Why Government Needs Social Media NOW

Feb 09

Why Government Needs Social Media NOW

by Rohit Bhargava
Category: Best Practices, Digital Influence

Recently there has been some talk on a few other DC-based social media consultant blogs about the rise of “Government 2.0″ and whether the so-called experts in the space really deserve that title. Yet for all this attention on expertise in social media (justified or not), those of us who at least work and provide advice in the space have not done as much as we need to offer the ammunition to the people who are really in a position to move government forward into using these tools. These are the web masters, communications managers, PR directors and other such people who are the voices waiting to be unleashed within government offices everywhere.

For them, there needs to be a simple reason to care about social media - and actionable advice to sell it into their organizations so they start focusing on it sooner rather than later. Thankfully, the new administration coming in offers that simple reason in three short crucial words: Get Obama’s Attention. Since government loves acronyms, let’s call this idea GOA.

GOA means building your public support. It means getting more funding and more attention from the new administration. GOA can allow you to have a greater impact on people in the US and have an easier time finding and connecting with those who believe in your mission and can help you. It can even make recruiting to get the best and brightest working with you easier. GOA, in short, could be any government agency’s initial reason for starting to use social media.

Though this may be a vast oversimplification, consider that if used strategically social media for government can do all of the following:

Share real voices and stories to help bring the mission of a particular agency to life.
Demonstrate widespread public support for an issue or department’s mission.
Be findable by staffers who are the first point of research for any policy or legislation.
Activate the most passionate voices internally and externally to promote an agency’s mission.
Own Google search results to manage negative comments or content on a particular issue or policy.

The nice thing about GOA is that it offers an argument to start with. No matter how traditional or risk-averse the leader of a particular government agency happens to be … there is none that I could imagine who would not want to get more of Obama’s attention (and by extension the attention of his administration). Those advocates of social media within government may finally have the reason they have been seeking to sell the idea of social media internally.

Update: Several responders on Twitter and people leaving comments shared the point that a social media strategy shouldn’t just be about Obama. I used him as a symbol in my original post, but the idea of GOA could more broadly be described as getting the attention of those influencers who matter when it comes to funding and support. Obviously that is more than just Obama - but the point is that sometimes the most powerful argument to support using social media is the visibility for an issue or mission that it can offer.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 9:34 am and is filed under Best Practices, Digital Influence. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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16 Responses to “Why Government Needs Social Media NOW”

Inspire-Media.Net » Blog Archive » Why Government Needs Social Media NOW Says:
February 9th, 2009 at 9:51 am
[...] Note: This post was originally published on the Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence blog. [...]
Andrew Krzmarzick Says:
February 9th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Hi Rohit,

Are you aware of the Federal Web Manager’s Forum? They have produced some great white papers related to Gov 2.0: http://www.usa.gov/webcontent/

- Andy
Rohit Bhargava Says:
February 9th, 2009 at 11:31 am
Andrew,
I had seen the site before, but thanks for mentioning it here as well - it’s a good resource.
Lahne Mattas Says:
February 9th, 2009 at 11:41 am
HI Rohit -

Thanks for the post. I have to disagree, however.

Getting Obama’s attention should not be the reason that government goes into social media. And I think if agencies focus on that, they are taking the wrong path.

Instead, communicating agency services and programs directly to citizens and getting them to engage at the local level should be the main objective.

While I appreciate what you are trying to say, I think making GOA the primary objective is what most people already think is wrong with Washington.

We shouldn’t communicate for the sake of communicating, but to do what’s right and help citizens do whatever it is that each agency does.

