Federal agencies are blogging, tweeting, sharing photos and videos, publishing data, running online public dialogues, texting, fanning and friending. Here's a great list in case you need to catch up.
Good news is that many of the policy barriers have been overcome and agencies are regularly using social media to communicate and, in some cases, serve the public. The complicating news is that the mainstreaming of social media has brought new eyes and challenges to light.
This manifests itself practically in an office saying they won't allow use of Twitter since it hasn't been accredited in accordance with NIST SP 800-37 "Guide for the Security Certification and Accreditation of Federal Information Systems." Hunh? Or another office saying that there will be no comments, or that comments will be ignored(!), on their Facebook wall because to interact would create a government record. Whaa? Big barriers to participation, no?
I wonder. Do people who comment on government pages and channels expect that they are entering data into the federal record? Or are they thinking it's like a town hall or letter to the editor in a newspaper? Or more likely something for their other friends to see?
I wonder. Are agencies barred from using public social networks unless these private networks follow government security requirements? [And would they turn over security documentation for the public record?] Or are theses public commons in which the government engages, like the President giving a speech at a school or addressing the public as a guest on a cable TV show?
I wonder. Does government own or control third-party, private social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube? Or is government a participant--like everyone else--in these communities.
Not one to let a hot meme slip by, and vacation prone to hearing the oceans in a shell and seeing signs in billowing clouds, here's my resounding YES to finding lessons for dot-gov in this past week's Internet phenom: that most awesome 180 videos in 3 days, multi-channel, rock-hard abs Old Spice campaign.
But I am not going to write about the brilliant social media campaign--others are doing that. Instead, I want to talk about four lessons we can take from @OldSpice Guy to better our dot-gov projects.
Number one: Speed
This is 2010, and if you haven't got it yet, we stopped waiting. The Old Spice team created video responses in real time. Someone--sometimes famous and sometimes not--would tweet and in minutes there was a response. And it was good. We hadn't seen this level of realtime before, but we like it.
Government needs to get with the program and escape from the time warps of never-ending requirements gathering, ad nauseam reporting, acquisition merry-go-rounds, and TAA (total risk aversion). I was on a panel a few weeks ago when someone asked how was it acceptable for government to take 3 months to implement open government initiatives. My response? that I would love for a project to come in under six. Sigh.
Our citizens expect immediate results. We need to make it so.
Number two: Planning
How do you make 180 videos, have them distributed across multiple networks and garner 11 million views in 3 days? Very carefully. This was a well-designed and executed plan. And, like any well-executed plan, it looked easy. But the handsome man already had a fan base, the social media team knew where to reach out, all the resources for the rapid research, writing, producing and editing were on site, and sign-offs were established.
I don't want to miss any chance to hammer home the strategy message. You, too, are building toward a goal. You have to lay the groundwork, do your research and pull together the team. You also need to be open to opportunities.
For example, we learned that you can't put a new capability in place during a disaster (duh, you say, but there is an expectation that technology can solve problems "magically"). That's why it's important for people drill and for organizations to run simulations and exercises. That's why your IT and new media teams need to participate. Setting up a Twitter account days into a crisis is much less effective than building a follower base and expertise to broadcast information that scales.
Is having a web infrastructure that can easily output RSS something you will need? Don't have the infrastructure you want, but can begin collecting data for the next gen? Do it now. In 2006, we tested third party tools for a blog, because, even though we had no nibbles from the front office, we knew that we would keep pushing to blog. When the formerly reluctant boss hit "go," many months later, we were ready with tested technology and policy. We went from go to live in 5 weeks without breaking a sweat.
See where you want to be. Build toward that state.
Number three: Talent
No doubt that the Old Spicers had a corral full of talent. From the guy in front of camera to the professional broadcast quality output to the hysterically funny writers to the social media experts who brilliantly got it and executed on key to the crazy creatives that put the whole scheme in motion, this was high-quality work.
Who do you have in your stable? Is your organization built for mules who keep their heads down and plod along on the well-worn path? Or do you nurture thoroughbreds and give them room to run? Do you hire or contact with superstars only to to keep pulling up the reins and push them to follow that old path? Does your staff look at the Old Spice campaign and wish they could do something like that?
