For the rest of this year, I’ll be spending 2 days a week with Podnosh and 3 days a week in my current communications role at the Observatory.

Some of the areas I’ll be working on include:

• Running social media surgeries – informal gatherings of people who want to learn how to use the web to communicate, campaign or collaborate.
• Web design and development.
• Training customers to use their websites – including the conversational and social aspects, as well as technical.
• Developing approaches to open data to strengthen the connection between citizens and public information.

Exciting times! Here we go…

Photo credit: Balsall Heath social media surgery by nvirdi

At the end of 2009, Cllr Ken Hawkins and I worked together to set up a new website that Ken uses to write about issues in Elmdon and Solihull in his role as a councillor at Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council.

Ken was already blogging on Google’s Blogger platform. However, following a few sessions at a Social Media Surgery, he was keen to do more with his blog both in terms of content and presentation.

I helped Ken by setting him up with a WordPress site, transferring legacy content over from the old blog to his new WordPress site and setting up the new blog layout.

Ken wanted his blog to have a clear layout with straightforward navigation. To provide this, I chose the Grid Focus theme by Derek Punsalan.

Rather than a traditional ‘menu’ navigation, all the content—posts, comments, contact details and Ken’s tweets—contained within a single page and browsed via categories.

We wrapped up with a demonstration session on using the WordPress admin interface to write new posts, upload images, assign categories and how to manage comments.

The Birmingham social media surgery for voluntary and community groups is now one year old. Huzzah! The first surgery took place in October 2008 at the BVSC and since then has developed into something quite special.

Here’s a video capturing the essence of what the surgery is and how those taking part feel about it (video by John Popham and questions from organiser Nick Booth).

Photo by Kasper Sorenson

It’s almost a year now since I first went along to a social media surgery for voluntary and community groups in Birmingham. The surgeries are thriving and it’s great to see new surgeries sprouting in Lozells, Acocks Green and now Solihull.

One of the things I love about going along to these surgeries is that I never know who I’m going to meet or what topics will come up. The randomness is refreshing, it keeps me on my toes while meeting motivated folk who really want to improve their communities is good for the soul.

This social media lark is wide. Those coming along to the surgeries for advice may want to talk about anything from how to start a blog, attracting more readers to their website or making new contacts using the social web – and that’s just the start.

So, what really happens? What do we talk about?

Here’s a summary of a chat from a surgery in Fazeley Studios on 19th August between Esther Boyd, Paul Hadley and I.

Esther writes about environmental and sustainability issues on her Lighter Footprints blogs. Esther came along to the surgery with some specific questions (I hope my notes and memory are up to scratch – I’m writing this some time after the event):

• How could keywords be used to increase ranking of Esther’s blog in search engines?
• How could she get more comments on her posts?
• How could she get more people to visit her blog?

Keywords and search engine rankings

Spending time worrying about the words to use in the keywords meta tag isn’t worth it. (There’s typically a keywords box you can fill out when writing a blog – we looked at this on Esther’s blog, which runs on Movable Type).

Google ignores the keywords meta tag in determining the order of its search results. Don’t just take my word for it though:

While Google ignores the keywords meta tag, this doesn’t mean that all search engines do the same. Yahoo and Microsoft’s Bing may do their own thing. However, with Google being so dominant, there’s little point in spending much time on the keywords meta tag.

So that’s something you can forget about.

Is there anything to make sure you do to help your blog perform well in search engine rankings?

Personally speaking, I regard much of SEO as an unwelcome diversion from the real job of writing good web content that other people might be interested in reading.

Whether you’re new to writing a blog or a veteran of the interwebs, the following basics hold true:

1. Write interesting content, regularly
2. Use appropriate, relevant keywords in the title of your post
3. Use sub-headings in the body of your post
4. Be a linker to other people’s sites

(I realise I don’t always practice what I preach; particularly writing regularly!)

Encouraging more comments

Esther was pleased that her posts attracted comments, such as this post on community recycling champions. She wanted to increase the number of comments.

The first thing we mentioned was for Esther to add replies to comments. When someone has taken the time to read the post and add a considered comment, adding a comment thanking that person shows that they are being listened to.

Also, when Esther replies as the author, she has the opportunity to develop the discussion further. As well as reacting to the comments, she can lead the discussion into new areas.

On the technical side, we discussed some possible layout improvements to the blog.

There’s a list of recent comments on the home page’s sidebar, which demonstrates an active site and a nice community feel:

However, the list of recent comments isn’t shown on any of the other page templates in Esther’s blog (post, search results or archived by category). Not all visitors will land on the blog via the home page. In fact, if the visitor is arriving via a web search, it’s more likely that person will land on a single post.

Changing the page layout to show recent comments on every page template is more complex as the blog layout is locked down in a pre-defined template. One for whoever runs the Birmingham Mail blogs.

Using Twitter to build a network

The last part of our chat came about through Esther asking how she could get more people to visit her blog.

We talked about social networking, specifically using Twitter and Facebook, to let other people know when Esther had written a new post or to highlight interesting comments.

While at the surgery, Esther:

• Registered on Twitter (she’s @estherboyd)
• Discovered people in her existing network who are already on Twitter
• Updated her profile with a description and a link to her Lighter Footprints blog

Blimey, that feels like quite a lot after writing it down.

So, these are a few examples of the things people talk about at a social media surgery.

It could be something completely different next time.

Attiye is a health and wellbeing lead for young people at Health Exchange, which aims to “make health services available and accessible to all members of our community”. It’s a partnership development between the Heart of Birmingham Teaching Primary Care Trust and Birmingham City Libraries.