Thanks.
Rohit Bhargava Says:
February 9th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Lahne,
Thanks for your comment. I agree that making getting his attention the sole purpose of a social media effort shouldn’t be the full strategy. Engaging citizens at the local level is certainly where social media can excel. Getting Obama’s attention in most cases may only be a side effect, but sitting in a meeting across from some government agencies struggling to get more public support and funding for their missions, the suggestion doesn’t seem that far fetched.
Steve Fleckenstein Says:
February 9th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
Rohit, many people in govt web & communications care deeply about social media but have been stymied by policies, lack of funding, and lack of perceived desire “from the top” to truly engage citizens. The President is now giving at least implicit permission to agency heads to engage in this type of activity. In fact he’s expecting it. We can expect more agency heads to start looking to their web teams to follow the President’s lead (as mentioned a lot of great stuff is already happening). This will lead to a softening of policies– many govt employees still can’t access Facebook, for example– and increased experimentation with social media. Expect more “low risk” experiments initially (press releases via twitter, bookmarklets, youtube channels, mashups, etc.) followed in the long term by agencies’ increased use of social media for true citizen engagement.
Mark Drapeau Says:
February 9th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
The government needs social media NOW, huh? That’s original. I’ve been writing about it since last summer (see http://is.gd/1fw0 for example) and I hardly claim to be the authority on the topic - some have touted this for much longer than I and are much less public about it.

This in itself wouldn’t be a big deal except that it’s written on the official blog of a company that consults the government. This sounds like a Government 2.0 post by someone representing an agency that’s completely out of touch with the topic matter. If I worked with government clients at Ogilvy, I’d be embarrassed.

Hello, Porter Novelli? Ogilvy needs help with its “digital influence.”

More to the point, it’s not clear that anyone researching or working with Web 2.0 in the government needs to be empowered by Ogilvy or any other outside agency. The webmasters, communications managers, public affairs directors and so forth are not “waiting to be unleashed” nor waiting for help from a PR agency in Dupont Circle. Since November 4th (and earlier) they’ve been…doing stuff.

Very recent events where Government 2.0 people have “unleashed” all by themselves include a Social Media Club DC panel and an all-day gathering at TSA. Government 2.0 Club (http://www.government20club.org/) has formed to act in part as an umbrella for such activities. The upcoming Transparency Camp and Government 2.0 Camp will be other opportunities for networking, information sharing, and strategizing among the “Goverati” (http://is.gd/itpe). There are numerous other wheels turning.

Organizations within the government, such as the Federal Web Managers Forum (as Andrew rightly points out) are influential in their own way; for example, they have published a number of studies looking at how to change websites for the better. These people are well-connected inside government and some of them increasingly so in the Web 2.0 world as well (via blogging, Twitter, and so forth).

Lahne Mattas has exactly the right idea. One of the true powers of government + social media that truly remains to be unleashed is tapping into the power of the citizens and in some cases even the so-called ‘global brain’ to solve problems. This is often called crowdsourcing collective intelligence and it will be increasingly important for a variety of reasons. It’s also very challenging and deserves thought and research into network science and other areas.

The “Get Obama’s Attention” strategy is a joke because it is a strategy outlined with seemingly little understanding of how the government operates. Offices and agencies already brutally fight for attention and budgets; they don’t need social media to outflank other offices; they certainly don’t need to hire an expensive consulting firm to tell them how to do so. I’m not sure it’s necessary and I’m not sure it’s in the spirit of the new administration, either.

On the other hand, the author seems to promote a strategy of social media rugby where government offices muscle each other in some kind of budget scrum. Hello, CDC? Yes sorry, the $40 mil you were going to use to study infectious disease went to OSHA to study ergonomics. Sorry buddy, they just…yeah, Got Obama’s Attention!

So that’s silly. However, getting in touch with people relevant to your office’s mission is not. But the beauty of social media is that to get people’s attention, there isn’t any need to Get Obama’s Attention. You just get out there where people are talking about your office’s brand (http://is.gd/2bEW). The influencers inside government offices big and small “get it” and are using their influence to teach others about it. Ironically, the same tools we are pushing are helping us network and educate.

Now, this blog post isn’t complete crap. For example, “Activating the most passionate voices internally and externally to promote an agency’s mission” is a good idea. It’s just entirely unoriginal. Here’s a piece I wrote about that for Mashable six months ago (http://is.gd/1VYO).

I confess to not knowing what kind of “360 Digital Influence” Ogilvy is throwing around government clients right now. But I hope that no one’s been suckered into paying for a strategy based around poorly-thought out slogans like “Get Obama’s Attention.” They’re not worth a dime.

