Social Media Surgeries come to Shropshire

June 14, 2010

I’m very proud to be involved in the first Social Media Surgery to be organised in Shropshire. It’s a great project that the Shropshire Infrastructure Partnership’s making happen.

Like many of the best things in the world, Social Media Surgeries originated in Birmingham and have subsequently found their way across the UK with strongholds in Yorkshire and the south west. They exist to help voluntary and community groups and community activists make better use of social media and online technology.

It’s a simple idea.

Let’s say the chair of local community group wonders if there might be anything in this facebook idea that people keep banging on about. So they decide to drop-in on the Social Media Surgery. At the surgery a “surgeon” (really a geek like me) sits down with them, asks a bit about their group and what they are thinking of doing. Then they can show them on a conveniently located computer how to go about actually doing it.

It’s relaxed, informal, and tailored to each individual’s needs. There will be no presentations, powerpoint slides or talks be invited speakers. Just a quiet chat with someone who knows what they are talking about. It relies on volunteer surgeons and I think it’s going great.

And the first one in Shropshire is happening in OMH so it’s right in the centre of town and in a rather fabulous building with coffee, tea (or something stronger if you prefer) easily to hand.

That’s it really. So if you have any questions about how your voluntary or community group can get more out of the internet, come and visit us any time between 1730 and 2000 on 12th July 2010. Find out more and let us know you’re coming here.

If you’re on twitter use #shrewsms and we’ll see you.

I’ve cross-posted this onto tellthehours.posterous.com and benproctor.co.uk/blog. First time I’ve done that.

 

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Jelly: crazy name for a fine idea

May 20, 2010

The Shropshire #jelly in May

The upstairs room at Shropshire Jelly, during a cake break

So yesterday I spent all day sitting at a table typing away on my laptop computer. No surprises there.

What was unusual was that I was surrounded by the chatter of 20-odd other workers all typing away on their respective laptop computers. I was at the second Shropshire “Jelly” co-working event organised by @janminihane who should be lauded for her efforts.

It’s a simple idea, which originates in the USA, get a bunch of homeworkers and put them all together in a room for a day. Not to network, not to train, just to do their normal work.

I wasn’t sure how it was going to pan out. In fact I had an e-mail conversation with a colleague (who ended up not going to this one) along the lines of “Well they say it’s not networking but presumably we will have to talk to each other or we might as well stay at home”.

And we did talk to each other. It was a lot like being in an office. We talked about what we were working on, we talked about whether Flash would survive the dual assault of HTML 5 and Apple (not all of us talked about that to be fair), we talked about twitter (a lot). We talked about how nice it is in Coalport and how lovely the weather is and we talked a bit about our businesses.

The atmosphere was really collaborative and friendly. No-one was trying to flog stuff, Enterprise HQ was a great venue and the cafetieres were of unusual size.

I did make some useful contacts but mostly I had a really great day, I got loads of work done and I came out feeling really positive and motivated.

There will be another Jelly next month. The past two have sold out very promptly so Jan has said the next one will go on Eventbrite at 0900 on the 1st June. You have been warned.

See you at the next one.

Posted by BenProctor | Filed Under shropshire | Comments Off 

Shameless marketing

October 13, 2009

STOP PRESS

EXTRA WORKSHOP

If you missed my PR workshop on 28th October, don’t worry. We’ve decided to run another workshop on 2nd December. Same venue, same price. What are you waiting for?

I am running a workshop on media relations for small and micro businesses on 28th October 2009. This is part of a series of workshops on various aspects of marketing organised by the Shropshire Hills Sustainable Business Scheme. The people running the other workshops are a great bunch, honestly, they really know what they’re talking about.

It’s going to be fabulous.

Each workshop costs just £10 per person for South Shropshire Sustainable Business Scheme members or £25 per person for non members, and includes light refreshments.

It’s probably worth noting that it costs £25 to join the Sustainable Business Scheme.

This is the five week programme. You don’t have to sign up to the whole series.

28th October 2009 PR – How to get your business into
newspapers and magazines – Ben Proctor. How to get your business into
newspapers and magazines. Find out the secrets of the PR industry, learn how to identify a good story, to prepare an impressive press release and to charm journalists into writing about you. We will also look at other benefits that good news stories can bring such as improving customer relations and helping with search engine page rankings. A fun and practical workshop session. 4th November 2009 How to get a great website that
will get you more customers – Anna Wilde A good website will get you more customers. A bad website could actually lose you business. Anna will talk you through the key elements of a great website and show you how you can you update your website to make it stand out from the competition and to get you more business. 11th November 2009 How to get your website found –
Google AdWords – Helen Mitchell Using Google AdWords, you can get your website to the top of Google almost instantly – which can be a great way to grow your business. In this session we’ll be looking at how to use Google AdWords wisely, keeping your costs down and tracking
your results for maximum profit! We’ll look at how to write effective, attractive ads, choose the right phrases to advertise on and how to monitor & optimise your campaign. 18th November 2009 How to get your website found –
Search Engine Optimisation – Helen Mitchell If you’ve ever wondered why your competitor is at the top of Google while you languish on page ten, in this session we’ll look at how search engines work, and how you can influence your ranking. This session covers how to improve your position on the left hand side of the search results – where you can get listed for free, without paying for each click you receive. We’ll
be looking at how to choose the right keywords to target, how to work them into your website, and how to get other websites to link to yours. 25th November 2009 Using Social Networking to get you
more customers – Karen Thorne Networking has always been a traditional way for small businesses to get more customers, but now social media is being used increasingly by businesses to drive traffic to their website and get more customers. Learn how using facebook, Twitter & blogging can benefit your business today!

