by Tristan Parker.
Is it still acceptable in these health-conscious times to have a bacon sandwich as a snack?
It might not sound like an enormously significant question for a government agency to pose, but for Jane Seymour, web editor at the Food Standards Agency, it was this and similar everyday dilemmas that proved the most successful way to engage people online.
Seeking to increase the profile of the agency’s chief scientist, Andrew Wadge, Jane Seymour and her team set up a blog for him in November 2006. “I was sceptical at first,” admits Jane, but the blog has proved popular, having received more than 330,000 visits, at an average of 15,000 a month (20,000 when a popular topic is being discussed) and around 450 user comments posted since the project began.
Many of these comments were in response to popular or controversial topics explored by Andrew, such as the bacon sandwich question, the value or otherwise of detoxing, and ‘traffic light’ labelling of food. The results saw both Andrew and the blog featured in the national press, hence achieving the raise in profile for which Jane and her team had been aiming.
The site also experienced positive feedback, with 45 per cent of users rating it highly and 80 per cent saying they would return. Based on her experience, Jane offers three main points for maintaining a successful blog: “Choose your blogger carefully, making sure it’s someone who will get involved; don’t underestimate the time needed; and know what you’re trying to achieve.”
Seymour was addressing delegates at a ‘digital dialogues’ workshop, hosted by the Hansard Society at this month’s E-Democracy ’08 (http://www.headstar-events.com/edemocracy08).
The need for blogs to be set up with a specific goal in mind was reiterated by Stephen Hale, Head of Engagement and Digital Diplomacy for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).
Hale developed the ‘FCO bloggers: global conversations’ site for the department (http://blogs.fco.gov.uk), which features a range of bloggers led by Foreign Secretary David Miliband. Encouraging ministers and officials to write on the site has been one aspect of a programme by Stephen to develop digital engagement throughout the FCO.
Hale outlined the usefulness of digital diplomacy as a method of working towards foreign policy objectives, for example, in supporting the global Arms Trade Treaty: “It’s not enough just to say once that we support the treaty – this is where blogs come in. They allow us to have a continuing narrative.
“If we had published the [Arms Trade Treaty] campaign on the web, it would have been a one-off. What blogs can do is keep talking about something and keep generating new content. They give us a mechanism for providing commentary. However, they are just one tool for engagement. In some cases they are brilliant, but there will be other cases where they are not appropriate.”
Although the FCO has already set up blogs in around 40 languages, Hale stressed the need for a continual widening of the department’s global community of engagement: “We still need more foreign language blogs. If we are trying to influence people, we have to do it in their own language.”
The session was chaired by Andy Williamson, eDemocracy Director of the Hansard Society, which has recently concluded an independent ‘digital dialogues’ review of how ICT can be used effectively by central government to enhance public engagement (http://www.digitaldialogues.org.uk/).
Williamson concluded that online tools must still always be complemented by more traditional forms of public engagement: “If we are going to engage people online, we’ve got to have clear aims about what we want to achieve. We do not yet live in a digital society. We can’t look at digital democracy as a single solution.”
The advice about choosing your blogger carefully is a crucial point. It has to be someone who wants to do it, someone who can offer the long-term commitment required, someone who is enthusiastic and willing, and someone who has plenty of ideas and inspiration. Without these, any blog is sure to fail, as we’ve seen many times before.