Social media - a fascinating learning curve

By Laura Ellis
Head of New Media, BBC English Regions

The spontaneity and accessibility of social media is both a blessing and potentially a curse, as the BBC English Regions' Head of New Media explains.

The Mail on Sunday published an article about Vanessa Feltz's presence on Facebook.

They read the page as Vanessa's personal page, rather than BBC London's page for her show, which is what it, and her Twitter presence, is. They have a point, because both sites were a bit ambiguous.

The BBC should have made it clearer that Vanessa's Facebook and Twitter presences were programme sites and not personal ones. Ideally when it was being updated by the team, Vanessa's Facebook page should probably have looked more like this rather than looking so much like a personally crafted set of updates. This has since been rectified.

There's little doubt that social media is at the heart of a mini revolution taking place across the BBC. It's a great way to get closer to our audience, to share ideas, to find out what's preoccupying people and to discover and develop stories.

We use it in a variety of ways across our own platforms through blogs and invitations to share content (such as Video Nation) and the full range of third party sites like Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. One of our Local Radio stations uses twitterfall.com to display a geographically selected flow of 'tweets' - on a screen in the corner.

"We used to have Sky News, now we have this instead," says BBC Gloucestershire's Assistant Editor, Mark Jones - and they've already spotted and followed up several stories from it.

The spontaneity and accessibility of social media its both is blessing and potentially its curse, but we do try our hardest to get it right Laura Ellis, Head of New Media, English Regions

Other stations and presenters feature regular 'shouts' via Twitter to get input to key local stories, showcase photos and information about station events on Facebook or use social media to strengthen and deepen the relationship with their audience.

Presenter, Frances Finn's amazing Twitter presence documenting (incredibly bravely in my view) her serious motorbike accident and subsequent recovery in amongst classic Twitter daily minutiae and BBC Nottingham trivia is a good example.

On a more journalistic note, recently launched blogs like this one from BBC London's Kurt Barling give our audience instant access to contribute to our journalism.

Like just about anything else, social media offers both triumphs and its pitfalls. Aficionados who combine their work and home presence on Facebook, Twitter or a blog need to offer their opinions with a level of caution they wouldn't have to exert as a purely private individual.

"If you wouldn't broadcast, it don't Twitter it" is pretty basic maxim. We also expect anyone combining a work and personal social media presence to use use a disclaimer to ensure that it's clear their views aren't necessarily those of the BBC.

Purely BBC pages or feeds may need to be looked after by a team to maintain freshness (a key social media imperative is regular updating).

One of the most tricky areas we have to deal with is how to give a programme, presenter or service a presence which is authentic, effective and in line with both the BBC's and the audiences expectations while ensuring it doesn't swallow inappropriate amounts of programme production time.

We're all learning about social media - what works best, what offers the best experience for those who consume it (and it's worth remembering that they're still a small minority of the audience who want to interact in this way with the BBC).

Social Media is a fast moving environment with landscapes shifting and new avenues for communication arriving almost as fast as we can keep up with offering guidelines and, where appropriate, training on the existing ones.

The spontaneity and accessibility of social media is both its blessing and potentially its curse, but we do try our hardest to get it right.