Straight from the Horse’s Mouth with Councillor James Cousins on Blogging and Twitter Pt. 1
- Straight from the Horses Mouth is featuring Councillor James Cousins
COUNCILLORS BLOGGING: BEGINNER
Dear readers,
Councillor James Cousins Blog
- How I started
The blog actually appears much older than it actually is – it only went live on 17 December. For several months before then I had been keeping a ’shadow’ blog. I did not want to start blogging on a whim and then months later have an old, abandoned, presence on the web that people occasionally stumbled across on Google. I started off simply keeping a list of subjects I thought would be worthy of a blog post, simply to see if there were enough to justify blogging, this process actually lasted 6-8 weeks. I then spent a month writing posts on a password protected blog to make sure I had the time and motivation to continue. I’ve deliberately not advertised or promoted the blog anywhere because I am keen to see how it will grow naturally. This strategy seems to be working fairly well. The vast majority of hits come from London, they are mainly driven by searches on specifically local subjects, and average time spent and bounce rates are good.
- Why I started
A series of reasons:1. Ego – it would be dishonest of me to pretend there isn’t a bit of ego in it. Anyone with a blog has to have some ego to put their opinions forward for anyone else to read.2. I had the domain name (and have had it for years) and wanted to put it to some use.3. There are obviously political motivations, from a party perspective Iwant to put my points across, and promote my views. From the non-party political point of view it’s a way of advertising what I and the council can do, and making myself available to residents.The real bottom line is that it is a bit of an experiment – I am doing this to communicate, mainly, with residents in my ward and Wandsworth and will be measuring success on that basis (one of the motivations behind the slow growth). Depending on the results things might be developed further.
- Challenges
None. What challenges could there be? You can set up something free on Wordpress.com in a few seconds, it’s not as if there are barriers to blogging.
- Benefits
Ask me this in six months.
- Unexpected incidents
No incidents, as such, but I’m rather surprised at the way my Twitter use has developed. I had imagined I would get a handful of followers over time. I didn’t expect there to be such a vibrant (or welcoming) social media/local government community on there. It’s a great discovery, though I hope I’ll eventually get a few Wandsworth residents following too!
- Current status
Still developing and still tinkering and still enjoying the project.
- Tips and recommendations
Just do it and see where it leads.
I don’t think Twitter has come of age yet. It is getting there, but it’s still very much a niche. It’s developing rapidly, and being helped along by several celebrities (Stephen Fry is a great example) but hasn’t quite got enough people outside of the early adopters yet – 2009 will be its year.Oddly enough, part of me does actually fear it becoming too successful. It may well be heresy, but I have really gone off facebook, it has too many ads and the vast majority of apps add no value but result in annoying messages and notifications. Several friends have reported similar feelings, and its interesting that a lot are no longer active – one who is posted a status of ‘wishes facebook would go back to 2007, when it was good’.
- Thank you Councillor Cousins for agreeing to be apart of this project.
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The Straight from the Horse’s Mouth with Councillor James Cousins on Blogging and Twitter Pt. 1 by Local Government Engagement Online Research, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
