About a month ago, PBS had a great interview with the new media team in the Obama White House:
The White House New Media Team
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Tag Archives: engage
How Social Media Can Effect Govt Change
Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist and an government 2.0 advocate who we’ve covered before, has another post on Mashable entitled, “How Social Media Can Effect Real Social and Governmental Change“. He discusses accomplishing everyday tasks, improving government from the outside, and open data and government data. A must read.
Social Media Criticisms and the Military
The Emerging Media Coordinator at the Defense Information School, Staff Sgt. Joshua Salmons, was recently interviewed at SmartBlogs. I found this especially interesting and relevant to all of us:
Social media has some of the same vulnerabilities, sure, but there are tools to mitigate risk just like with e-mail, computer use or the chance that a spouse will give away information on the phone. Short of locking up all employees in the basement, there will always be security risks. Social media does have its own set of vulnerabilities, but to write it off as a lost cause because of the risk is overreacting, in my opinion.
A very interesting perspective on social media in the military. He responds to many of the criticisms of social media, a must read.
ICMA Local Govts Share Photos on Flickr
The International City/County Management Association (ICMA) has had a Flickr account (a photo sharing social network) since 2008. Today ICMA has announced that they are looking to share your photos of government in action:
In partnership with 3CMA, ICMA is seeking to capture the essence of local government through photos! Join 3CMA and ICMA on Flickr by submitting original photos of “local government action.” These photos will be used to enhance marketing materials for 3CMA, ICMA, and participating jurisdictions, as well as give the general public another way to see what’s going on in our local governments.
This is a pretty neat idea, to crowdsource (or city source, if you will) finding good photos for marking materials.
You can submit photos through their online form.
Statistics to Judge Your Social Media Efforts
Business.gov (“the Official Business Link to the U.S. Government”) posted recently an article on quantifying your social media efforts. The article provides a list of social media benchmarks, which should be helpful for any organization.
- Are you using video to market your small business? Not sure it’s worthwhile? Well, consider this: 62% of adult American Internet users watch videos on video-sharing sites* such as YouTube.com.
- If your Facebook business Fan page has more than 100 fans, you are in the top 65%* of all users.
- If you post at least one Twitter update per day, you are among the top 15% most active Twitter users*.
- If you have 100 Twitter followers or more, you are among the top 7% of Twitter users as measured by number of followers.
If you need help hitting any of these benchmarks, govfresh recently had a good article on the subject, titled “Social media in government is like riding a bike.”
Why do I tell this story? Because I think government can greatly benefit from a “small glider bike” when first taking on social media. Too many agencies are reluctant to try not just because they’re afraid of falling, but because some mistakes lead to severe consequences.
Pawlenty Holds Facebook Town Hall
This afternoon we have another link from OhMyGov! Last week Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty held an online town hall meeting on Facebook. And some stats:
Gov. Pawlenty saw his Facebook fan numbers surge to over 35,000 from around 31,000 in the days before the event, a campaign spokesman told OhMyGov.
During the 2 days last week when Pawlenty was promoting the town hall, he received 1,039 “likes” on posts related to the event and 527 comments, for a total of 1,566 citizen “touches.” Not all were unique, to be sure, but it’s a nice base of activity that, remember, gets broadcast to all of his fans’ friends too. The town hall had over 1,000 confirmed guests.
Over 1,000 confirmed guests is pretty incredible. And what about the town hall itself?
The range of questions posted on his Facebook page ran the gamut from sensible to downright strange. One participant offered this suggestion and question on how to solve Minnesota’s budget problems: “Two large oil fields have been discovered in North Dakota and Montana – how can Minnesota profit from oil in North Dakota?” We assume that T-Paw, as he likes to be called, took a pass on that one.
Overall, the post-town hall meeting comments on the Governor’s Facebook page were overwhelmingly positive. From Roberta Folino: “very good town hall meeting and I actually had my question answered,” and from Patty Rosehill: “good beginning – looking forward to more of these town hall meetings.” Of course, keeping a positive spin on developments is made easier on Facebook since only “fans” can comment on your page.
What an accomplishment. Governor Pawlenty said about his first online town hall, “I think we should (have) more Facebook town halls in the future. Thanks to all who participated and we’ll do the best we can to get more questions in during future events.”
National Budget Video Game?
A USA Today article on Wednesday had an interesting bit buried deep within the text:
[Former White House Chief of Staff Erskine] Bowles has been in touch with Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer about creating a deficit-reduction video game that would enable anyone with a computer to take a stab at balancing the budget, much like the 1994 commission did.
Updated for 2010, Kerrey says, such a game could “go viral.”
The tech site Gizmodo picked up on the video game mention.
While it might not “go viral,” this might be a good way for the ordinary citizen to understand the Federal budget issues.
