now got to go back into overdrive on the project (after slowing down a little on the threat of an election…) so normal blogging service is yet to be resumed…

*A co-incidental bit of shared learning & reflection: In searching for a link for Purdah I discovered that the use of the term is quite contested (the term having it's origins meaning 'curtain' and being connected to Islamic and Indian cultural practices relating to the segregation of women [Wikipedia]). The best description, however, of it's political context that I could find in the top google results was from the very well designed Chester Blogs and reads:

During the six week period prior to local and general elections there is a ban in place on publicising the views of political parties. Issuing press releases or promoting intiatives with quotes and photos from a particular councillor, for example, could be seen as unfairly promoting one political agenda over another. This period is know as a Purdah.

The basic principle is that any activity which could call into question political impartiality or could give rise to the criticism that public resources are being used for Party political purposes is suspended for this time.

New Youth Participation Blog

Children's Participation BlogJust a quick pointer to the Children's Participation blog recently launched by Henk van Beers as a way of sharing useful links / resources and information around the theory and practice of children and young people's participation.

If you're interested in pointers to organisations and literature relating to children's participation from across the globe then it looks well worth subscribing to. Henk writes:

In this blog I will collect information, resources, materials, and experiences that relate to the theory and practice of children's rights to participation in the widest sense. Over the years, with a limited number of people. I have shared useful information that I came across. Through this blog I want to make relevant information available to a wider audience while at the same time building a site that can be revisited for useful information and links.

And it looks like that's what the blog is set to do.

Two very helpful tools for public transport travellers (Or ‘when good design and useful tools collide…’)

TrainTimesAddressI have a confession. I can't drive. I did try to learn once, but realised:

TrainTimesResultsa) I don't like driving

and

b) I really would rather our world was far less reliant on the car, so I ought to make a start by being less reliant on the car myself.

Which means I spend a lot of time trying to find the best way to get places by public transport. Which isn't always as easy as it should be. However, the are two key tools which I find indispensible, and which I often find myself showing to others. So, I thought I would share them with you too…

#1 TrainTimes.org.uk

The fantastic Mr Mathew Sommerville (behind much MySociety code) has created an accessible Train Times website at www.traintimes.org.uk.

At a glance, you may think its just a slimmed down version of the National Rail website… that is, until you see URLs like:

http://www.traintimes.org.uk/leicester/london/09:00a/tomorrow

which will return all the train arriving in London from Leicester at 9am tomorrow.

Simple. But incredibly effective. No more skipping through form after form to plan a journey. One visit to the address bar of the browser and bingo – all the train times you need.

This slide show explains it a little more, as well as having some good tips on getting cheaper trains by splitting journeys.

Transport Direct#2 TransportDirect.info

Sometimes, just sometimes, I can't get where I want to just by train. In such cases I could spend hours struggling with local bus timetables and inadequate bus company websites.

Or I could use the very good, but very under-promoted Transport Direct website at www.transportdirect.info, which is not only a rather nifty Multi-modal journey planner – but which also will tell me how much CO2 my journey is likely to use depending on how I travel.

So, not only can I get places by public transport when others would quail at the thought, but I can feel smug good about the environmental benefits of the extra hour travelling and the lack of circulation in my legs due to somewhat cramped bus seats.

Anyhow. Hopefully these tools will prove useful to others, and I can just point people to this post in future rather than feeling compelled to spend 1/2 an hour raving about them and demonstrating how just fantastically handy they are… although, come to think of it, I could just do that as well…

What is participation anyway?

"Participation is the informed, autonomous and meaningful involvement of a community in influencing decision making and action."

Family Fortunes Top 5 Participation Words

This blog is at least in part about participation – so I really ought to have a definition. I've got a post on the go that explores what I mean by participation in more depth, but lets start with just getting a sentence sorted out for now. Ok – so the sentence above a bit wordy – but I think it captures quite a lot of what I mean by participation. I scribbled this definition down yesterday when I was asked to come up with my top 5 words to describe participation.

