Category Archives: Web2.0

Feb 1 2012

Government Social Media Guidebook Update

Last year, my writing partner Ines Mergel and I signed a contract with Jossey-Bass/Wiley to author a government guide to social media. The product of our collaboration is a handy little tome called: Social Media in the Public Sector Field Guide: A practical approach to designing and implementing government social media strategies. Yes, I know it isn’t the most creative title, but it does get the point across!

The book is a guide for the social media novice – the government employee who is tasked (either by assignment or design) to develop and support the agency’s social media efforts. The book covers the origins and value proposition of social media in government. It explores the most successful tools and how to use them.  We also cover the strategies, policies and tactics to ensure a successful launch and long-term value. The guide includes dozens of real-world examples and several case studies and testimonials from government 2.0 rock stars to help make the content practical and accessible.

The peer reviews starting rolling in about a month ago and I am happy to report that we’ve just submitted our edited manuscript back to the publisher for review. Please join me in a collective woot on reaching such a great milestone!  If you think this book might be helpful, please stay tuned for more updates as we get closer to a release date.

Jan 25 2012

So What’s the Deal With Pinterest?

I am not so sure that I understand the purpose behind Pinterest.  First of all, they seem to make it a somewhat exclusive club by not allowing you to automatically sign-up.  You either apply and wait or you beg for an invite from a friend who already has a Pinterest account. This seems like forced viral marketing…but for what reason?

I applied and got an auto email thanking me for joining the Pinterest waiting list.  Wait…what?  I have to wait to join?  Why? A you really checking up on me? Do you need to see my credentials? After venting my frustration at being wait-listed, I did have a couple of big-hearted pals who took pity on me and sent me an invite to speed up the process:

Four days later, I was finally got the “approval letter” from Pinterest directly, but by then I was already in.  By the way, drop me a line if you want a personal invite to check it out for yourself. I can’t seem to find any online resource about why they choose this process for inclusion, but I did find a lot of people asking the same question as me.  However, the process isn’t slowing down their use rate.  According to Alexa, Pinterest pageviews have increased 128% over the last three months, even though it has been around since March 2010. And according to their Wiki page, the company was valued at $200 million in Oct 2011. What am I missing?

To be fair, Pinterest has never claimed to be a game changer. Their stated mission statement is “to connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting. We think that a favorite book, toy, or recipe can reveal a common link between two people.” But other than being able to post pictures, what’s the appeal?  I can see how this would be great for visual designers, photographers, interior designers, etc. to strut their stuff. But what about the rest of us? Just to see how it works, I created a board focused on the Imminent Zombiepocalypse. Last week I started adding images to it and since then, it has had hundreds of “likes’ and “repins” and new “followers”, but so what? I didn’t post anything that wasn’t already online or anything original, so who cares? I am not a renowned zombieologist, I’m just a guy who thinks zombies are fun. I contribute nothing original. How does the fact that Jenna or Kyle or JumaniXL repinned one of the images from my board help to “connect everyone”?

Do you see any business or personal value in using it? Is it just another online time waster? Is it just for fun? That’s cool with me, ’cause I know those are really popular. But somebody just tell me that so that I can let it go and move on and maybe try Tumblr next. Fact is, I have only a small bit of time for fun these days, and I don’t care to spend it looking at pictures of couches, but that’s just me.  But don’t worry – become a faithful follower and I’ll keep posting those awesome zombie pics!

Nov 2 2011

Lessons Learned Info Sharing: Social Media During Disaster Response

Here’s a timely follow-up to the post I did last week on FEMA’s aggressive adoption of social media in emergency management. The Lessons Learned Information Sharing Research Team (LLIS.gov) is looking for examples that illustrate the use of social media in a disaster response. Here’s the content of an email blast that went out today. Note especially the link to the Harris County, TX case study(requires a login):

Call for Documents

FEMA is collecting documents related to using social media during disaster response. As the use of social media increases throughout the county, many jurisdictions are incorporating Internet sites such as Twitter and Facebook into their public communications plans. Recently, the LLIS.gov team worked with Harris County, Texas, to develop an exclusive Practice Note, Emergency Public Information: The Harris County, Texas, Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management’s Implementation of a Social Media Protocol. 

Does your jurisdiction have a similar story? Please email stories or documents to the LLIS.gov Research Team at research@llis.dhs.gov. Alternatively, you can always upload documents through the SUBMIT TO LLIS.GOV tab on the LLIS.gov homepage.

Oct 25 2011

FEMA’s Social Media Efforts

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Still not convinced Social Media is important? Try telling that to FEMA Director Craig Fugate’s after you read his testimony on the topic. Kim Stephens over at idisaster 2.0 has a great post on FEMA’s use of Social Media in disaster management and emergency preparedness.

In the Social Media in the Public Sector guidebook that we just submitted to the publisher for peer reviews, we highlighted FEMA’s efforts in social media as a true testament to the value of crowdsourcing when you need quick, actionable information (i.e. immediately following a large-scale disaster.) Check out Kim’s great post for more info! 

Oct 23 2011

The CDC Zombies are Back…In Comic Form!

Brainssssssssssss!

It’s Halloween season…and who doesn’t love a good zombie story?  AMC’s The Walking Dead is dominating TV and Romero’s Dead continue to press forward in new brain-munching glory with every new iteration.  And the federal government does not want to be left behind!

Last May, the CDC had massive success with their Zombie Preparedness Kit campaign – teaching everyone about the value of being prepared for ANY emergency.  Whether you are being threatened by a shuffling corpse or a tornado, being ready can save your life. A serious message delivered via a fun (and effective) campaign. The campaign went viral (how ironic) across social media channels and crashed the CDCs servers as people logged on for more info.  Like I said, who doesn’t love a great zombie story?