What’s a social media surgery?

The social media surgeries are informal meetups where voluntary and community groups can get free advice on how to make use of things like blogs, Twitter and YouTube. Chris Ivens summarises it far better than I can:

Q: What is a Social Media Surgery?  A: With an abundance of buzz-words at every tick and turn and an almost daily mention of twitter in the news we try to look at what technologies could really help your organisation and we’re here to explain in plain English what they are. It’s not a sales pitch nor are you obliged to do anything after the meet, I guess it’s the old cliché; ‘Giving Something Back’. If you come and find the session useful, please pass on the word so more people can benefit.

What we did

Attiye had already set up her experimental blog at a previous surgery. This time, she wanted to learn more about writing on her blog.

We covered a lot:

• How to write a page
• Attiye published her first post
• How to review, approve and delete comments
• How to change the look of her WordPress blog

We also played with a Flip video camcorder but got a bit baffled.

It’s wonderful to see Attiye get started at blogging and I hope she grows more confident with each new post. Hopefully, we’ve demystified the technology so she can concentrate on getting her message out and getting some discussion going through the blog.

How do these surgeries happen?

Nick Booth brings it all together. The surgeons are all volunteers and change from month to month. This time it was the super Jon Bounds, Nicky Getgood, Chris Ivens, Pete Ashton, Neil Houston, Kasper Sorenson and Andy Mabbett (I’m sorry if I’ve missed anyone off). Diane from Fazeley Studios also volunteers her time to keep the meeting place open.

Keep an eye on the Paradise Circus site for future surgery dates.

Hat tip to Nick for the photo.

Just a quick writeup following the third Social Media Surgery for voluntary and community groups based in Birmingham, organised by Nick Booth, and held at the Birmingham Voluntary Services Centre in Digbeth.

At these surgeries, representatives from community groups and volunteers come along to discover how they can make use of social media. This could be setting up a blog to bring people together around a common issue, organising a Facebook group or sharing a video on YouTube to better communicate a story.

Volunteer “surgeons” offer advice on freely-available social tools in a one-to-one or small group environment. No presentations, lecturing or jargon—just people with knowledge, ideas and passion to help community groups make the most of the internet.

I met Jon at the surgery. Jon runs a martial arts academy in Birmingham and is advocating how martial arts training can be used specifically to help disadvantaged groups.

He wanted advice on setting up a blog to act as a home for the academy, and using social tools to connect people together around this comon issue.

We looked at how to get started with a free WordPress blog, tweak the design and personalise the blog. A day later and it’s nice to see Jon has got his blog up and running at Epic Martial Arts. Great stuff! I’m looking forward to seeing how Jon develops his blog as a community hub to bring together people who share an interest in the therapeutic and rehabilitating potential of martial arts training.

I also met Chris at the surgery. Chris, Jon and I looked at the Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn networking sites as ways to make contact with other people interested in similar issues.

Other ‘surgeons’ at the event were Nick Booth, Jon Bounds, Simon Whitehouse, Danny Smith, Abby Corfan, Katie Spragg, Pete Ashton, Philip Oakley, Jon Hickman, Ben Whitehouse and Joanna Geary (apologies if I’ve missed anyone off).

This is the second surgery I’ve been along too. They’re refreshing, fun and you learn a lot.

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The idea behind the surgeries is to help individuals working in voluntary and community projects in Birmingham who want to know how to make better use of the web and social tools to benefit their work.

Help and support is provided by the ‘surgeons’, a group of bloggers, social media and web types who provide their free time to offer advice to the community groups. They’re a lovely, generous and inspiring bunch with a home on Paradise Circus.

After some tentative toe-dipping into this world at Brum Bloggers meetups, with friendly encouragement from Jon Bounds, Julia Gilbert and Nick Booth, I went along as a first-time surgeon to see if I could, well, try and pass on some knowledge and learn something new myself too in the process.

In tandem with fellow first-time surgeon Ben Whitehouse, we talked with Mark and Michael from the Birmingham City University Students’ Union. They were interested in equipping group organisers in the Students’ Union — working on community projects and fundraising, for example — with the social media tools and skills to run their own online groups.

We talked about free web tools, building and inter-linking networks and the importance of a personal blogging ‘voice’ to help individuals get started with their own blogs on specific community issues – and building up their own networks around these blogs.

I sketched a spider-like diagram of individual blog authors connecting through Twitter and how the linkages between networks on Twitter can occur. Looking at the sketch now, it’s a mass of scrawled spider death but I hope it proved useful.

Amongst many things, we talked about:

• Getting your own blog quickly through WordPress.com
• Keeping your network informed and building wider connections using Twitter
• Starting small – targeting a receptive enthusiast first and encouraging them to blog
• Speaking with your own personal voice on your blog
• How Google Analytics can help you monitor your website traffic and understand your visitors’ behaviour – and how it can used to measure the impact of promotions when you attempt to attract more traffic
• Aggregating many RSS feeds into a custom feed for your own community using Yahoo Pipes

Other groups at the Social Media Surgery looking to learn more about the web and social media tools were: City Centre Neighbourhood Forum, Perry Barr Multifaith Network, the Get Walking Keep Walking project and the Digbeth Trust (apologies if I missed any off – please add your group’s website in a comment).

I hope those who came to the surgery got the advice and encouragement they needed to go and try out some of these tools and ideas.

I certainly learned about the great work these voluntary groups are doing in Birmingham and the depth of incredible digital talent in this city.

Photo of social media surgery by Julia Gilbert