Mark
@cheeky_geeky

These thoughts are my own and not the official position of any government entity.
Rohit Bhargava Says:
February 9th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Hi Mark,

Thanks for your comment. I’ve actually read some of your posts before and you are certainly one of the people working in government that gets it and is doing some great things. You also make an effort to get out to social media gatherings and speak to other people who are doing great things and don’t need anyone’s help to be “unleashed” as you put it. I respect that.

There are also plenty of smart people working in government today who do, in fact, need help to unleash their voices and work more with social media. And they want that help. In part, this is one of the key missions behind some of the groups that you mention in your comment such as Social Media Club DC and Government 2.0 club. I’m not arguing that any of these people need the help of our agency or any agency in particular. But learning from each other and sharing lessons learned is a big part of the reason any of us attend these social networking events in the first place.

The idea of “getting Obama’s attention” was an intentionally inflammatory and oversimplified one and I’m not surprised that someone with your background who has done quite a bit with social media found the post quite basic. If you’re looking for more advanced stuff, I’ve got over 500 posts on my personal blog dating back for over four years also talking about social media strategy and implementation as well. I’m sure you’ll find some of those more original.

Still, we are all competing for attention (in government or otherwise) and if we weren’t then marketing in any form wouldn’t need to exist. Getting any one person’s attention doesn’t constitute a strategy, to be sure. And I didn’t mean to minimize the importance of using social media to reach influencers and build a groundswell. But the point I raised in the beginning of my post is the most important one: that true change and adoption of social media won’t come from consultants like me. It will come from people like you and others actually working in these roles and putting these tools to work.
Steve Fleckenstein Says:
February 9th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
Mark,

I’ve enjoyed your articles in the past on Mashable & RWW but am disappointed by your comment here. While the comment has some valid points, it strikes me as a bit disingenuous for one consultant (you, according to your bio blurb on Mashable) to disparage another consultant (Rohit, Ogilvy) by commenting on that second consultant’s blog, especially when said comment contains 5 links promoting the first consultant’s own work (along with a good dose of snark).

I find it especially ironic that you ding Rohit for having “seemingly little understanding of how the government operates” while in the same paragraph you reference your Mashable article about branding in government. (If it were only that easy.) In your 2nd to last paragraph you say that Rohit’s point is entirely unoriginal, then you link to your Mashable article (inferring that your article from 6 months ago was original?). I don’t get it.

(Note to Rohit: implement some better comment spam filters on your blog, man!)

Up until June 07 I spent almost 10 years working as a consultant to government clients helping them with web strategy, development, and implementation. I spent over 3 years of that time working in the trenches (day to day web operations for a high profile web site that changed dramatically just after noon on 1/20/09). So I have some understanding of how government operates. And I know all about consulting. Too much, in fact.

There was already a bit of a feeding frenzy going on around public sector social media; Obama’s election threw chum in the water & has made everyone a bit more opportunistic. (Something tells me Government 2.0 Camp wouldn’t be sold out if it was John & Cindy hanging curtains in the executive mansion).

This isn’t unusual (e.g. I remember it happening in 2001 when the Section 508 deadline was fast approaching). And it isn’t necessarily bad either. Good consultants can in fact play valuable roles in such a situation: they often bring private sector experience to the public sector (which many agencies value and which is especially needed in the social media space); they can help jump start or validate social media efforts (execs sometimes pay more attention to consultants than to their own people); and they take the experience they already have working with an agency to help government employees push social media through the bureaucracy.

Government web pros know how to work with consultants — and vice versa. They’ve been doing it for years. Most social media consultants haven’t been at it that long. But they’ll get better at it. And government (and citizens) will benefit as a result.
Mark Drapeau Says:
February 9th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
Steve: As people say in the government, “There are consultants, and then there are consultants.”
Mat Morrison Says:
February 10th, 2009 at 7:59 am
Quick disclosure: I work for Porter Novelli and am here as a result of Mark’s “Hello Porter Novelli” comment. More disclosure - I’m based in the UK (although I have an outsider’s interest in US politics) and have little public affairs experience.