Now the CDC is back with those fun-loving flesh-eaters in comic book format. You can download the online graphic novel Zombie Pandemic: Preparedness 101, from the CDC website for free. It educates about a preparedness kit against the gory backdrop of what else? A zombiepocalypse! Get ready..and read a comic book!

Oct 23 2011

Top 10 Most “Liked” Federal Government Agencies on Facebook

Apparently the Marines are looking for a few good “likes” for their Facebook page.  And judging from an article this month in Government Technology magazine, they’ve found them. The USMC tops the top ten list of most “liked” federal agencies on Facebook:

The U.S. Marine Corp
1,584,318 likes

The White House
1,178,189 likes

The National Guard
1,012,382 likes

The U.S. Army
920,629 likes

NASA
595,788 likes

The U.S. Air Force
562,301 likes

The U.S. Navy
384,107 likes

The CDC
160,253 likes

The FBI
154,051 likes

The U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs
146,314 likes

Not surprisingly, most of these agencies have been at the forefront of social media outreach for years. The White House conducts real-time virtual town hall meetings. The US Navy publishes an actual social media handbook encouraging sharing via social media.  The VA actually hired one of their most vocal critics to drive their social media engagement.  And who can forget the CDCs Zombie Preparedness Kit campaign!  The one surprise for me was the FBI – glad to see people are not too paranoid to like them!  I was also surprised some of the other social media friendly federal agencies, like the EPA (only 33,665) and GSA (3,362) were so low in comparison. Probably has something to do with the size of their operational scope and not their social media savvy though because those agencies, and several others at the federal level do great things with social media. I think “social media influence” rather than hard numbers is a topic just ripe for an infographic!

I’d be interested to see a similar list at state and local level, although I bet populations would weigh heavily on that one! Let me know if you’ve ever seen a infographic or recent data on that one.

Oct 21 2011

Peak Sharing Times for Social Media

Found a very interesting infographic today on PR Daily about the peak times for social media sharing.  9:30AM on Wednesday morning seems to be the magic day and time! Check out the infographic itself below for more interesting tidbits.

Although I’ve never tracked my own, I feel comfortable that they are extremely random in terms of day and time.  Usually I share when I find something interesting to me that I think someone else will get benefit from.  Unfortunately, I don’t get a whole lot of “free time” for research or reading.

What do you think? Does the data match up with your own sharing trends or any observations you’ve made?

Aug 26 2011

JVWR: MuniGov 2.0, A New Residency Requirement: Local Government Professionals in Second Life (via Social media in the public sector)

Reposting a post from my writing partner in crime Ines Mergel that summarizes an article that we help to craft for the July Edition of the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research – good stuff for local govts interested in the opportunities and challenges posed by virtual worlds for engagement.

JVWR: MuniGov 2.0, A New Residency Requirement: Local Government Professionals in Second Life Michelle Garder, Pam Broviak, Bill Greeves and I have just published a paper in the Journal of Virtual World Research. Here is the abstract and link to the pdf file: The virtual world Second Life allows social interactions among avatars  – online representations of real-life people – and is slowly adopted in the public sector as a tool for innovative ways to interact with citizens, interorganizational collaboration, education and recruitment (Wyl … Read More

via Social media in the public sector

Mar 21 2011

Mapping the Social Media Response in Japan

The geodata masters over at ESRI have created some excellent live data mash-ups map of Japan that visualize information compiled from personal social media accounts. Warning, it takes a few seconds to load the info and you must have Silverlight installed (but it is worth it).

Social Media Map

http://www.esri.com/services/disaster-response/japan-earthquake-tsunami-2011-map/index.html

This map shows content related to the disaster posted on social media sites.  It includes posts from Youtube, Flickr, Twitter and Ushahidi (a tool that allows anyone to report incidents via SMS, e-mail or the web). It has a very visual impact with the raw data posted by citizens and government alike.

Trends Map

http://www.esri.com/services/disaster-response/japan-earthquake-tsunami-2011-map/trends-map.html

According to ESRI, this one “uses trend analysis to visualize community reports related to the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.” It is a visual constructed by those who are in the zone of impact and still needing help.  The map includes geographic points posted wherever someone posts a message requesting help or info or offering help or info.  These messages include things like shelter information, transportation routes, power outages, etc.  But it also documents postings from individuals – stores are posting a general summary of the supplies they have available, etc.   Go to fullscreen view for the maximum impact.

As of Monday (3/21) afternoon, there were over 2300 such postings available for viewing on these maps. This is an excellent visualization of the collective crowdsourcing power of social media.  Not only does it help first responders and emergency planners focus their efforts with more eyes and ears in the thick of it, it also shows how social media is used to connect people-to-people, with or without emergency management coordination.

If you want to know more about the technology behind the mashup, you can read the news release from ESRI.

There was also a recent article on Mashable that highlights the other crucial role that social media has played in the recovery efforts in Japan.

Because internet access has been mostly unaffected by the disaster, social media has been a lifeline for reconnecting families.  In fact, on March 14th, the US Embassy actually sent a message to US citizens in Japan encouraging them to use social media to stay in contact with family outside the country: “While we understand that there have been disruptions in communications in Japan, including the interruption of internet and mobile telephone service, we encourage you to continue your efforts to be in contact with your loved one(s) using SMS texting and other social media (e.g., FaceBook, My Space,Twitter, etc) that your loved one(s) may use.”

Score one for ESRI and score another one for social media legitimacy in government!