Federal agencies have two choices when it comes to the blogosphere.  They can ignore it or they can embrace it.  To ignore it is to allow inevitable conversations to continue without their contribution, which can fuel disinformation.  To embrace it is to take ownership of these conversations and to ensure that an agency’s or office’s efforts and perspective are expressed with intelligence and accuracy – on their own blog, but more importantly, via posting comments and responses on others’ blogs.

From a public affairs perspective, Federal agencies and organizations must:

• Recognize the reach and resonance of blog-driven online conversation
• Create and moderate their own organizationally appropriate messages via blogs in an official capacity
• Increase their participation in others’ existing blogs, continuing conversations via blog comment features, again in an officially approved capacity.

Given the new administration’s call for more transparency and collaboration in government, now is an ideal time for Federal offices and agencies to consider the benefits of blogging and blog-comment participation, particularly for public affairs personnel.  With proper guidance, blogging and blog participation turns personnel into advocates who can speak to mission success, respond to critique and drive dialogue. 

So how do you get started?  Are there any roadmaps out there that agencies can use to guide them in starting their own blogs and setting policies for participation?  In a recently released white paper entitled “Public Affairs Blogging,” Mind & Media presents some good examples of successful blog initiatives in the Federal sector and offers practical guidance for the creation of blogging policy.  While not prescriptive (and I would love to hear of other examples that we can add to the paper in the future), the paper is intended to provide a snapshot of some of the more standardized approaches being used by various Federal agencies.  You can go to the Mind & Media website to download a copy. 

Hats off to Paul Worsham for organizing this event, which we hosted at our Alexandria office on Wednesday, February 11.  As a matter-of-fact, here’s my quick plug for Paul because he organizes lots more of these types of events around the DC area, like the Social Rockstar Happy Hour and Startup Rockstars (next event, March 12 at 6pm).  Frankly, I don’t know how he finds the time because he also holds down a full-time job, tweets (@1p) and keeps up with his own blog, Chief Social Officer.

Approximately 25 people attended the event and the conversation went non-stop for two hours and included some after-hours networking.  So, since this was a “Do’s and Dont’s of Social Media,” what did we learn?  Here’s a few highlights:

• If you haven’t yet begun, DO start participating in Social Media.  Companies or organizations that decide against this run the risk of becoming obsolete.
• DO set clear commentary policy for your company or organizational blog.  It’s OK to establish clear guidelines for allowable commentary and to police personal attacks and inflammatory comments in order to keep those out of public view.
• DO allow for negative comments, which is not the same as allowing purely personal or inflammatory attacks.  Negative comments and your response to them will give you credibility in the blogosphere.
• DO police and respond to negative commentary on other social media sites such as Twitter.  There were some good specific examples of companies that make it a part of their business to immediately respond to negative commentary about their products or services and offer assistance.  The group agreed that this was an excellent way for companies to connect with their clients and turn a possibly infuriated customer into an advocate.
• DON’T create various aliases of yourself to pass off the illusion that there is more commentary than actually exists.  Doing this is a recipe for disaster.
• DON’T sit on the sidelines assuming that Social Media is a fad.  This is happening now, it’s happening fast and it’s here to stay…so start participating!

Thanks to all who participated in this event and I hope to see YOU at the next one!

I just read in Federal Computer Week that USA.gov director Bev Godwin was named the White House’s Director of Online Resources and Interagency Development. Worth noting that the source cited was, “several blog posts.” I guess that’s as good as an anonymous source, eh? According to FCW, Godwin will be on the New Media Team rallying the federal government into using social media. I can’t say I remember other administrations having such a team. It’s an exciting time to be a participant in this government and an exciting time for communications and new media companies!

The inclusion of “Interagency Development” in her title to me, indicates an emphasis on using social media internally to perform work. Certainly noble and necessary (good article also in FCW about that), but I’m interested in how agencies can use social media to engage the public and better serve their missions. For example USDA could support a social network site where schools, students, healthcare workers, nutritionists, etc. share information about diet and exercise, show off their field day events, and generally support healthy living. Compare that to printing a bazillion “Healthy Eating” leaflets to be stuffed in kids’ backpacks. Money can be spent more wisely!

Since I am a big film buff and am interested in anything and everything about film (including making them), I was recently reading “The Art of the Documentary,” by Megan Cunningham.  The book explores the current state of documentary film-making via interviews conducted with various directors, cinematographers, producers and editors.  One of the more interesting interviews (to me), was the one conducted with MTV Executive Producer and Director Lauren Lazin, and this is the question that really caught my attention:

By using music, graphics, and fast-paced cuts, MTV has been credited with shortening a generation’s attention span.  Do you agree with that assessment?

Lauren Lazin’s answer (and I’m paraphhrasing) is that this is a chicken-and-egg question.  In her opinion, the audience at the time was actually demanding faster-paced cuts because simply put, they had the capacity to absorb and process more information more quickly and furthermore, they actually desired that the information be presented that way (whether they knew it or not).  And I agree.  I believe that MTV and CNN were simply reacting to the zeitgeist of the moment.

With today’s growing list of new social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Friendster and Squidoo, plus hundreds of blogs and Ning sites popping up all over the place, plus smart phones and IM (and I could go on) it might seem as though an entire generation’s attention span has been shortened and segmented even further. But what does this mean?  The implication in the question above is that this is a bad thing but I don’t agree.  I simply think that this is the way that a whole new generation of people want to engage with media.  I simply believe that it’s the current zeitgeist.  What do you think?