Shaping the identity of a community

Interview with the Mayor of Hinton, Alberta – Glenn Taylor

I first met Glenn on Twitter, when he put a link out asking for feedback on a housing report for the Town of Hinton.  I replied asking if he and his administration had considered using a wiki for policy feedback from citizens?  He replied, “No, but I’ll pass it along.”  Then becoming Facebook friends and continuing our discussion, we found out that he was presenting at the ALI Social Media for Government conference.  This gave me an opportunity to meet Glenn in person for the first time.  Glenn was presenting a fire-side chat (no PPT slides) with Ken Chapman of Cambridge Strategies about the Grande Alberta Economic Region (GAER).  The story is interesting in terms of how this particular region has been impacted by many different issues.  The Mountain Pine Beetle for example has had a devastating effect.  After the conference we agreed to follow-up and today’s interview was our next step.

WS: Why become an elected official?

GT: “That started in the sandbox, I was learning about the political process in grade 5 which was when I became class president.  After school I was involved in unions and activism.  For me, it has always been a sense of representing other’s concerns that’s interested me. Union politics turned out to be too limiting, contractual negotiations etc – a narrow lens of looking at the world.

The opportunity to represent citizens’ concerns to administration is what I found fascinating and why I really love governing at the municipal level.  You can discuss something at Council and the next day be having a cup of coffee over the fence with a neighbour fielding questions about the decision.  That has translated into what is currently my 3rd term on council and 2nd term as Mayor.  We’ve focused on shaping the community identity.  We’re an industrial town, and yet, as a community realize that we have a responsibility to give back to the land.”

During the ALI conference, Glenn described his initial response to Ken Chapman’s suggestion that he start using social media as resistive.  ”I don’t have time for this,” he stated while speaking at the ALI conference this week.   However, what I don’t think Glenn bargained for is how persistent Ken Chapman can be and so @mayorhinton is now active on Twitter.  Also during that presentation he revealed that others on his Town Council are on Facebook now, although they’re not as active as they could be and more Twitter accounts have been set-up recently too.

WS: What resistance if any has there been from your colleagues on Council, administration or the region?

GT: “Well I would start with the traditionalists being afraid to engage, the silent majority if you will.  They’re asking, how can we control the message?  What’s motivating that fear are examples like what’s happening with elements associated with Rockyview County Council generating a facebook group.  Basically fixating on the negative.

We (government) can’t be superficial, can’t just listen and continue to do the same thing.  We need to take action.  However, within administration there can be fear that change will bring about more work.  Fear about change of the status quo.  At the provincial level there’s a tendency to consult with citizens through town halls so that it can be stated folks were consulted and then do what was planned anyway.  As the community changes, we need to bring that message back from the citizens to the government.  In a municipal government it’s truly the citizens issues being presented to the government and that’s my favourite part.  The challenge becomes then, how do we get those issues to the administrative team…for change in process?”

Glenn didn’t name the group but I found this one called Stop the Madness in Springbank! which seems to be against development.

WS: How do you see social media impacting your region economically?

GT: “Well number one – you need to make decisions with good information which means you have to gather good information first.  Being open to listening is key and understanding the challenges.  How do we tap into that knowledge?  Traditional invitations to discuss the issue and also connecting people online through various channels.  Flexibility has to be present in our approach so that we can reach as many citizens as possible.  In fact, we’re hosting a workshop on social media to help folks understand the tools better.”

WS: What challenges lie ahead for you and your community?

GT: “We’re really at the beginning stages of engaging the citizens.  I believe that we’re ahead of the curve and that’s a source of pride for us. However, there can be a disconnect between administration and council that sometimes exists and that will be something we have to work on.”

WS: What advice would you give to other elected officials?

GT: “Build the business case, not I have a dream, rather it’s what I have learned. It’s way easier to to operate in reactionism rather than finding the path.  I’d say it’s important to be proactive rather than reactive.  For example at our GAER Board meetings we now start with blue sky sessions and ask what’s on the horizon?  What are you hearing in your communities?  Is it a priority, do we need to spend time working on it…that means that key issues have a chance to help us set our course at the beginning.”

 

“Leaders get the behaviours that they themselves exhibit and tolerate.”  - Larry Bossidy, Author of Execution: The discipline of getting things done.

And with that in mind, I’ll leave you with the same question that Glenn has posted on Facebook and like other elected officials I’ve come across (but unfortunately not all), he cares about the answers you give…

GT: What does community mean to you?

Social media is about sweat!