You want high quality output? Find and nurture the folks who can do that work. And give them the space.
Which leads to...
Number four: Trust
There would be no speed from this well-planned caper if there wasn't an extraordinary level of trust in the superstar team. The ad company had worked with the client at length and pitched a process that skipped traditional sign-offs from legal, et.al. And the client agreed.
This is an interesting element. It's critical to understand that while trust is imperative, it's not automatic. Trust needs to be earned, every day. It's unreasonable--and dangerous--for executives to bet on a project or team simply because trust is a success factor. It's up to the folks in dot-gov to build the trust and to show the judgement necessary to take on risk. You create trust by building relationships, by showing success on smaller projects, by understanding the needs of the organization and developing programs to meet mission goals, by creating strong implementation and risk management plans, and by communicating clearly both up and down.
Trust, like Rome, isn't built in a day.
So that's it, speed, planning, talent and trust or SPTT! I think I need a vowel for that. Hey, look, a fish just fell in my arms. Then it turned into diamonds. I'm on a horse.
And, in case you missed it, here's my personal favorite of the Old Spice rapid ads--to the actor's daughter.
Dear Google/YouTube, We want it. We want it NOW! xoxo, Your Dot-gov Buddies
A big barrier to making video content available to people who can't hear is creating captions for the audio--like the closed captioning you see on TV. This is especially important to government because we are required-- by law and by mission--to make content available to all people, regardless of their abilities. So, the dot-gov space was a-flutter [I almost said a-twitter, and that was true too] when Google announced two new features to make videos on YouTube accessible to the deaf and hearing impaired.
First, and available to EVERYONE now, YouTube account holders can upload a transcript with a video and YouTube will be automatically generate, time stamp, and incorporate captions into your video.
What does this mean? Well, in order for captions to make sense, they need to be coded to match up with the audio on the video. Bottom line, using current technologies, it takes more than a few painstaking staff hours to time code a 15 minute video. This delays posting the video--or fosters a reluctance to create video content or, even worse, encourages posting video that people who are deaf can't access. This is a huge problem for time sensitive, safety messages.
Why is this extra cool? The generated YouTube caption file can be downloaded from YouTube and used in other versions of the video. Most federal agencies post their video on a dot-gov site in addition to posting on YouTube. This will turn around processes and let us create the timestamp file on YouTube to post with our videos. Yay! I know at least one hard working captioner who will be ecstatic to turn her attention to more video production and less caption production. Breaking news: IT WORKS!!
Second,
[Google has] combined Google's automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology with the YouTube caption system to offer automatic captions, or auto-caps for short. Auto-caps use the same voice recognition algorithms in Google Voice to automatically generate captions for video. The captions will not always be perfect, but even when they're off, they can still be helpful—and the technology will continue to improve with time. --Read more on the Google Blog.
This is pure awesomeness--despite any imperfections in machine generated captions--because unscripted events require a transcriptionist at cost of time and money. If the captioner is also transcribing it can take an hour to get a minute or two of captioning done. Google's auto-caps is a game changer with the potential to make more video more accessible to everyone.
Let's let Google explain the service:
This is great news for people who are deaf or hearing impaired. This is great news for government agencies that struggle with the cost and expertise required to make video accessible to everyone. This is great news because government can't be transparent for most of the people--open government is only meaningful when it's available to all.
Dear Google/YouTube, Thanks for this new service! We are happy to help beta test your auto-captioning feature. Give us a call! xoxo, Your Dot-gov Buddies
White House Closes Down Phase I of Open Government Dialogue, Preps for Next Phase. After receiving 900 submissions and 33,000 votes on ideas ranging from strategies for making government data more accessible to legal and policy impediments to transparency, the White House closes the Open Government dialogue at opengov.ideascale.com (hosted by the National Academies of Public Administration). All materials will be reviewed along with comments received from government employees in March. The goal is to use ideas from the first phase to "inform deeper discussion." The White House wanted to clarify that while "the voting on the brainstorming submissions will be instructive, it will not determine which topics are discussed in the second phase." A little confusing, too, is that the brainstorming tool will remain open for the lively dialogue through June 19, it just won't inform the process (?). More on the next steps on WhiteHouse.Gov.
