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It’s been roughly a calendar year since we started using social media channels here at Parliament. Our strategy around using these platforms will be more clearly defined going forward, but our rationale in using them originally were based around two basic ideas:
1) Linking up with one of Parliament’s primary objectives: to promote public understanding of the work and role of Parliament through the provision of information and access, by
- Informing – ensuring that the public is well-informed about the work and role of Parliament
- Promoting – ensuring that the public values Parliament as an institution
- Listening – engaging the public in ways that reflect their interests
And,
2) Reaching out to people and communities that wouldn’t be visiting the Parliament website.
Evaluation
I realise that stats only tell part of the story, and information on public and internal feedback and traffic back is important. I could write a whole post on the public and internal reaction to us using these tools, but this one is just about the stats. In summary, generally public feedback has been good! And internal departments are now actively looking to use these channels, especially YouTube, Flickr and Twitter.
YouTube
- www.youtube.com/UKParliament
- 47 videos on the channel – started posting videos May 2008
- Approx views across all videos: 224,000 (this is views on YouTube, on our site, or other sites where it’s been embedded)
- Channel views: 67,000+
- Subscribers: 477
Flickr
www.flickr.com/photos/uk_parliament
- 179,430 views since summer 2008
- Recently we’ve been averaging approx 1000 views per day
- 78% of these views come from users searching on Flickr.com; 13% from Google; 3% from Parliament.uk
- Our most popular image is of the Speaker’s Table
- www.twitter.com/ukparliament
- Regular updates began June 2008
- Followers: 8600
- Updates 1127
- Clickthrough on links (according to bit.ly) is usually over 200. With 519 clickthroughs the highest so far. The stats for any of our bit.ly links can be accessed by copying and pasting the bit.ly URL into a browser window, then adding ‘+’.
www.facebook.com/pages/London-United-Kingdom/UK-Parliament/16553417732
Launched June 2008 – 739 fans
We’re starting to do more with our Facebook page, ie, updating it regularly. And it would be good to look at the possibility of developing apps like Number 10 have.
FriendFeed
http://friendfeed.com/ukparliament
Launched August 2008, aggregating all our social media content, and stories from our news area – 284 subscribers.
UK Parliament Google Profile
www.google.com/profiles/ukparliament
Our Google Profile links off to the main areas of the Parliament website and our social media content. Stats are only available for the last 30 days:
Impressions 12438; 1958 Views
Parliament Labs blog
- http://parliamentlabs.wordpress.com/
- 10,000+ views since launching September 2008
- 312 views in one day – for our improving Hansard post – is our busiest day so far.
- 52 posts
- 84 comments from members of the public and Web Centre staff across all posts.
We worked with the good folks from Tweetminster recently to put together a custom iFrame widget that we could use on the Parliament website.
This involved styling the widget Tweetminster already make available so that it fitted with the look of our new redesign, and specifying what Twitter feeds it would use. We wanted the widget to be ‘Parliament on Twitter’ – so it uses our own @ukparliament feed, any MPs or Peers that use Twitter (are there any Peers using Twitter yet?), but no parliamentary candidates, government departments or political parties.
The hope is that using this widget will further promote how Parliament and its Members are trying to engage with social media tools and with the public. During recess it should also give an insight into the work of MPs in their constituencies. Although, we have included a disclaimer because the Web Centre team is responsible only for the content of @ukparliament updates, not those from Members…
WordPress.com doesn’t like iFrames so below is just a screengrab, to see it working go to our new Get Involved page.
There’s a lot going on in Parliament, so you’ll want to stay in touch by using our calendar. Thanks to our recent redesign, a cut-down version of the calendar is now embedded on our main homepage and most of our top level pages, like those for the Commons and Lords.
But, if you don’t want to visit our site on a daily basis, you can now subscribe to our improved calendar feeds. These start with a big, subscribe-to-everything feed and are then split down into all the different areas our business takes place – like Westminster Hall, or Commons Select Committees. There are RSS and Atom feeds available for everything.
We’re going to make the availability of these feeds more obvious on the calendar homepage shortly, but you can see them through the URL address bar (in Firefox) and in the toolbar area (IE 7). The feeds are also all visible on our Commons and Lords homepages as you move through the different tabs.
In the meantime, while we work on raising the profile of these feeds on the site, here’s a list of the RSS feeds (you can switch them to atom by changing the ‘rss’ to ‘atom’). We’re in recess at the moment, so most of the feeds are showing business for when Parliament goes back to work:
Calendar, all: http://services.parliament.uk/calendar/all.rss
Commons, all: http://services.parliament.uk/calendar/commons.rss
Lords, all: http://services.parliament.uk/calendar/lords.rss
Commons, Westminster Hall: http://services.parliament.uk/calendar/commons_westminster_hall.rss
Commons Select Committees: http://services.parliament.uk/calendar/commons_select_committee.rss
Commons General Committees: http://services.parliament.uk/calendar/commons_general_committee.rss
Lords Grand Committees: http://services.parliament.uk/calendar/lords_grand_committee.rss
Lords Select Committees: http://services.parliament.uk/calendar/lords_select_committee.rss
As always, your feedback on this and other services is welcome. Leave a comment below or email webmaster@parliament.uk
What’s new?
We’ve launched a new design for the Parliament website: www.parliament.uk
The redesign features a refined navigation system and improved information architecture, together with a new section called Topical Issues and greater emphasis on our Parliamentary News area.
The Topical Issues area organises parliamentary research material by subject, with the long-term aim to draw in other areas of parliamentary business like debates and Bills. News covers the main parliamentary business in the Chambers, Westminster Hall and Select Committee reports, inquiries and evidence sessions (read about the development of our News area)
Why?
The Parliament website aims to make parliamentary information more accessible, show that Parliament is relevant, and enable people to connect and engage with us.
The aim of the redesign is to: provide a site that is modern, fresh and engaging; refine the routes to information, making it more accessible for the user; and offer more focused, timely and dynamic content to improve the overall user experience.
Development and testing
The design and new information architecture has been developed by our team following extensive consultation across Parliament and external users, alongside a comprehensive programme of user and accessibility testing.
Plans for 2009
The launch will be a phased approach. The first phase is the new homepage and major landing pages, the Topical Issue section and new top level and service navigation across all content areas. The next stage of the roll-out, a redesign of all content pages, will follow throughout 2009.
Our five main areas of work for the Parliament website in 2009 are:
- buying tools to improve both search and content management on the website and intranet
- making changes to the look and structure of information on the website so that it’s more user friendly and information is easier to find
- making significant improvements to the intranet so that it will become an essential tool for Members and staff
- working with our ICT department (PICT) and others to ensure that all information generated by the work of both Houses, including Hansard, Bills and procedural information, is delivered effectively to the web
- working on a strategy that will enhance engagement between Parliament and the public through the use of social media and other tools.
As always, we’d welcome your feedback on this work. You can leave a comment below or email us through webmaster@parliament.uk
(You can see earlier iterations of our website in this welcome post)
