Government & Social Media: Tools & Techniques (Part II)

Recently in Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper of the Conservative Party ventured into YouTube territory with a video soliciting questions by text and video for his response to the Speech from the Throne.

More than 1,800 questions were submitted and approximately 175,000 votes cast regarding what the Prime Minster should talk about. The following week, an exclusive interview was posted on YouTube with Harper responding to questions from Canadians.

While the responses seemed canned and it was a buttoned-up approach doing an online video, it was a good step forward for the federal government to be more transparent, answering questions on Canadians' minds about the economy, foreign aid, climate change, and the military commitment in Afghanistan. With more than 138,000 channel views for Talk Canada and millions more who heard about the event taking place, the government impressed upon its young demographic and target audience that it was making the effort.

Social media channels are a way for governments to listen to their constituents by:

• Using tools like Facebook, Twitter, online forums and message boards to monitor misconceptions and discover important conversations;
  
• Identify new influencers in online communities through tools like Technorati;
  
• Using bookmarking tools like Delicious as part of ongoing issues management processes, media clippings reports, and social media metrics reporting;
  
• Setting up blogs to share information about new programs, laws and initiatives so constituents can go there directly for up-to-date information;
  
• Leverage government experts and evangelists on Twitter, Facebook and blogs;
• Develop a Flickr community with a photo campaign;
  
• Utilize real-time feedback directly from constituents about ways to improve social services and proactively incorporate feedback into their strategic planning cycles.

There are many other ways social media can be built into a bigger part of the government PR strategy - can you think of any?

Government & Social Media: How PR Can Bridge the Gap (Part I)

There are many reasons why governments at all levels are wary of exploration in the social media realm. For starters, governments are elected and they get and stay that way because their constituents are (relatively) happy. That's why it's understandable that governments do not wish to leave themselves vulnerable to criticism in a public platform where the voicing of displeasure can lead to a downward spiral. What's more, governments are always criticized anyway- by the mainstream media, the public, and anyone with a pen chance for analysis. It's a reason why internal communications shops within ministries spend significant time and effort working with their policy advisors and staffers to devise simple, core key messages which politicians tend to stick to at all costs.

The Fels Institute of Government is the University of Pennsylvania’s graduate program in public policy and public management, and they conducted some interesting research in July 2009 to find out the extent to which governments are experimenting with social media. They found that only 9% of surveyed US municipalities had a presence on Twitter with more than 500 followers. Considering these cities were ranging in size from less than 70,000 to more than 1,000,000 residents, that ratio is not too promising. However, the report showed the perceived importance of social media to overall government communications strategy was a 3.7 out of 5, indicating strong interest.

So how can PR practitioners harness this desire and integrate the medium with the machine?

First, it's important to realize that governments generally want to create a direct line of communication with their constituents. They just don't know how to do it online or what to expect, especially since having a hard-to-navigate website is still considered a big deal. But they're interested. And they want to reach younger demographics who are difficult to target through traditional channels.

Social media is a great opportunity to do that. It's more:

• Interactive vs authoritative
• Conversational vs story-based
  
• Personal vs institutional
• Narrowcast vs broadcast (in that even a large government social media audience is small relative to radio or TV)
  

And users:

• Generate much of the value through responding comments and recommendations
  
• Guard their online experiences by exercising discretion over the information they subscribe to

Learning how to communicate in this world where stakeholders have a voice can mean a big cultural shift for governments, especially since today's tools are so different from how governments are used to communicating.

Toronto Mayor David Miller (@mayormiller) is a great example of how a publicly elected official can use Twitter to speak about topics of interest while still maintaining personal identity. As an avid Twitter user, Mayor Miller tweets about his day-to-day activities and gives taxpayers an idea about what publicly elected officials do. He informs users whom he's about to meet that day, shares reactions to speeches he gives at conferences, posts pictures with people of interest, answers questions, and expresses himself in an informal yet engaging way that serves to build rapport with more than 11,000 followers- many of them young Torontonians.