The Smithsonian Crowd-sources for It's Future. The grand museums(s) on the Mall is hosting a discussion on YouTube. They are "looking for a few friends and fans from around the world to help us form the future Smithsonian experience. A revolutionary Web and New Media Strategy project is underway, and we invite you to collaborate with us as we envision a rich new media future for the Institution." They are asking people to join their group on YouTube and submit a <1 class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(192, 192, 192); ">More on Smithsonian's channel. [A little funny because the "conflict" for Night at the Museum 2, filmed at Air and Space, includes a rant against the modernization of the museum experience.]
What’s Your Government 2.0 Personality Type?Steve Radick creates a fun set of social media archetypes ranging from the Edgerider--an early-adopter of all things technology always looking for the latest and the greatest Internet meme, idea, and initiative--to the Skeptic who asks, “Why the hell are you spending so much time on Twitter and Facebook when you could be doing real work?" And a bunch in between. See if you can find yourself at Social Media Strategery.
The Social Media Academy released a report reviewing the "social media status" of six global enterprises including Dow Chemical, John Deere, NetApp, New York Life, Toyota, and Vodafone.
We had a pretty good understanding about the estimated outcome –yet it was shocking to realize how vulnerable businesses are that stay away from social media. The present case demonstrates how a small group of social media savvy consultants can compromise a global enterprise based on publicly available data.
We used only publicly available data by dissecting the social web. The data was aggregated from over one million people who publicly expressed their opinions and emotions in social networks, groups, communities, forums, blogs, and other social media related places. The “Mind Share Report” demonstrates not only that social media is heavily used by businesses across all industries but also that it poses a significant threat to companies who do not understand how publicly available information can be used by their competitors to create devastating effects.--Read more on customerthink.com
The full study is available for $195, but you can glean some very good insights from the free 30-page executive summary, especially as a blueprint for using social networks to find out more about your audience/stakeholders and what they think about your organization and issues.
What you see in the corporate world are fan pages set up in Facebook, reviews of services in Yelp!, LinkedIn profiles of employees and groups related to their organizations, Twitter streams about organizations and from organizations, videos both for and against on YouTube. These same outlets are used by citizens to share things that they like about government and things that they don't like about government. Social media is the world's largest, ongoing focus group.
As agencies look to add more video to their content mix, it's important to keep an eye on current video and TV habits.
[T]elevision viewership is quickly splintering across a number of platforms like computers, phones, and set-top boxes. But in spite of this trend, viewership on all platforms (including the good old boob tube) is actually up. Online video hubs like YouTube and Hulu have also grown in appeal, as 74 percent of the study’s 14,000 respondents said they would enjoy watching TV via the computer. This increase not only represents a 13 percent bump year-over-year, but also the growth potential of the platform. As more and more video hubs net premium content deals, it seems likely that consumer interest in online viewing will continue to rise.
Surprisingly, Accenture’s respondents also expressed a lack of loyalty towards branded channels. Put simply, this means viewers were fiercely loyal to their favorite shows, but less loyal towards a show’s parent channel. Given the plethora of viewing outlets available to consumers (broadcast, online, mobile, cable provided on-demand, etc), and the myriad pay options available for these services (subscription, ad-supported, pay-to-play) this actually makes sense. As video distribution outlets pop up left and right, there’s basically a non-broadcast option available for everyone. --Read the whole post on Venture Beat.
Two trends I wanted to track here. First, it is critical to recognize the different ways that people are consuming video. TV is still popular, but there is no longer a common time that people watch a TV show--save popular sporting events. People watch a show when and where they want, sometimes with complete ads, sometimes with no ads, sometimes skipping ads. People don't rush home for their favorite shows. They can watch when it's convenient--after the kids are in bed or after studying on a less busy night.