Giving the White House Feedback Thru Twitter
ExpertLabs and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have teamed up to help the White House identify major goals:
The White House wants to identify Grand Challenges in science and technology that will help inspire a new era of innovation. And they’re asking for your ideas, right on Twitter. These challenges will inspire innovations that create jobs, improve education, power clean energy, transform health care, and more.
Here’s how to help:
- Think big! Imagine an ambitious science or technology challenge (something huge like the moon landing!) which you think can inspire great new ideas and inventions.
- Reply to the @whitehouse tweet with your idea, or a link to ideas you find interesting. Use the hashtag #whgc.
- Encourage your friends and followers to respond, too!
This is a pretty neat way to use the social networking site Twitter to help the country. And you organization could do something similar by polling Facebook friends or Twitter users in your community.
And just so you know this is real, here’s the tweet from @whitehouse:
What Grand Challenge should be on our Nation’s to-do list? Reply w/your idea now! http://bit.ly/dy9fkL #whgc
Tips for Your Community Managers
Mashable just posted a great primer, 10 Fresh Tips for Community Managers. This is aimed at startup and business community managers, but everything is extremely applicable to community managers and PIO’s in government.
Build That Fiber Yourselves
In the next couple of weeks, Google will announce the winners of the Google Fiber for Communities applications (we covered the initiative previously). Wired has a good article on what communities that don’t get into the fiber project should do: contact a fiber provider, go out for bonds, and build it yourselves:
Wilson, North Carolina, runs a city-owned network called Greenlight that offers an unbundled 20 Mbps up and 20 Mbps down connection for $60 a month. Cable subscribers can get 10 Mbps up and down for $35 — and those who need even faster connections can go all the way up to 100 Mbps.
But there are lots of ways for cities to start a network without committing to building everything at once — which often requires a bond measure.
Settles points to Santa Monica, California, which started with a fiber-optic line serving the government, then expanded it slowly as the city worked on projects like street renovation and sewer-main installations. In March, it launched the Santa Monica City Net, a 10-Gpbs open-access network that Santa Monica businesses can use — which includes Google and some top hospitals using it for tele-medicine. That network is 10 times faster than what the FCC calls for as a goal in 2020.
We all know that it isn’t as easy as deciding to put broadband in our communities, but this has to be a better option than changing the name of your city (Topeka, aka Google, Kansas) or jumping into a shark tank.
Chile Using Twitter More Than Many Others
Global Voices Online highlights how Chile and Chilean politicians are using social networks for the good of their citizens. Very neat to see governments in foreign countries that are more receptive to social networks and social media.
FEMA’s Social Media Site
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has a great site for it’s own social media accounts and explanation of what they do. Check it out here, and read FEMA’s factsheet on social media usage here.
About this page, FEMA writes:
FEMA has been engaging in Web 2.0 tools and on social media sites nationwide as part of its mission to prepare the nation for disasters. FEMA’s goals with social media are: to provide timely and accurate information related to disaster preparedness response and recovery; provide the public with another avenue for insight into the agency’s operations; and engage in what has already become a critical medium in today’s world of communications. FEMA’s social media ventures function as supplemental outreach, and as appropriate channels for unofficial input.
All FEMA social media accounts outside of the www.FEMA.gov domain carry the branded femainfocus look and feel. This provides consistency and accountability for content in that the public and our partners can rest assured it is the authorized FEMA account and that the information is accurate. Citizens can engage more easily with the emergency management community through social media sites, and increase their role in disaster preparedness, response and recovery.
FEMA has wholeheartedly engaged social media, how does your organization stack up?
Design for America Contest for Data Accessibility
Sunlight Labs is opening up a contest called Design for America that encourages the public to create data visualizations with open government data. See news of the contest at Wired and govfresh.
Access and Twitter in the White House
FoxNews’ White House Correspondents write a blog about covering the White House. They recently published a post titled, “Getting Closer: A New Era of Access.” The post discusses the amount of citizen access in the recent healthcare debate and specifically mentions the White House Press Secretary’s usage of Twitter.
Robert Gibbs, the White House Press Secretary, is @PressSec on Twitter.
Must Read: Using foursquare to Increase Tourism
This is a must read for any local government or business leader. The topic is using location-based social networks (specifically, foursquare) to increase tourism.
Some of the tips:
If you have a Visitor Center, or a number of them, you might offer a special token or freebie for Foursquare users visiting your city or attending a convention. For instance put a little tweet out (Foursquare users are very likely already active on Twitter) about how the next check-in at your kiosk will receive a couple of passes to something or other you have laying around from one of your members. A little piece of swag goes a long way in the service industry. After all, your Visitor Center benefits from traffic, and wants to be helpful, not to mention hip.
We’ve previously talked about foursquare on FollowYourGov. For more on using foursquare to increase your business, look at their website.