All the workshops start at 1730hrs and finish 1930hrs. the first four are at Long Mynd Hotel (lovely venue) in Church Stretton. The final session will be at a currently un-named venue.

Pre-booking and payment are apparently essential and to do this please contact Alison Scimia, Shropshire Hills AONB Partnership, The Old Post Office, Shrewsbury Road, Craven Arms. SY7 9NZ. Or e-mail Alison.scimia@shropshire.gov.uk

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Shropshire, devoid of Chief Executives

May 6, 2009

At the risk of being a back-seat driver I can’t help noting that my local Council is prepared to pay up to £180,000 for their new Chief Exec. I don’t really care about the executive pay debate but people do and the local media are going to get quite excited about this. So it would be prudent to do some publicity to explain who the Council is looking for and why they deserve that amount. I can’t find any evidence that they’ve done that, which they may come to regret.

And while we’re on the subject. Neighbouring Telford and Wrekin Borough Council is also going to be looking for a new boss. The old one is leaving. He earns £160,000. Looks like his successor might expect a little more.

And are there really two high calibre £160K plus-worth candidates desperate to come and work in lovely (though sleepy) Shropshire? I guess we’ll find out.

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A challenge to Shropshire Council (and all the others)

April 6, 2009

With a whimper not a shout, a new Council has burst into being here in Shropshire . Imaginatively titled the “Shropshire Council” it is one of nine new unitary councils which are between them replacing 44 county and district councils. The creation of these authorities reflects an assessment by central government that the old 2-tier structure of local government isn’t working (or more properly isn’t going to carry on working over the coming years). The government hasn’t done away with two-tier completely (yet) but the policy leads in only one direction.

A debate took place before the decision to create these new councils was taken. It was a debate , to a large extent, that the public were not invited to join. In fact, in Shropshire, some of the district councils organised referenda and Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough took the government to court. These actions were, inevitably, futile. In other parts of the country the process exposed political and administrative schisms and the unusual approach the Government has taken allowed local political majorities the chance to crush dissenting minorities.
As the day quaintly referred to locally as “vesting day” approached I took part in a local radio phone-in answering listeners questions about the new Council and its plans. Broadly speaking the listenership seemed unmoved. The local press dutifully reported the council tax freeze for next year without exploring the technical but important issue of how tax rates will be equalised across the county and there was shock and outrage at the sums spent by the Borough Council around its final civic service.
The Council snapped into being. There were no riots. Nothing appeared to fall over. Few people noticed.
That the majority of people are left unshaken by the reorganisation of public services is no surprise. This is after all a country where (the island of Ireland apart) we have never had a popular revolution and, across our history, restricted our outrage to unfair or heinous tax levies. There is a temptation to treat this lack of interest as a signal of contentment, as a suggestion that so long as the bins are collected and the potholes are repaired we won’t care what the council is up to. These new authorities must not succumb to this temptation.
Shropshire Council and its fellow local authorities are not mere service providers. Shropshire Council and its fellow local authorities are forms of government. They hold considerable powers to interfere in the lives of the people they serve and they are the key organisations who will shape the way local economies and indeed societies develop over the next few years. There is even jargon for this role: placeshaping. The way they shape their places, the way they exercise their considerable and wide-ranging powers and the way they build a consensus about the future for their areas will profoundly affect the lives of individuals and families right across the country.
So it is important that individuals and families, and businesses and groups, and clubs and bloggers (and on and on) are all involved in shaping the way the local authority works. They need to understand the issues, they need to know how to take part and they need to know that the council will act. Some councils are good at this. Some councils are less good at this. No council is good enough (yet).
Local authority communicators are very focused on improving satisfaction with the job their employers do. I applaud that and I applaud the work done to understand how to increase satisfaction. But the real job is much bigger than that.
I’d like to see a Council so embedded in its community, so well run and so reflective of the society it serves that people would take to the streets to prevent the government wiping it out of existence. That doesn’t seem unreasonable… does it?

Posted by BenProctor | Filed Under government, shropshire | Leave a Comment