Often organizations make a mistake in thinking that all they have to do to create a web-based presentation is to create a link to a PDF file.  If budget is tight and something needs to be done immediately, this can work.  But if an organization wants to truly persuade an audience, they need to do better than that.

Recently we had the opportunity to work with the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder to turn a static PDF into something that truly engages soldiers and their families.  The original PDF was designed as a printed pamphlet and it served that purpose well: rich in content, well laid out, and full of pictures.  But NCPTSD knew that a good design for print does not translate into a good design for the web, and they wanted something that their viewers would watch and be inspired by.

We created “Returning from the War Zone: A Guide for Families,” an on-line presentation that uses a simple user interface, transparent navigation, friendly narration, colorful graphics, and video stories that put a face on the serious issue of posttraumatic stress disorder.  Though the content was derived from the PDF version, we revised it dramatically to work in an on-line environment, chunking the information, rewriting it for narration, and providing much of the information through video storytelling.  Check out the finished product and notice how much more compelling this is than a static PDF.

Our clients often believe they’ve communicated vital recruiting messages, yet a potential hire must dig very deep into busy websites or fragmented recruiting materials to understand why an agency is a stellar career choice.

Recently we had the opportunity to help USDA/ERS develop a recruiting tool to attract top-level professionals.  Though USDA was well ahead of the pack in knowing what set them apart from the competition, they also knew that their message was not getting the exposure it deserved.   And now more than ever, USDA knows it has to put out an inspiring recruiting message so they have the right talent to tackle many pressing issues, e.g. climate change, rural economic well-being, and international food safety and security.

As a starting point for a broader campaign, USDA/ERS tasked Mind & Media to develop a recruiting tool to give out at their national conference.  The tool they had used in the past was a series of fragmented files on a flash drive.  While the information contained on the tool was excellent, it was difficult to use and required a concerted effort on the part of the applicant to glean any value from it.

We recrafted the information to showcase the key recruiting messages and eliminate the clutter that muddled the messages.  We recrafted the tool so that it was transparent and very easy to use, whether being presented on CD-ROM or on the web. We also maximized the use of video to give the agency a human face. Check out what we created:  http://dev.mindandmedia.com/usda/tool/start_here.html.   Wouldn’t you want to be part of the USDA/ERS team?

The problem with communication … is the illusion that it has been accomplished.

George Bernard Shaw

Image courtesy stevesanterre

I was in a meeting last week where the client’s Director of Marketing expressed exasperation at her inability to keep the organizational website current.  “There’s just too much going on,” she fumed, “and people expect me to list and promote all the events happening here.  It’s just impossible.”  And if she had to be the only one to input all the data every day, I certainly agreed with her.

Fortunately, we live in a Web 2.0 world, where many people can contribute to our websites to keep them vital and alive.  By setting up a content management system or blog and giving a variety of people the ability to provide content or feedback (e.g. direct input, comments, RSS feeds) we can keep our sites alive, make many stakeholders feel empowered, and take the pressure off ourselves.  If you’re nervous that your contributers will make errors and put in inappropriate content, you can always moderate the input before it goes live.  Or you can simply let designated participants take full responsibility for their content’s accuracy and appropriateness.

By allowing more people to participate and removing ourselves as the bottleneck, we can eliminate much of the fingerpointing that occurs when some stakeholders feel marginalized or not heard.  It also takes a lot of pressure off one individual for keeping everything up to date.   It certainly is a different way of thinking (more collaborative and less controlling), but the benefits are significant.

Photo courtesy fitness360

Many people who use Twitter brag about their huge number of followers.  Some have tens of thousands, in fact, and follow thousands in return.  Depending upon your purpose, however, high follower numbers may be meaningless.  It’s the quality of followers that counts.

If your purpose is to learn and share as much as you can about green living, for instance, you’ll want to follow those who share information about this subject, and build a list of followers interested in living green.  Those trying to sell you a Bubblewash (or most anything else) probably won’t help you achieve your purpose and you may not want to clutter up your newsfeed by following them.

Here are five tips to help you maximally learn, share, and influence with Twitter:

1. Focus on one subject or several related subjects.  Don’t try to be everything to all people.
2. Provide value by posting substantive thoughts and links on your chosen subject matter, particularly during the times your key audience is on line
3. Put key words in your tweets and your bio to attract like minds; and follow those interested in your subject by doing your own key word search regularly
4. Retweet (RT) posts on your subject matter and repay those who RT you with a thank you or, better yet, by RTing them — if you want to be RTed, remember to keep your tweets to under 110 characters.
5. Build your own targeted newsfeed and ”tribe” by following those who tweet about or are interested in your subject matter.  Before hitting follow, check out their bio and last few tweets to see if you have a common interest.

To see an example, check me out at www.twitter.com/Bright_Builder. And feel free to follow me if we share similar interests:-).

Did You Know?
–MySpace has 200 million users; if it were a country it would be 5th largest in the world?
–Google boasts 31 Billion searches every month?
–More text messages are sent every day than there are people on planet Earth?

