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Increasing Digital Capacity

Jason Richardson,

Corporate Communications

Manager

I’m Jason Richardson, Corporate

Communications Manager at Leeton Shire

Council.

I’m here to talk about workshops we ran earlier

this year aimed at improving online

representation of our Shire’s tourism operators.

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Leeton Shire• Population:

11,683

• Area:

1167.3Km2• Town of Leeton

(pop. 6,828)

• Villages of

Yanco, Wamoon

and Murrami

Leeton Shire is located in the NSW Riverina

region between Wagga Wagga and Griffith.

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Local Government Web Network

Conference 2009

I’d been in my role for a bit over a month when I

attended this conference last year and I found it

fascinating to meet the variety of people who

maintain Council websites.

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Quick poll

Can I get a quick show of hands? Who here

identifies as being IT staff? PR? Admin? Any

managers?

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From these varied roles and perspectives we’re

united by being at the forefront of

communications technology and I think we all

know how daunting this can be.

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Another quick poll

Quick poll, whose council has a YouTube

channel?

Who has a Twitter feed?

Who has a Facebook page that they have

established?

It’s funny but, while these names feel familiar

and maybe a bit old yet, we’ve been using them

for less than four years.

I don’t think I’m alone in saying that sometimes

my head hurts a bit when I think about the rate

of change we’ve seen.

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So I think maybe I can imagine how it must feel

for people who don’t have email.

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Pop singer Lily Allen used the term “neo-luddite”

when she embraced a move away from online

technology.

I propose we use a less pejorative term which

recognises the spectrum of technological know-

how in our communities: digital capacity.

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Digital Capacity

Capacity refers to capability.

Specifically I’m using the definition of capacity

as the ability to hold, receive or absorb; or as a

measure of such ability.

The notion of environmental capacity has been

around for decades and informs discussions of

sustainability.

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There are challenges for digital capacity in

Leeton Shire.

Like many country towns there are above

average numbers of young and older people but

less than average numbers of those aged

between 20-40 years.

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It is quite literally a generation gap and one

obvious in the usage of a newish medium like

Twitter.

Here’s a record of tweets from users who

identify their location as Leeton, taken last

Friday.

Obviously this doesn’t capture those who don’t

identify their location, like me, but I’d guess

there are less than a dozen people in Leeton

Shire on Twitter.

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Digital capacity became an issue for me when I

developed a new tourism website last year.

Analytics show accommodation is the most

popular page but only a third of the businesses

listed there have a website and one does not

have email.

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For many of our local events the Tourism

website is their only online presence, aside from

what gets reported on the local newspaper’s

website.

There are nine annual events listed on the site

but only two of these have their own website.

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The tourism coordinator Brent and I talked about

this and also with our managers and an idea

developed to hold a workshop to show tourism

operators some of the free online tools available

and to try and whet their appetites for getting

their businesses online.

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I wrote workshop notes identifying useful sites

and applications, particularly services offered by

Google, as well as making the argument that

advertising in the Yellow Pages isn’t enough to

be sure of reaching an audience these days.

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The media release I wrote to promote the

workshop discussed how, back in 1995, Bill

Gates wrote a book on how the ‘information

superhighway’ was going to change our lives

and that new business opportunities would

appear like those when automobiles became

widely used.

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The motel, or motor hotel, is one example of

such a business and tourism operators should

know many visitors currently plan their travel

through online research and that it’s important to

reach them on the web.

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On the day of the first workshop I pulled up the

Analytics data to show the businesses attending

that people were visiting the Tourism site to find

their contact details.

It was educational for me to hear the questions

raised, including one about Google business

listings.

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I was lucky that Bern’s blog post on managing

business listings came my way soon after the

workshop.

That’s the one reprinted in Stories this year and,

if you haven’t checked what information Google

has about your council, you really should read

the piece.

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At the Workshop I talked about Google a lot:

setting up an email address with Gmail, putting

up a website cheaply on Google Sites, writing a

website with a view to search engine

optimisation, seeing traffic with Analytics,

advertising with Adwords, monitoring reputation

with Alerts, embedding video with YouTube – all

the good stuff.

At the end Brent and I asked what we could do

to help and the attendees indicated they were

keen for presentations by people who build

websites.

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We held a second workshop and invited two

web design businesses to discuss their services

and prices.

Their presentations covered areas we’d

previously gone over on why businesses

needed to be online and how to ensure you can

be found.

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Then we crossed our fingers and hoped that the

designers and tourism operators would go away

and make websites together.

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But to be honest I don’t think a single website

has appeared as a result of those two

workshops and, when only two people showed

up for the third workshop...

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I thought the exercise might be ready to be

written off.

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However, when you’re not getting the results

you planned it doesn’t mean you’re not getting

results.

You just need to recalibrate your expectations

and find a way to spin the result as a win.

So, while the results we’d hoped for haven’t

appeared, there were a number of positive

outcomes for Council.

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The two businesses at our third workshop went

on to become finalists at the recent Inland

Tourism Awards and one topped their category.

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At our last Council meeting the Mayor

congratulated these finalists and the minutes

record the “enormous benefit” they said they had

gained from the Tourism Operator Workshops.

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The feedback I’ve had is that the workshops

were successful as a way of building and,

particularly, improving relationships with

members of our community.

While the workshops didn’t lead to more

businesses setting up websites, it was

successful as a public relations exercise and

those who attended learned something, thus

contributing to an increase in digital capacity in

Leeton Shire.

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Another good outcome has been seeing my

colleague Brent has since established a Twitter

account, set up Google Alerts and has been

digging deeper into Analytics.

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I’d expect all of us know of good online

resources and, while it might not be considered

core business for councils, sharing this

knowledge empowers people and can benefit

our communities.

Leeton Shire Council plan to run the web

workshops again next year and we will open

them up to all local businesses.

We hope it will engage a broader sector of our

community with as much success in

strengthening relationships and improving digital

capacity.

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Questions?

• See www.leetontourism.com.au/notes to

download copies of the workshop notes

• See Tegan Le Page’s presentation at

http://teganlepage.com.au/leeton/

• Thank you!