• 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.

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.”

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:

1. 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.
2. Reply to the @whitehouse tweet with your idea, or a link to ideas you find interesting. Use the hashtag #whgc.
3. 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

1. Build It, And They Might Come

For years, people have asked “What’s your brand’s AOL/Second Life/Twitter/YouTube/iPhone/MySpace Strategy?” Facebook is the world’s leading social network, with over 400 million users — 50 percent of whom login everyday. It’s easy for brands to become distracted by the latest trends, but let’s face it, Facebook is the real deal. Affluent consumers are slowly gravitating to social networking, specifically Facebook. However, simply creating a Facebook presence alone just doesn’t cut it. It’s better to create the destination, guide it, nurture it — and allow your followers to flock to an official channel. Your brand’s Facebook Page may not explode overnight, but at least you control the medium.

Does your organization have a Facebook presence?  Let us know in the comments.

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?

This is probably the most interesting passage from the Wired article, a quote from a Major who worked in the Haiti relief operations:

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are fought on classified information systems. While an operational necessity for these conflicts, most disaster relief partners, to include a majority of the US Embassy staff, can neither see nor access classified material. During the initial days of the relief operation, the ability to pass timely and accurate information was arguably as important as the availability of food and water. In the initial weeks of Operation UNIFIED RESPONSE, Blackberry text messages became the primary means of communication, chiefly because they were the simplest and most reliable means of corresponding with the host of US Government agencies, United Nations offices, and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) coordinating the relief efforts.

The real solution to the social networking security problem is to embrace sites instead of blocking them. Rather than being overly restrictive, companies would do better to make social networking policies a part of their corporate policy and procedure manuals, spelling out what is and is not acceptable within their organization. Left up to users, it’s clear that for some, it’s anything goes…and that’s a danger most companies cannot afford.

• appropriate implementation, authorization and acceptable use of social media

• Security measures to protect individuals, sensitive information and state systems

• Proper records management and preservation

Many people use open records compliance issues as a reason not to utilize social networks and social media.  If you make the Facebook page for your city and your Twitter account public, where is the issue?  A citizen can see everything that has occurred.  It is, by definition, open.  I think this is a moot issue.

In too many instances, the first inclination of public-agency managers still is to restrict access to popular social-networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube for rank-and-file employees.

That is ironic when you consider some of the terrific uses that state and local governments have found for these tools.

The article mentions the Utah state web portal, which is here.  They also have a list of state government Twitterers and blogs.

Nobody has control over what their Facebook friends do — that’s the fun and the flaw of Web 2.0 for governments. Then again, when citizens go to the microphone at a council meeting, nobody has control over them, either.

In early 2010, the City will expand the business utility of social networking for our residents by adding a Twitter component to our CRM application, referred to in Santa Clarita as “eService.”