MySociety success

Following my analysis of the MySociety / MPs expenses campaign, I wanted to post some of the feedback from their email group.

1. According to Francis Irving and there were somewhere between 4000 and 5000 messages sent to MPs from the MySociety site, writetothem.

2. Matt Wardman drew attention to the credibility of the MySociety brand, the use of existing networks and pushing with the grain of public opinion:

"A couple of thoughts as to other key aspects that I think you underemphasise.

Use of existing platforms and profiles. Applies to MySociety, Stephen Fry and also those who posted in advance of MS last week (Guardian, Guido).

I'd suggest the key MS contribution was as a respected non-partisan brand with a track record making a stand on a broadly non-partisan issue. Imho that cleared the way for it to become a mainstream issue.

MS legitimised a specialised groundswell and made it a general groundswell that already and triggered others to get involved who would not from the previous posters"

Citizen Journalism - how to

There's a really thoughtful, practical guide here to how to get started as a citizen journalist.

MySociety and MPs expenses: how they won

MySociety is claiming victory in their battle over the transparency of Members' of Parliament expenses - rightly so. The Prime Minister declared at PMQs today that the motion to conceal the expenses would be withdrawn - when only hours later journalists thought that Labour MPs would have a three line whip to vote in favour. The campaign took about five days.

What the campaign involved

The campaign had all the essential ingredients of an online campaign: a blog, an email group, a Facebook group, a shared database, easy individual action backed up by some entrepreneurial moves on Twitter and on their own sites. Each of these elements were successful in their own right.

The blog was successful with 1829 links to it and 53 comments - even though there was 2 days before the second comment was posted

The email group was lively - I think I counted more than 100 emails over the last five days, focussed on producing and logging activity but allowing people to post ideas as well.

The Facebook Group recruited over 7000 members

The coverage on Twitter reached over 50,000 people - thanks in part to Stephen Fry's intervention and the core message was re-tweated over 25 times.

Why it was successful

1. There was a clear community of people, used to taking action
The MySociety email group is significant. I've no idea of its size but know that there are more than 30 active contributors and many people on the list are used to taking action as a result of emails they receive.

2. The campaign was timely, with a clear call to action
The campaign only had 6 days to succeed so there was little opportunity for possible activists to think 'I will do that next week'.

3. The call to action was clear
MySociety repeated the three point call to action in all of the communication. It was clear and easy to achieve.

4. It was high profile but only dependent on their own profile
That's a clumsy way of saying that the message reached thousands of people - thanks also to the popup boxes on the MySociety websites. But that it didn't depend on others (like newspapers) to spread the story. They could do it themselves.

5. They knew their audience - and knew who to motivate
The audience was clear - MPs - and there is already an established community of interest in political blogs that could help spread the message. This would have been hard to build from scratch and impossible in just 6 days. Using well established blogs like Iain Dale's certainly got the message out to a wider group of people.

I hope that people more closely involved in the campaign will also record their thoughts (and we'll keep an index of those) so that critical lessons can be learned by others who also want to run successful campaigns online.

Using Fixmystreet to get media coverage

There's an interesting story from the Western Mail about someone who used Fixmystreet in conjunction with a local campaign.

Local residents found that HGVs were regularly driving up a narrow street which was on a key route provided by sat nav systems. Local campaigner Mrs Clark said: "The police were called and expressed their ‘concern’ that after two years the problem remained unsolved. I am appalled by the attitude of Denbighshire County Council.”

It looks like the complaint on Fixmystreet helped create the news hook for the Western Mail article and the pressure of the two was enough to get the council to act accordingly.

Value over volume - more thoughts

Guido made an important comment on my thesis that value will trump volume. He argues that he gets a wider attention for his blog because it is read by so many people. That's undoubtedly true. Clearly if it was read by 25 people, journalists would ignore it. But what if the 25 people were all members of the Cabinet? That's why the Progress magazine (where I used to intern) was significant.