For anyone out there who still thinks they or their organization can keep doing things the same way and not be part of the new Web 2.0 – information-sharing, social-networking phenomenon, take a minute to look at this fascinating video.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend a superb webinar hosted by the Young AFCEANS, Bethesda Chapter. Jeffrey Levy, EPA’s Director of Web Communication, provided wonderful insight on how his agency used a mix of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 to promote Earth Day in 2008 and how he’s taking those techniques and elevating them in 2009. He offered some interesting suggestions for how to build traffic and promote the mission of an agency/organization through widgets, podcasts, Flickr photo contests, and viral videos. I’d encourage those interested in more effectively reaching out to the public in cost-effective ways to check out his presentation and attending the next seminar in the YAFCEAN webinar series .

A recent article in Washington SmartCEO hit the nail on the head about Twitter and many senior level staffers’ unwillingness to embrace the new media. Laura Van Eperen and Allison Gebhardt in Twitterpated: How You Can Learn to Love Social Media write:

“If you immediately associate the word ‘twitter’ with ‘chatter about trivial matters,’ your vocabulary may be robust, but your knowledge about cutting-edge social media is probably lacking. Ask a 25-year-old young professional about Twitter and he or she will undoubtedly reference the popular social networking Web site that allows users to micro-blog by sending and receiving short text-based information. And so exists the great divide in today’s workplace regarding social media.”

Like many of my generation, I shied away from Twitter since I didn’t understand the concept of “micro-blogging.” Why in the world would anyone want to spend the time to tell strangers what they’re doing at the moment, and what value could these fragments of information hold for others?

But over the last month, I’ve discovered how much value Twitter really can have. It’s amazing how many interesting and relevant bits of information I gain by simply glancing at updates from those I’m following. I learn about great new books, new web sites, and technologies. I get links to important articles relating to my many different interests. I have the opportunity to let people know what Mind & Media is working on, share information that I believe important, promote my blogs, share inspirational quotes, and gain connections quickly that I never thought possible.

Eperen and Gebhardt encourage senior executives to take advantage of their “built-in experts” (the young people in their companies who can give them a tour of Twitter and other social networking tools). And they encourage all of us to join in the conversation since “it is time to stop resisting and start embracing the expanding workplace generation of social media enthusiasts — your [organization's] ’street cred’ and future bottom line will depend upon this new media marketing evolution.”

Sounds like a good New Year resolution to me! www.twitter.com/Bright_Builder

I’ve been told by several Federal clients that their agency prevents them from blogging on behalf of their organization. I can understand why this may be the case: the Government, like most of us, is afraid of what might be said and how they could look to the world. While I definitely understand this concern, we’re encouraging our Government clients to embrace blogging as an opportunity to enhance their agency image, promote and share the expertise of their best and brightest, recruit others with similar interests, and gain valuable public insight.

And we’re not talking about the formal, heavily controlled blogs that we see many agencies putting forth. Rather we’re encouraging our clients to welcome and value the open, honest feedback that is inherent in a Web2.0 environment.

Employees should be encouraged to share expertise on their agency’s blog, on other industry-related blogs, or even on their own personal blogs. Besides the ability to glean valuable feedback from these interactions, employees can demonstrate that Federal employees have unique insights and abilities, which can draw others (including bright recruits) to the agency. Blogging can also be a means to earning praise and public recognition, as well as publishing credit, along with straightforward satisfaction for their efforts — essential to enhancing job satisfaction and retention!

There are downsides, of course. Negative things will be said, but the positives outweigh the negatives, and in today’s increasingly Web2.0-driven society, employees, especially Generation Ys, just expect to communicate in this way.

Of course, we’re biased. We’ve been blogging for awhile (both professionally and personally) and swear by its ability to reinforce one’s online presence and credibility. That said, we’d love to hear from any of you working in the Federal sector; please share your opinion on whether or not you believe blogging would benefit your agency! Don’t worry, we can keep comments anonymous. What are the organizational hurdles keeping you from blogging?

I Googled my own name the other day and was surprised what I discovered. A high school newspaper article I wrote 30 years (!) ago . . . an academic paper, long-lost, that I had gotten published shortly after college . . . geneological charts that gave surprisingly in-depth pictures into how all my relatives for the last hundred years had died(!) . . . and pages and pages of other items.

For better or worse, a lot of things about us are starting to appear on line, and in my opinion it pays to know what Google says about you. After all, whenever I want to find out about someone (a business associate, a business, a client, etc.), I Google them. I generally only look at the first five or ten items on the list to frame a general picture of who this person or business is.

One of the best ways to control what people see about you is to use the new media to your advantage. Joining LinkedIn, for instance, allows you to create a public profile that reflects the way you want yourself to be viewed in business, and your LinkedIn profile is generally one of the first links that come up on Google. If you write a professional blog, those posts, especially if you’re maximizing search engine optimization and getting others to comment, will appear near the top of your list. On-line newspaper articles and frequently visited pages on your website that contain your name will also show up at the top of the Google list.

We do have some control over what people see in their Google searches. Remember that any time your name appears on-line somewhere, Google will generally be able to find it, so it probably pays to consider how to maximize that knowledge to create the appropriate first impression.