If only,

So, Martha Payne, the nine year old who created the #neverseconds blog about her school dinners and Argyll and Bute Council lost. What's more Marth has now helped raise more than £80,000 for a charity that provides meals to schools in Malawi.

Martha’s story has all the elements of a classic social media firestorm. A great heroine fighting for a cause we can all identify with, battles against some controlling bureaucrats doing exactly what we expect of them. And then suddenly and unpredictably it all goes viral and in an instant you’re trending on Twitter. 

Things might feel quite different for the council at the moment, if only…..

If only, the authority had capitalised on the positivity of Martha’s blog which is honest and balanced.

If only, they had appeared willing to listen instead of “refute”.

If only, they had taken the opportunity to get involved with and openly applaud the ingenuity and spirit of this mini citizen!

If only, they had reacted to Martha’s blog a whole lot earlier.

If only, they had followed the sanity of their frontline staff at the school who were wholly supportive of Martha.

This is a local authority but it could easily be the NHS or any public service. As we at Patient Opinion say, social media means that everyone has a voice. Public services can either harness it: proactively engaging in genuine two way dialogue with citizens; joining in instead of trying to control the story; gaining respect for adopting a listening approach; using information to improve what they do; or disappoint by reverting to a negative, defensive, siege mentality response which unfortunately is what the new generation of active citizen will probably remember on this occasion.

This story isn’t finished of course, …if only. But  if you want to help Martha raise more money for Malawi just go to her Just Giving page.

And if you want to see some official guidance about how to use social media you could take a look how the US Air Force does it, or what the Cabinet Office recommends.