A presentation for the 2010 Local Government Web Network

1. Increasing Digital Capacity
Jason Richardson,
Corporate Communications
Manager
I’m Jason Richardson, Corporate
Communications Manager at Leeton Shire
Council.
I’m here to talk about workshops we ran earlier
this year aimed at improving online
representation of our Shire’s tourism operators.
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2. Leeton Shire
• Population:
11,683
• Area:
1167.3Km2
• Town of Leeton
(pop. 6,828)
• Villages of
Yanco, Wamoon
and Murrami
Leeton Shire is located in the NSW Riverina
region between Wagga Wagga and Griffith.
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3. Local Government Web Network
Conference 2009
I’d been in my role for a bit over a month when I
attended this conference last year and I found it
fascinating to meet the variety of people who
maintain Council websites.
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4. Quick poll
Can I get a quick show of hands? Who here
identifies as being IT staff? PR? Admin? Any
managers?
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5. From these varied roles and perspectives we’re
united by being at the forefront of
communications technology and I think we all
know how daunting this can be.
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6. Another quick poll
Quick poll, whose council has a YouTube
channel?
Who has a Twitter feed?
Who has a Facebook page that they have
established?
It’s funny but, while these names feel familiar
and maybe a bit old yet, we’ve been using them
for less than four years.
I don’t think I’m alone in saying that sometimes
my head hurts a bit when I think about the rate
of change we’ve seen.
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7. So I think maybe I can imagine how it must feel
for people who don’t have email.
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8. Pop singer Lily Allen used the term “neo-luddite”
when she embraced a move away from online
technology.
I propose we use a less pejorative term which
recognises the spectrum of technological know-
how in our communities: digital capacity.
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9. Digital Capacity
Capacity refers to capability.
Specifically I’m using the definition of capacity
as the ability to hold, receive or absorb; or as a
measure of such ability.
The notion of environmental capacity has been
around for decades and informs discussions of
sustainability.
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10. There are challenges for digital capacity in
Leeton Shire.
Like many country towns there are above
average numbers of young and older people but
less than average numbers of those aged
between 20-40 years.
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11. It is quite literally a generation gap and one
obvious in the usage of a newish medium like
Twitter.
Here’s a record of tweets from users who
identify their location as Leeton, taken last
Friday.
Obviously this doesn’t capture those who don’t
identify their location, like me, but I’d guess
there are less than a dozen people in Leeton
Shire on Twitter.
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12. Digital capacity became an issue for me when I
developed a new tourism website last year.
Analytics show accommodation is the most
popular page but only a third of the businesses
listed there have a website and one does not
have email.
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13. For many of our local events the Tourism
website is their only online presence, aside from
what gets reported on the local newspaper’s
website.
There are nine annual events listed on the site
but only two of these have their own website.
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14. The tourism coordinator Brent and I talked about
this and also with our managers and an idea
developed to hold a workshop to show tourism
operators some of the free online tools available
and to try and whet their appetites for getting
their businesses online.
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15. I wrote workshop notes identifying useful sites
and applications, particularly services offered by
Google, as well as making the argument that
advertising in the Yellow Pages isn’t enough to
be sure of reaching an audience these days.
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16. The media release I wrote to promote the
workshop discussed how, back in 1995, Bill
Gates wrote a book on how the ‘information
superhighway’ was going to change our lives
and that new business opportunities would
appear like those when automobiles became
widely used.
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17. The motel, or motor hotel, is one example of
such a business and tourism operators should
know many visitors currently plan their travel
through online research and that it’s important to
reach them on the web.
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18. On the day of the first workshop I pulled up the
Analytics data to show the businesses attending
that people were visiting the Tourism site to find
their contact details.
It was educational for me to hear the questions
raised, including one about Google business
listings.
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19. I was lucky that Bern’s blog post on managing
business listings came my way soon after the
workshop.
That’s the one reprinted in Stories this year and,
if you haven’t checked what information Google
has about your council, you really should read
the piece.
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20. At the Workshop I talked about Google a lot:
setting up an email address with Gmail, putting
up a website cheaply on Google Sites, writing a
website with a view to search engine
optimisation, seeing traffic with Analytics,
advertising with Adwords, monitoring reputation
with Alerts, embedding video with YouTube – all
the good stuff.
At the end Brent and I asked what we could do
to help and the attendees indicated they were
keen for presentations by people who build
websites.
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21. We held a second workshop and invited two
web design businesses to discuss their services
and prices.
Their presentations covered areas we’d
previously gone over on why businesses
needed to be online and how to ensure you can
be found.
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22. Then we crossed our fingers and hoped that the
designers and tourism operators would go away
and make websites together.
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23. But to be honest I don’t think a single website
has appeared as a result of those two
workshops and, when only two people showed
up for the third workshop...
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24. I thought the exercise might be ready to be
written off.
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25. However, when you’re not getting the results
you planned it doesn’t mean you’re not getting
results.
You just need to recalibrate your expectations
and find a way to spin the result as a win.
So, while the results we’d hoped for haven’t
appeared, there were a number of positive
outcomes for Council.
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26. The two businesses at our third workshop went
on to become finalists at the recent Inland
Tourism Awards and one topped their category.
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27. At our last Council meeting the Mayor
congratulated these finalists and the minutes
record the “enormous benefit” they said they had
gained from the Tourism Operator Workshops.
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28. The feedback I’ve had is that the workshops
were successful as a way of building and,
particularly, improving relationships with
members of our community.
While the workshops didn’t lead to more
businesses setting up websites, it was
successful as a public relations exercise and
those who attended learned something, thus
contributing to an increase in digital capacity in
Leeton Shire.
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29. Another good outcome has been seeing my
colleague Brent has since established a Twitter
account, set up Google Alerts and has been
digging deeper into Analytics.
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30. I’d expect all of us know of good online
resources and, while it might not be considered
core business for councils, sharing this
knowledge empowers people and can benefit
our communities.
Leeton Shire Council plan to run the web
workshops again next year and we will open
them up to all local businesses.
We hope it will engage a broader sector of our
community with as much success in
strengthening relationships and improving digital
capacity.
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31. Questions?
• See www.leetontourism.com.au/notes to
download copies of the workshop notes
• See Tegan Le Page’s presentation at
http://teganlepage.com.au/leeton/
• Thank you!
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