I don’t entirely agree with Mark that the 5-point plan that Rohit outlines is “a joke.” Nor - I think - do I agree with Lahne who suggests that the main objective of social media should be “communicating agency services and programs directly to citizens” (although I believe that Rohit covers this off adequately in points 1,4 & 5)

I think that one of the communications challenges that face us all (no matter whether we work in government, public affairs, or consumer marketing) is that we must manage relationships with multiple audiences of differing backgrounds, interests, and motivations. Lahne’s heroic unknown citizen is only one of these audiences. Important - granted. But not the only audience of importance.

Porter Novelli’s “Compass” planning methodology is one way of addressing the challenge of “how to harmonize communications with and between multiple stakeholder audiences”. Ogilvy’s own 360° Digital Influence is (I think) a ‘channels-specific’ equivalent (I welcome any correction). Readers from a broad web-planning background may be more familiar with persona-based planning methods.

The challenge that many of these methods attempt to solve is “what is the single motivating statement that can sit above all our activities, and against which all activities can be judged?” A sort of communications mission statement.

While I recognize that Rohit is speaking with his tongue rather neatly in his cheek when he talks about the mission being “Get Obama’s Attention” I think there’s some wisdom in his words that has bearing on a broader canvas.

That said, of course, I’m sure that (subject to terms) Porter Novelli would be more than willing to step in and offer support and advice on digital influence from time to time!
Rohit Bhargava Says:
February 10th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Hi Mat,
Thanks for your comment and sharing your point of view from across the pond. The thread that runs through what most of us on the consulting side have said is that finding the right strategic approach for using social media in any group (government or otherwise) is crucial to success. Sometimes the biggest stumbling block, though, is getting the buy-in of the right people in order to start. That’s a challenge we should all help each other to face together. Nice to know there are other agency folks out there committed to the mission - thanks for being out here and listening.
Michele Nix Says:
February 10th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
I agree, Rohit. Getting the buy-in of the right people can be the biggest hurdle in advancing Gov 2.0. It requires a bit of “managing up,” or leading up, to make gains in this area. I also agree that it’s incumbent on those of us in the PR realm to nudge for this kind of progress as well as define and clarify social media’s value to those in the public sector. I don’t think it’s a hard sell; change is already occurring. Government agencies are now Facebooking and grassroots organizations are using many of the new social tools of advocacy. It’s an exciting time to be part of this evolution. Thanks for the post. Interesting read.
Curtis Pond Says:
February 10th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
Mark: There are consultants, and then there are contractors. Consultants strategize, recommend, and think before they do…contractors just do. It sounds like what we have here are the beginnings of a strategy, some sort of path to wrap ideas around and help them to grow down the road. This idea might not be for all of us, but it’s a push. That’s what Government 2.0 will need to succeed. It can’t be waiting around to take orders. If so, our portfolios will be filled with unused communities, empty Facebooks, talking head videos, and awful uses of data to mashup. While these technologies aren’t new, their adoption in this sector is new, and there will undoubtedly be agencies ready to turn anything they can into some form of social media or 2.0 (as Steve says, chum in the water, it goes both ways).

In this new era of “goverati,” I think the strategic times we don’t implement 2.0 for our clients, might make us just as successful as the times that we do. From the conversations and link sharing I’ve been watching on Twitter, etc., there are several niches of Government 2.0 that will need to be addressed (and hopefully draw good discussions like this one), such as security; the outdated infrastructure that many agency sites stand on; design and accessibility; distributing more APIs, and on and on. I just hope that as we’re widgetizing the world that we’re thinking about the evolution of information and where it really needs to be…on someone’s mobile device.
world traveler Says:
February 16th, 2009 at 2:02 am
i think we need more independent not large media owned by large company’s also we need better media not this false blown up fake news stuff !
Marketing to the Government with Jimmy Baker » The Buzz Bin Says:
February 16th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
[...] it’s certainly a hot topic with some, err, interesting posts going up right now. One of my favorites is this Mark Drapeau “goverati” post, [...]