Second, this cornucopia of viewing choice allows people to connect to the content itself--not who created it. The drive is to get the shows from their preferred outlet whether it's broadcast, digital video recorder (like TiVO), over the internet online to a TV or computer, downloaded to a personal device like an IPOD. The particular broadcast channel is unimportant. Again, the video consumer is taking more control.
While there has been a fair amount of attention--and plenty of concern--on the effects of the Internet on newspapers, it's important to also track the disruption in traditional television viewing.
While not all dot-gov is about social media--despite heavy news and buzz coverage--it certainly is growing in importance.
Social media includes blogs, social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, microblogging platforms like Twitter, social bookmarking like delicious, collaborative tools like Wikipedia, and more. These tools provide new avenues to deliver government services and communicate--two way!--with citizens.
Ten Common Objections to Social Media Adoption and How You Can Respond: From Read Write Web: An excellent article that list each of the top 10 common objections to new online tools and provides advice on what you can say in response to each of them. From I to I don’t have the time to contribute and moderate.
Top 10 Reasons Brands should Listen to Social Media: From Power Shift - Social Media Blog: There are a multitude of reasons for paying attention to what’s being said in social media. This article lists the top ten which include uncovering complaints so you can remedy them and identifying customers who praise your products so you can use these as testimonials.
21 Ways to Share the Social Media Love From Altitude Branding: The first step in convincing someone about social media is making sure they understand it. This article reviews 21 things to do share what you know about social media with others — business or individual. If you want to increase your own confidence in social media try our post 100+ Resources to Boost Your Social Media Savvy
Take a look at these even if you are not ready to convince your boss. You might be the one who needs convincing, and the time to research is now. If you liked the examples above, see more here.
Whitehouse.gov--which had been using YouTube to embed and play videos so that the President's weekly address was dubbed the YouTube address--is making video available in multiple formats.
In addition to Vimeo and YouTube, the White House makes the presidential addresses available as mp3 audio files and mp4 video files that can be uploaded into any video player. (YouTube video files can be shared through linking and embedding but they cannot be downloaded for insertion into, say, Brightcove players.)
And today, the YouTube version of the president's address wasn't even easily found on WhiteHouse.gov's blog, which offered up a flash video player with no logo as its main mechanism for viewing, then linked out -- under the link "also available here" -- to Vimeo. --Read more at WashPost.
The use of YouTube by government has had it's share of critics. Some folks are saying that White House is "abandoning" YouTube, but the fact they continue to upload video to their channel disputes that. In addition, the White House has been uploading video to both YouTube and Vimeo for the past three months. See, for example, videos from the transition teams on Vimeo here.
The team did not retrofit videos already embedded from YouTube, so you may see different types of players, depending on the blog entry you are viewing.
The use of third party video players, like the ones used by the White House, is getting caught in the policies of government--privacy, accessibility, endorsement, even gifting. As government continues to extend into non dot-gov sites the tension between openness and participation and federal rules of engagement will challenge many trying to meet up with citizens where they are.
Web-Savvy Obama Team Hits Unexpected Bumps: The team that ran the most technologically advanced presidential campaign in modern history is finding it difficult to adapt that model to government. WhiteHouse.gov has a blog and a YouTube channel, both firsts for a president. The online unit, which numbers at least seven, is larger than any White House has had, but it is not configured to replicate the campaign's work. New Media Director Macon Phillips said, "We're not running a campaign anymore. To us here, WhiteHouse.gov is not just a Web site. The new programs that we will roll out are more than just URLs. They are new ways to engage with citizens. Stay tuned." More on Washington Post.
Pentagon gets a blogger of its own: The Defense Department's in-house wire service, is taking a page from the bloggers and offering up a new new series of Internet reports from one of its own. Fred W. Baker III, who is currently on an extended assignment in Afghanistan, has a dedicated page on the Department of Defense website. It's a slick multimedia setup that combines video, photo essays and dispatches. More from Wired blog.
Why is it important for dot-gov to use You Tube? Well, what if people began to use You Tube to search for information?