Probably the best example of how social media can work to create a community for government can be found with Students for Barack Obama, set up in 2006 by student Meredith Segal after hearing Obama's extraordinary 2004 keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. Long before Obama announced his candidacy, this group had already ballooned to 62,000 members, ready and waiting for his campaign to begin. Today the group has more than 250,000 supporters and is officially recognized through President Obama's Facebook Fan page. This online community served as a forum for public action, producing youth voter turnout that could have made the difference to Obama's margin of victory.

PR can help bridge the gap by showing these and other relevant examples to demonstrate how high-level issues can be handled or solved, and opportunities created through the use of blogs, online videos, and social media platforms. A well-crafted internal presentation to educate senior decision makers can increase this understanding in social media's value.

Can you think of any other large bureaucratic organizations that could benefit from social media?

Putting the 'Public' In Public Relations

The goal of public relations since its inception in the 1920s has always been to interact directly with people in society. Back then and over the past 90 years, the main channel for doing so has been through the mainstream media with the help of our colleagues and dangerous friends, our fellow journalists and broadcasters. With the development of internet-based communications tools, the barriers to entry for anyone who has something to say is virtually none. This means that anyone can say anything about an organization, true or not— whether or not that organization has an online presence on any number of platforms and online communities.

What does this mean for PR?

First, practitioners need to start by adapting, adjusting and integrating new information and communications channels into strategic communications planning and processes. How do we do this? By becoming participants and engaging in these mediums. The way we advise our clients and employers to explore these mediums, so too, we must bite the bullet and take our own advice.

But where do we start? There are microblogging sites like Twitter, social networking platforms like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn, and online communities like Kaboodle and Stumbled Upon, among countless other interesting and influential sites. The chart above is a helpful guide not only to Chief Marketing Officers but also to PR professionals, students and general internet users who are seeking an understanding of what the major sites are to learn and know.

For example- if you are looking to generate major traffic to your client's blog, you would probably not pick Facebook as your platform of choice because it's great for fan pages but will generate only a marginal increase in traffic with its share buttons. Instead, you would look to a more challenging but rewarding approach: social media news channels like Digg and Stumbled Upon. The key is to be active on these sites and not to approach them as though you are 'pitching' an idea. Instead, it's all about symmetric engagement on the medium -- learning and leveraging opportunity.

The PRSA has a great post on their blog called 'The Game Has Changed' which goes into more detail on what a thorough knowledge and engagement in the social media space can mean from a brand perspective.

Second, realize that you are part of the bigger picture. What we do today has an impact on the future, not only for our careers and clients, but also for the profession which is still in relative infancy. The whole concept of PR practitioner roles is in dynamic shift. Grunig argues in Paradigms of Global Public Relations in An Age of Digitalism (2009) that the practitioner's role as centered on publicity-oriented campaigning where 'messages' are disseminated for 'audiences' is shifting to a new paradigm with the wide-spread use of internet-based technologies. It is evolving toward its essential nature if you will-- toward a more behavioural, strategic management function that conceives of the practitioner as a participant rather than a conveyor of messages. With at least about a dozen distinct practice areas in PR, this paradigm shift has a breadth and depth that we are only now starting to understand. In Online Public Relations, 2nd. ed., Phillips & Young argue that this change centers around the fact that organizational discussion in society is becoming more about what an organization does (ie. with their products and services) vs what they say (media relations) - an important shift. One which has positive implications to the profession as management teams seek experienced and credible practitioners to manage this complex relationship.

I say, dig your heels and get busy because there's a lot of work PR has to do :)

See how these ideas work for you, and let me know what you think. I always love to hear about real examples and welcome your comments below.

Ciao for now!

The Beginning of the Beginning

So it starts. A new blog, a new day. A new way to think about Public Relations.

Welcome to my blog! I'm Ani, a Toronto-based PR practitioner who's also pursuing her Masters in the field. I'll be talking about PR issues as I see them, and as I hope they are relevant to you, an intelligent reader.

The driving force behind this blog is my current course in digital media, though I plan to keep it going long after my course is done.

Do me the pleasure of sharing your thoughts and insights, and enjoy the site!