Who wants to chat?

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It’s no secret that I’m currently juggling the highs and lows of being a new Mum with my continued interest and passion for delivery of sound community engagement. I feel incredibly lucky to be able to spend precious time with my daughter balanced with running my business.

Since she arrived in my life 5-months ago, the one thing I have had by my side day and night has been my iPhone! A compact little gadget (even the iPad started gathering dust for a while) loaded with sanity-saving devices – both baby and Becky related. My trusty iPhone has provided me with instant ‘sounds of the womb’ in the depth of the night; lyrics to lullabies at the touch of a button; monitoring and recording growth, feeds, sleep times and even nappy changes.

But for my non-goo-goo-gaa-gaa stuff, the trusty iPhone has provided me with social connectivity as it always did. I’ve been able to keep up to date with the rest of the world through my usual social media favourites and I can’t highlight enough how sanity-saving this has been.

So where is this babble going? Well to set the scene, on Wednesday evening I was walking around my house with baby in her stroller sleeping and dinner on the hob. I had a few moments to myself so thought I’d check out my Twitter feed (as you do) using my iPhone. I quickly noticed an invitation to participate in a conversation with senior health professionals and Ministers about local health services as part of an initiative called ‘HealthChat’.

“Brilliant!” I thought! I’d been meaning for a while to provide some feedback on how great I had found the public health system when having my baby back in December and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. I suddenly had access to the highest level – and this is where I wanted to send my praise! So I tweeted straight to the Minister of Health & Aging and it felt great to know he was ready to listen. I was on a roll… I sent a couple more bits of praise whilst I was at it!

I waited a few minutes anticipating the next part of the ‘chat’. As a facilitator myself I was preempting what they were going to ask me. I thought to myself that they’d probably delve further. I’d mentioned that the staff on the labour and post-natal wards at the hospital had been outstanding so imagined they’d come back to me asking to elaborate – “what was it about my experience with the staff that made it outstanding?” or “what can we do to continue those services being outstanding?” were the types of question that instantly sprung to mind.

You can imagine my excitement to receive a reply from the Minister. Here was me – rocking the baby and cooking the dinner whilst engaging directly with decision makers at the highest level in our state. I was buzzing – THIS is what social media is so good for and why I continuously rave about the benefits of online community engagement. You are reaching people who can’t or don’t want to attend traditional meetings or make formal written submissions.

BUT. Imagine my disappointment at the simple response of “Thank you”. Ok, fair enough he was polite and I appreciate that but I felt deflated. At least my tweet was acknowledged and seemingly appreciated. But where was the chat? That was it. End of conversation. I was there – hooked in – willing to give so much more information as a consumer but I was thrown back out to sea!

So the moral of my story? I think there’s a few key lessons to be highlighted –

– Social media IS a brilliant tool for engaging with people who might not want to participate in more traditional methods. You are literally reaching out to the more silent majority and providing ways for them to feel included.

– Let’s be careful what we call a ‘chat’. A chat to me is a conversation – it’s two way. It needs to be give and take, not just take take. Yes, Twitter only provides an opportunity to exchange snippets of information in 140 characters or less, but it does provide the opportunity for a good back and forth conversation.

– Using the tool alone isn’t always enough. If you are wanting any ‘meat’ in your engagement, good facilitation is required for online engagement as well as offline.

– Don’t ignore the positives. We are often so quick to react to the negative feedback we receive that we forget to utilize and harness the positive comments we hear. I’m a big fan of an Appreciative Inquiry approach of using positive experiences to help shape future planning. We should try to practice it more often – both in our online and face-to-face engagement. If you don’t massage and pamper the people giving you positive feedback the likelihood is they will swim off in to the deep ocean and never emerge again…