According to The New York Times
And now YouTube, conceived as a video hosting and sharing site, has become a bona fide search tool. Searches on it in the United States recently edged out those on Yahoo, which had long been the No. 2 search engine, behind Google. (Google, incidentally, owns YouTube.) In November, Americans conducted nearly 2.8 billion searches on YouTube, about 200 million more than on Yahoo, according to comScore.
This startling statistic prompted Alex Iskold, the founder and chief executive of Adaptiveblue.com, a Web start-up, to ask in a blog post, “Is YouTube the next Google?” In other words, is YouTube effective as a mainstream search engine, and might it supplant or rival Google some day?" -- Read more on NYTimes
The Times also reported that You Tube's share of videos streamed soared to 40 percent in November from 17 percent in March 2007. What does this mean in real numbers? Well in November, 146 million Americans watched videos online, streaming a total of 12.6 billion video clips. That means YouTube streamed over 5 billion videos. In November 2008.
Don't fool yourself by saying that you or your friends don't use You Tube as primary search. Look at the data, and follow the trend.
As they say in real estate, it's Location, Location, Location. Put another way, if people are looking for information on You Tube and you're not there, then you don't exist.
Kids no longer learn about the world by reading text. Like the television generation, they are absorbing the world through their visual sense. But there is a big difference. Television was programmed and inflexible. YouTube is completely micro-chunked and on demand. Kids can search for what they need anytime. This is different, and powerful.
True, the current model of YouTube is still raw and still skewed to entertainment. But imagine online video 5 years from now, geared to kids, where entertainment, games, education, travel -- everything for kids -- is mixed and delivered via searchable channels. This would be a big change on the Internet and in the world. Just as we no longer think twice about Googling, kids of the future will be consuming huge volumes of information via video. --Read it all.
Better have a video strategy! (And better have access to YouTube from desktops in dot-gov!)
Here is an incredible piece of news for dotgov. YouTube tries out downloads with Obama videos.
"Google Inc.'s YouTube began offering downloadable video for the first time [my emphasis] over the weekend with offerings on President-elect Barack Obama's ChangeDotGov channel.
Small 'Click to download' links began appearing under videos on Obama's channel, allowing users to download the video to their computers and devices rather than simply stream them online." Read (a little) more here
This news is an exciting harbinger for people working to use social media in government. It has been really hard for government to work with Web 2.0 providers. Hard to talk to the right people. Hard to make headway in moving projects forward. Government has different rules and LAWS that interrupts use of social media. What I read from this snippet, is that the Obama team is talking to the right people to make changes, and that this should trickle throughout government.
My first request in using this conduit--Let's work with the private sector to put making social media more accessible to people with disabilities at the top of their list. Rather than seeing Section 508 as a barrier, let's work collaboratively between the private and public sector to make information more available to everyone.
The video below isn't so much related, but what a performance! [hey it's my blog, I can do what I want!]
On Monday, YouTube, in collaboration with Congress, will unveil two new Web pages, one for the House and one for the Senate, where every lawmaker will be able to create a video channel on the site. The pages will include a map of the United States that will allow users to easily navigate to the channel of their elected officials.
Already several members of Congress have channels on YouTube. But by creating a central hub for all senators and representatives, YouTube is hoping to encourage more members to create their own channels, not only as a place to promote their agendas but also as a forum for interacting with citizens. --More from NYTimes
Read Write Web thinks that YouTube is getting preferential treatment,
YouTube is not a public service but a commercial enterprise. Google might, one day, decided to just shut it down, and take its archive with it. One might argue that this is unlikely, but it could happen. A stronger argument against favoring YouTube, however, is that it does look like preferential treatment of a service that is already close to being a monopoly. Given that services like TubeMogul make it incredibly easy to post videos to a large variety of online video services, there is really no excuse for government officials to only post videos to YouTube except for being ignorant about the alternatives. --Read more on Read Write Web.
One suggestion is to have the videos on dot-gov sites (too?). This is an evolving area, but there is an emerging best practice to make sure that YouTube and other non-government sites are not the sole source for dotgov video.
It's also critical, though, that government engage within the social media ecosystem and not create a "government ghetto" that is outside of where the eyes are. Wherever they are.
