Click on the image to vote for the Met Office in the Computer Weekly Social Media Awards

Computer Weekly‘s search for the best use of social media in IT is back for its fourth year, in association with IBM, and this blog along with the range of Met Office Social Media we provide has been short-listed for an the ‘Best use of Social Media in the Public Sector’ category. Our Twitter channels, Facebook, YouTube pages and News Blog have been shortlisted for providing you with the latest news and information on all things weather and climate ‘when it matters’.

So if you enjoy what we are doing across all of our social media channels follow the link and vote for the Met Office – Social Media ‘When it Matters‘.

Social Media ‘When it Matters’

We use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and our blog to help keep you up to date about the latest weather so that you know what to expect and how best to deal with all that the British weather can throw at us as a nation.

The Met Office is a world leader in weather and climate services and through our social media channels, we’re reaching over 75,000 people every month so that we can explain our science and keep people up to date with the latest weather news.

During times of severe weather, we use social media for communicating messages quickly and raising awareness. When hurricane Katia crossed the Atlantic, reaching the UK as a post-tropical storm in September, we kept you up to date, day and night, though Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and our blog, Through our 24/7 Twitter presence we were able to provide reassurance and updates on current conditions. Our messages were retweeted many times, helping us to reach an even larger audience.

We produced and issued two YouTube forecasts directly from our forecasters to update you on the progress of the storm – these were promoted through our Facebook and Twitter accounts as well as embedded into our traditional media channels and were watched over 65,000 times.

Thanks to your support, over the last 12 months we have integrated operational 24/7 social media into our communications mix, reaching over 75,000 people every month through our social media channels.

Through active, engaging informative and relevant communications we have increased twitter followers by over 100% and have seen a 1000% increase in engagement. Our Facebook fans have increased by 400% over the same period. We also get three times more visitors to our blog than the same time last year.

You can vote ate at the Computer Weekly Social Media Awards page.