Yes, there is value because of the number of people that read something. But I'm arguing that there is greater value from a smaller, but more significant audience who (and this is the critical piont) can be mobilised to take action.

A small, committed group of people will always have more value than a large group of passive readers. That's why the participation of Guido's blog is sometimes so much more valuable than the participation of readers of, say, the Daily Mail.

PS. Incidentally, I'm much more pleased that of the 250 people that have read my post one of them was Guido rather than 2500 people who I've never heard of!

Fixmystreet - further validation

Following my post on Fixmystreet, I found another great post showing how it works.

Sionide.net reported that the service led to the council fixing a streetlight within a week of the problem being reported.

This report is of a user reporting surprise at receiving a courtesy call from their local authority (Tower Hamlets)

The message is clear: if you want to report a problem to your local council, Fixmystreet is the best way to get the job done.

Fixmystreet - it works!

I always thought that Fixmystreet was a great idea. I think I was one of an early group to use it BITD when it was called something else. But I worried that the inflexibility of local authorities would mean that it would only work where the council was flexible enough to handle enquiries that came outside of their own systems.

I recently reported a problem in my local community and had a call back from my council within 24 hours. The problem was sorted by the end of the week. My council, Hackney, isn't famed for being at the forefront of public service innovation.

The site is so great because it provides a complete solution to an individual, without needing mass participation to succeed. That is, if Fixmystreet was like Digg, I would need to make thousands of people support my complaint for the local authority to notice it. That would be undemocratic, particularly in areas of low broadband penetration. Instead, Fixmystreet works beautifully. Give it a go next time you're unhappy with your local council and tell someone else about it.

Why is this so important? Because:

• so many new startups are dependent on building a mass audience to deliver a good user experience. And that's getting harder and more costly.
• it shows the internet doesn't have to be trendy or catchy or need marketing expertise to deliver social benefits. In short, value over volume
• the many to one relationship of Fixmystreet means that lots of people can put pressure on a single organisation which (may) have to change or act accordingly - whereas a many to one relationship (think, local petition) would be a classic excuse for inertia.

Why value will beat volume online in 2009

In 2009 the value of your audience will trump the volume of your audience. In some ways this isn't new but 2009 will see the triumph of small, highly motivated campaigns online over mass audience sites. Let me explain.

Volume advertising is dying

For some time, the usefulness of running a very large website has been questioned. Yes, it's nice for the BBC, Guardian or Telegraph to have millions of visitors a day (even if the absolute number of visitors is much less). But it's not useful for them - and means little to the reader. We know this because advertising is sold increasingly on a pay per click basis rather than as a unit of number of page impressions.

Volume leads to diminishing returns

Blogs have tended to only receive significant wider attention if they have a large audience. The leading UK bloggers have all built their audiences thanks to interactions with the mainstream media. However, as Guido Fawkes recently reported the greater his audience, the less worthwhile the comments. In a similar theme, Martin Clarke who is response for the Daily Mail online told the Society of Editors that global unique web figures are a waste of time and unhelpful to advertising purchasers (though presumably he needed to say this because his main competitors still use them and they work and they're better than his).

Good value can build volume

One of the most effective and most socially entreprenuerial groups in British web development, MySociety, have recognised the importance of value over volume. One of their core principles is that their websites should be useful for one person - that they don't depend on volume to deliver a successful outcome for a single user (unlike an online petition site, for example). Their sites show that delivering great value for one person can build volume - but volume can't build value.

Aim for value over volume in 2009

The challenge for bloggers and website owners is to aim for value over volume in 2009. We all know the ways that we can get lots of clickthroughs to articles that will help our end of month statistics. But we need to kick the habit. Instead, try to use the internet to build meaningful relationships that you can influence. So when you blog you can motivate people to act, not just click.

I'll be giving some thought to what this all means over the next few weeks on my blog. There's plenty of advice for how to build a large audience. Let's have some more on how to build a valuable audience.

Iain Dale's impact on Sally Morgan

Iain Dale, one of Britain's most high profile and effective blogger, has written about attending an evening with Sally Morgan.