Unfortunately that definition gave me at least 7 words:

  • Informed
  • Autonomous
  • Meaningful
  • Community
  • Influence
  • Decision-making
  • Action

But cut down to the 5 I was asked for I ended up with:

  1. Informed
  2. Meaningful
  3. Influence
  4. Decision-making
  5. Action

Perhaps with a little more work I can really get a clear sentence to put across what I mean by participation. But that's a few weeks off – so I'd love to hear from you:

What is your definition of participation? If you had to choose five words to describe participation what would they be?

 

(In case you'd noticed I've been slightly slower on blogging since the end of August, fear not, Tim's Blog is not dead… just time-constrained and with many posts-in-the-pipeline-held-up-by-philosophising (a common affliction) which should make it here sometime soon…)

31 days – the final 11

The end of August 2007I'm back from my annual pilgrimage to the Greenbelt Festival (official website) and I've got six hours left till the end of August and the 'deadline' for the 31 days to a better blog challenge.

So, it seems like a good time reflect on the month of blogging, what I've learned, and to see if I can tick off any of the remaining tasks on Daren's task list.

The learning journey so far

I started blogging in May this year, after many years considering starting and one or two aborted attempts. Over August this blog has evolved from a fairly assorted collection of posts, to have a stronger focus on youth participation. It provides a space for me to share content, engage in discussion, and invest time in critical thinking.

The 31 day challenge has encouraged me to look carefully at the blog from a visitors point of view (which made me realise early on that I needed to tweak blog settings to get comments working, and that I needed a lot more explanation about this blog) – and I've benefited a lot from the advice and shared learning of other 31 day challengers, not least with respect to improving this page giving a background to Tim's Blog. As that page says, this is still the early stage of my journey with blogging, and the exact focus of the blog is still evolving – but with these draft principles to guide me I'm on a far stronger blogging footing that I was at the start of August. As with any intense process of learning, the full results will take a while to be seen… so for now, lets look at the last 11 challenges and I'll pledge to post a wider reflection on my blogging in a couple of months time…

The tasks and some reflections:

Day 21 – Make a Reader Famous

Overlinking blog postsI try to link across to other blogs as much as possible in posts where the work of other bloggers adds to the topic or post in question. I realise, however, that I've often done that just by talking about, for example, Mike's blog, with an inline link, flooding the top of posts with lots of links, and not being selective enough or purposeful enough with my linking to other blogger. Perhaps less can be more in terms of links pointing blog readers to the blogging of other readers.

Daren also suggests increasing the profile of readers on a blog by using comments as the basis for posts. This seems a great idea, not only in that it highlights the comments of a particular reader, but it shows that comments contribute to a debate in the blogosphere.

Roger Schmidt (whose group blog with the Lutheran World Federation has made it into my reguarl reading list and is already providing a lot of food for thought) provided me this week with an opportunity to build a post around a readers comments. I was challenged to think about the concept of the 'voice of youth' by Roger's comments, and found I couldn't fit my reflections into a short reply, so this post emerged and can hopefully provide space for more discussion.

Day 22 – Catch New Readers Up on the Basics of your Blog

During the 31 day challenge I've made a lot of changes to my about this blog pages – but readers keeping up with Tim's Blog through the RSS feed or e-mail updates and regular readers won't see changes to that page. These 31-day pages have done a lot to keep readers up to date on the evolution of this blog, but as Daren suggests, periodic updates to put blog posts into context can be an important part of effective blogging, so do look out for these context-setting posts in the future.


Day 23 – Go on a Dead Link HunBlog link checkingt

I've already mentioned that I can be 'link happy' with my blogging. More links now, however, means more chance of broken links in the future.

A quick check using Xenu's Link Sleuth didn't show up any permenant problems right now (although it did show a few links to other blogs that timed out…) – however, I will need to keep an eye on links in the future.


Day 24 – Do a Search Engine Optimization Audit

There is an interesting challenge for those blogging in the youth participation and youth work niche. I primarily work on, and reflect on, work with young people in secular contexts. However, if you search for youth work online, you'll find predominantly faith based youth work blog posts, which can be a very different niche. I'm not quite sure how to resolve that yet, but I'm hoping that an upcoming seminar at Leicester De Montfort University by Thomas Vander Wal (intentor of the term folksonomy and recently blogging on the state of tagging) might provide some space for an exploration of keywords online.