One of the things I’ve always taken exception to is the comment that social media is “free.”  You’ll see some content in the video below about Gary Vanyerchuk and “$0 dollars invested in Twitter to generate 1800 customers.”  Social media is not free, this is a gross generalization.  Vaynerchuk continues to state that social media is free throughout his book Crush It as well, and regardless of his success (which is substantial) he is sending the message that simply because the tool itself requires no registration fee to use, all social media is free and essentially has no value.  Wrong!

“There’s nothing stock about a stock car.” – Harry Hogg

He’s not coming straight out and saying social media has no value but to the untrained eye that could be how it is interpreted.  I certainly agree that on average the investment in social media marketing is considerably lower than traditional methods of marketing, but free and of little value?

Is the key to massive social media success simply just working 16 hour days on free software?  According to Vaynerchuk, yes and he explains the importance of what to spend those 16 hours on.  He advocates relentlessly building your personal brand, something I completely agree with. Ultimately, many social media tools may be free to use but the time invested and experience on how to apply them in a coordinated way is very valuable. In the case of Vaynerchuk and many others, it’s worth millions.

His main message is “listen” to the Internet and your customers, answer all your emails and comments and treat your customers like gold.  Sound advice AND it’s nothing new.  Having said that, many still do not do this because it’s too much work.  Vanyerchuk is proving that his simple, in your face style and showing up every day is and does work.  Is he passionate? Yes.  Is he relentless?  You bet.  Is it hard work? Absolutely!

As for his book Crush It, I found it a very easy read, entertaining in a few places and there are a few good tips.  Would I call it revolutionary or mind blowing? No.  Vaynerchuk’s mantra is simple, he considers much about the use of social media to be about showing up, sweating and being passionate as you do it.  With that I agree but in reality it’s not free.

As for the socialnomics video.

Eric Qualman has released a new social media centric video on Youtube, this man loves his stats and I think you’ll appreciate them as well.  I originally found the link to this video on Twitter via Mike Street (@streetforce1)

Mike’s link sent me to LitmanLive, a blog which provides a bit of a break-down of the stats within the video itself, it’s below for your viewing pleasure.

By the way, if you haven’t played this iPhone game called Pik’s Revenge yet, you’re missing out.  Speaking of “sweat,” we’re working with Edmonton’s Fluik Entertainment on this cool project, I thought I would throw this in too…

How can Alberta Tourism and Hospitality Industry use foursquare?

With all of the social media networking apps emerging, it’s no shock to hear of yet another. What exactly sets them apart? Why should a person use one and not the other? And who specifically is using these apps? Well, the beautiful thing about social media is that you get to decide for yourself what apps you prefer to use.  In this post, I’ll be focusing on how foursquare, the most recent social media app, can be utilized to promote tourism in Alberta.

First thing’s first. What is foursquare?

That’s an excellent question!

As stated on foursquare.com:

Think: 50% friend-finder, 30% social cityguide, 20% nightlife game.  We wanted to build something that not only helps you keep up with your friends, but exposes you to new things and challenges you to explore cities in different ways.

Think twitter, but instead of answering the question ‘What are you doing?’ and writing in 140 characters what you’re up to, foursquare lets people know where you are when you ‘check-in’ to any location you specify and vice versa. Now, you may be asking how secure is this app? It’s as secure as you want it to be. If you don’t want people to know where you are, you simply don’t check-in. For instance, you may not want people to know where your house is, so you don’t have to check-in when you are home. Some people choose to check-in at a location within their neighbourhood, rather than use their actual address. However, an important part of social media is being transparent. And it may be seen as misleading to check-in at a location when you aren’t actually there, regardless of how close you happen to be.

What makes a social media app valuable is how mobile it is. Foursquare is offered on the iPhone, of course. And can be accessed via a mobile web browser for devices without an app. According to foursquare.com, Blackberry and Palm Pre apps are in the works. Foursquare can also be accessed online where additional features can be used, but the whole point of the app is to be mobile.

So, how is foursquare a valuable app for tourism and hospitality in Alberta?

Well, obviously it only works if the tourists use foursquare and the mobile app. Given that those two things are in place, tourists can locate information about any city in Alberta that they are visiting. Provided that foursquare has the city listed in their system. Right now that’s not the case, but it’s getting there. Say someone from the US is visiting family living in Edmonton. They want to go out for dinner, but they don’t know any of the local restaurants. Using foursquare, they can use ‘Nearby Tips’ that lists comments from other users giving, well, tips about restaurants and businesses they’ve visited (As seen in the picture to the right). The great thing about this feature is that you don’t have to be ‘friends’ with anyone in the particular city. It’s just a list from all foursquare users in that location.