It will be interesting to see what impact his blog has on her online reputation. If his account is a fair representation (and I have no reason to think otherwise), I hope it has a considerable impact.

Web visits strategy

An article on search engine watch has reminded me of the importance of planning before building an excellent website.

In the old days, a company would have commissioned, written, posed for the photograph and printed a corporate brochure, without thinking about who might read it and how they might receive it? I hope not - although I did work for an organisation who did just that. A customer complaint might have started with a petition outside the store or a letter to the CEO.

But many people do exactly that when building a website. They say 'we need a website' and act accordingly. Instead, why don't you try a variation of the following:

• We need to talk to our customers in a cheaper way. How could the internet help? or
• We want to be known for our CSR programme. How can we promote it online?

The answer will probably include a website but that will only be the start, not the end of the job. It should also include:

• a list of websites, forums and networks that are interested in the subject
• a laser-focus on the relevant search terms
• a demographic of people on social networking sites
• multi media delivery to engage audiences with different demands

And it might include a website - or you might save yourself a few grand by thinking first, then acting.

Good practice in Liverpool

You may not have heard of LFC TV. It's the reason I subscribe to Setanta and it gives me live coverage of the reserve team games, clips of former games and extensive highlights packages.

The channel is a year old and can sometimes appear amateurish. I set Sky+ to record the highlights of our game against Crewe (we won 2-1 in case you missed it) but it didn't record because the EPG was inaccurate.

One of the channel's editors has gone onto a Liverpool FC fans' site to explain why this happened - and why the coverage sometimes slips up. It's a brave thing to do: corporations often struggle to engage successfully in fora for customers because they lack credibility. Why has this worked?

I'm interested in your views but would suggest it includes:
* transparency of their motives,
* no anonymity
* consistency of engaging in the same way
* plain English,
* no obfuscation

any other thoughts?

Perceptions of Cow and Gate

After my (slightly petty) complaint about Cow and Gate, I set up a basic monitoring alert for "Cow and Gate" and discovered that a recent TV commercial has attracted criticism in the UK and ROI.

Half Pint Pixie complained to the Food Safety Authority (Ireland) about this ad which, according to the blog, confuses follow on milk and infant formula and idealises formula milk over breast milk and Boycott Nestle also flashed up, with concerns over product contamination.

So what impact have these websites had on Cow and Gate's reputation? I think it's significant.

Authority
Both websites have a greater authority than cowandgate.co.uk measured by how many sites are linking to them and how authoritative those sites are, on average.

• Half Pint Pixie has 233 sites linking to it which are (on average) 240 times more authoritative than that site
  
• Boycott Nestle has 167 / 114
  
• Cow and Gate has just 71 / 60

Search engines
Both sites are ranked in the top 20 (13th and 14th) results in Google for a search of 'Cow and Gate Ad' whilst five other sites about Cow and Gate's advertising appear in the first two pages. A search for 'Cow and Gate advertising standards' is even worse for the company. Negative reports are 3rd 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th 9th and 10th.

Even a search for Cow and Gate (which over 18,000 people do each month according to Google) shows that the company is vulnerable to negative articles being displayed prominently.

Social networks
The videos have been well received on YouTube with over 30,000 views and largely favourable comments. However, they are not substantive and largely refer to the 'cute babies' rather than the ethics of the ad.

Conclusion
So in conclusion, Cow and Gate's website carries little authority. This means that the company's defence of the advert is hard to find and that anyone concerned about the company's advertising practices is only likely to find further criticisms rather than arguments in defence. Although the videos are widely viewed and favourably received, this is probably in insufficient numbers to outweigh the negative impact of the controversy.

If Cow and Gate were to engage in the debate, they could improve the authority of their website and enable customers who are interested in hearing a balanced debate, the information to make an informed decision.

I think the information is probably there, on their own site. And the social networking element of cowandgate.co.uk is innovative for a large company. But - as so often - the information isn't packaged well for web 2.0.