Day 25 – Go Shopping and Improve Your blog

 

For day 25, Daren suggests visiting a local shopping centre and watching people's behaviours to find lessons transferable to blogging.

I wish I had picked up this challenge on the 25th of August, rather than when I returned from Greenbelt festival. As a phenomenal example of a temporary community – packed full of creativity and celebration, chance interactions and deep conversations, serious commentary and off-topic commedy it seems a far better mirror of the blogosphere that I want to engage with than does the commercial world.

Greenbelt 2007

(Greenbelt is an annual christian arts festival held on Cheltenham Race Course in the UK, attracting a diverse group of around 20,000 people, often from the 'liberal fringes' of the church or from beyond the conventional boundaries of christian / non-christian. It has developed a strong committment as a festival to social justice, and has a vibrant community atmosphere – with a quite undescribeable diversity of festival events, from headline music acts to seminars on nationalism and scottish independence. I can't do it justice in a quick paragraph – but you can see a bit of the festival here, or read more on the official site here)

The youth work seminar series at Greenbelt has certainly given me a lot to think and hopefully blog about.

And from observing shoppers in the Greenbelt marketplace I've learnt that it might seem like a good idea to buy a multi-coloured stripy cardigan with tassles when everyone around you is buying them… but you're not going to want to walk off site into Cheltenham wearing that now are you…


Day 26 – Link Up to a Competitor

I've already confessed to my propensity for linking to other sources (although this post seems notably link free). Often those links will be to other bloggers in the niche I write for – although as mentioned before, I'm not working in a collaborative, rather than a competitive mindset. I'm really keen to see the development of a stronger youth participation and youth work blogosphere in England and the wider UK, so linking to newcomers and conversations taking place on other blogs in the sector is key to building that. (If you're a new youth participation / youth work blogger – drop me a line and I'll point people in your direction…)


Day 27 – Find a Sponsor for Your Blog

Much of the content for this blog emerges as a result of my full time work, and so that does, in a sense, act as sponsorship for my blogging. Although I've not, as yet, looked carefully enough at building time to reflectively blog into my costings and work plans. As blogging does act as a powerful reflective learning tool, that is something I'll be exploring.


Day 28 – What is Your Blog’s Mission Statement

I'm still evolving a mission statment for this blog. My principles are a first part of that evolutionary journey, but this task will have to wait till I've got a long train journey to spend some time reflecting.


Day 29 – Email a Blogger that Linked to You to Say Thanks

The 31 day challenge has encouraged me to become a lot more interactive in blogging – and that pays real dividends. It also take a lot of time. The challenge is in finding equilibrium – knowing when interaction is valuable, and when the fact that someone links to something I've written (either here or elsewhere on the web) can lead to more than platitude. A bit more reflection on how I move forward with a sustainable level of online interaction is also scheduled in for the upcoming train journey (hmm, and I find myself hoping for delays again!).


Day 30 – Explore a Social Media Site & Day 31 – Run a SWOT Analysis on Your Blog

Flog Blog in FacebookOnly four hours left now (there were six when I started writing this post!) till the end of August, and I think, for the sake of being able to get some rest this evening, and for your sake (my attempt at a SWOT is likely to run on a bit…) I think my write up on these two task shall have to slip.

I'm already to be found in many social media spaces. And I've been exploring integrating my blog better with facebook using FlogBlog this month, as well as enjoying the interaction offered by MyBlogLog – but I'll leave more commentary on my experience with social networks and blogging for a later date.

The end?

The 31 day challenge has been a valuable learning experiment for me in blogging, and I'm not yet done with all my learning from it. I hope that these posts have provided some insight into the process (although I admit they've not always distilled learnings as much as I'd like… something I'm still learning to do) and that they've not disrupted the flow of other posts.

This isn't the end of improvements to Tim's Blog, and I hope it won't be the end of the very helpful suggestions, constructive criticism and input I've recieved from many readers. Thankyou to all who've helped – and to all the other 31 day challengers, I look forward to continuing to read your writings, and to opportunities for more peer learning in the near future…