The other great thing about this app for tourism and hospitality is that once it gets more popular, there will be more entries from tourists themselves. So, it won’t just be content from the locals, but also tips and reviews from people who visit the city. Now, this means good and bad reviews. But this gives Alberta Tourism and the hospitality industry an indication of what tourists honestly think of some local tourists destinations, including restaurants, in real-time. This will give them essential info about what tourists want to see more of, what they don’t like so much, etc. Of course, some things will be out of the industries control. If the food is bad at a particular restaurant, there is little Alberta Tourism can do about that. But other concerns/issues may become obvious, and provide insight into changes that can be made. After all, it’s their job to ensure people want to visit Alberta, and have such an enjoyable time they wish to return, and recommend it to others! Every tool that is available to the consumer that provides information on the products and services to tourism/hospitality stakeholders is valuable. The technology is there. Foursquare enables some interesting real-time interaction between consumers, and the tourism and hospitality industries. It’s like a real-time comment card and a repository of comsumer behaviours. So we recommend that the stakeholders within the tourism and hospitality industry become very familiar with this application and it’s advantages.

Social media is not for interns

There was a time not long ago when so called “experts” talked about how easy social media was to operate.  ”Huck an intern on it.” After all it’s only a twitter account, Facebook fan page and/or blog.

Today’s organizations should realize that assigning the responsibility of social media to an intern does a few things that are not necessarily great for their brand.

1.) Puts front-line communications of the brand message in the hands of the inexperienced.  If you wouldn’t position your intern to pitch your biggest client in a lead capacity, don’t put a mass communications tool(s) in their hands either.

2.) Puts inexperienced intern in a position where they may be forced to make a critical “judgement call” decision publicly and in real-time.

In both cases, serious damage could be done to the brand “when” the situation is mishandled.  Often it’s a matter of time, not if but when.

Here’s another perspective.  Assign a value to your brand. Once you’ve estimated the financial value of your brand – $10M, $100 million dollars, measure that against how old your company is.  Then realize that it can all be negatively and dramatically impacted with an ill-advised tweet, video, blog post or photograph.

Sure many executives today are social media rookies, however, they should know what’s critical to communicate about their businesses and they have the authority that comes with their positions to back it up. In many cases the simple fact that the executive is the one communicating builds credibility, credibility that could lead to business.

Social media is not a place for interns to learn about your business via real-time interactions with your customers.

Your top line executives cannot afford to be “too busy.”  The world is a different place today for business and organizations, if your CEO, VP Marketing, VP Communications are not prepared to operate in this space to some degree and they’re not prepared to learn more about social media, your organization is at a severe disadvantage.

How would you like to wake up one morning as the CEO of a publicly traded company to find out your stock “allegedly” lost $180 million dollars in value?  The result of a song that went viral on Youtube.  You didn’t see it coming because you were “too busy.”

The above blog post link refers to the “cost of inaction,” I would offer an alternative to that – “cost of ignorance” could actually be proved in many cases.  Ignoring the implications of social media on your business model and its frontline communications or subsequently handing this important aspect of business communications to an intern is in my opinion foolish.

The future of your city

One of the greatest things about social media is that there are tremendous amounts of conversations to learn from, but what about the conversations at the kitchen table?  Many a great idea has been discussed there.  What if Edmontonians, folks in Red Deer and Calgary decided to communicate their ideas in a more public sense?  In this case, at futureedmonton.ca or futurereddeer.ca or futurecalgary.ca.

Frankly, this is not a new concept.  Communicating ideas online has been happening for years in all sorts of ways.  What we’re suggesting is that this process can be chaotic and unorganized.  Our solution is to provide a very simple series of websites that empowers the everyday citizen.  There are so many citizens who may currently make limited use of the Internet in their lives.  We hope this very focused concept that’s easy to use will inspire them to contribute their great idea for their local city or town in just a click or two.

These sites will be providing the ability for local citizens to participate at their local level and potentially affect change on a macro-level.

Every time there is a new idea posted, the Twitter accounts for each site are updated. If you’d like to follow from Twitter, the usernames are @futureedmonton, @futurecalgary and @futurereddeer.

Here’s the twist:

We’re loosely tying these sites together to provide a macro perspective on the ideas of what Albertans are contemplating. Everything will be crowd-sourced, right down to “functionality requests” of the sites themselves and how they evolve. We believe the elegance of this concept is in it’s simplicity and we encourage you to participate by voting, commenting or submitting your own idea for your city.

We’re also launching a special offer for towns and cities in Alberta today so tune into Global Edmonton at 5pm.

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