10 Tips for Blogging by Public Sector Executives

I was recently kindly provided with a great research report on Government Blogging authored by David C. Wyld, from the Department of Management at Southeastern Louisiana University.

After reading pretty much the entire 99 page document, I thought one of the most valuable take-aways it offered (in addition to the plethora of great diagrams and statistics) was the section providing the Top 10 tips for public sector executives wishing to start a Blog.

As a result I decided it would be a good idea to post this Top 10 list on my blog , since it is relevant to all of you that work in the Public Sector. While the majority of the report dealt with best practices in the U.S government blogosphere, naturally the same tips apply here in Canada. Again, I want to reiterate that these tips were taken from David C. Wyld’s report (I do not want to take credit for them):

Tip 1: Define yourself and your purpose. In 1992, Ross Perot’s running mate was vice Admiral James Stockdale, a vietnam War hero and former prisoner of war,. At the vice presidential debate, he infamously began with the rhetorical questions: “Who am I? Why am I here?” (Holmes, 2005). While these questions didn’t lead to victory for Stockdale, they can for you. You should, at least mentally but perhaps in your first post, state the reasons you are starting your blog, what you hope to do with it, who you hope will read it, and so on.

Tip 2: Do it yourself! Do not have someone else write your blog. While you may enlist assistance for any technical aspects that you feel uncomfortable with (and with the blogging tools available today, this really should not be an issue), you must be the author to make it authentic and interesting to your audience.

Tip 3: Make a time commitment. Before you begin your blog, know that you must make a personal commitment to have the time available to not only regularly post to your blog, but to read and respond to comments made on it. And if the comment section is managed, you or perhaps a subordinate must make decisions on which comments will be posted on the blog and which will not. You should work blog writing and reading time into your regular schedule, and if you know you will be unavailable for a period of time, invite a guest blogger(s) to fill your virtual shoes. remember, in the blogosphere, 10 days without posts could mean the death of your blog, as readers will be drawn elsewhere in virtual space.

Tip 4: Be regular. While related to the first two tips, the need to regularly post to your blog merits particular attention. In short, if you do not regularly post updated material to your blog—interesting material— whatever readership you have will quickly fade away.

Tip 5: Be generous. If your blog is nothing but an exercise in self-centeredness and self-congratulation (or links to organizations congratulating you), then your readership will tire of it. Use your blog as a platform for your jurisdiction, your staff, your family (to an extent), and so on. Take the opportunity to highlight special people in your district or community, and let your blog be a channel for spotlighting your area, not just yourself. Provide praise, applaud unsung heroes, and point out people in need of special help. In short, do good works with your words.

Tip 6: Have a “hard hide.” You cannot have a thin kin and engage in blogging. You will receive comments that range from the thoughtful and insightful o the unwarranted and the unprintable. You will also surely be praised by some tech-savvy constituents or using a new communications medium, while others will call your office or write a “snail mail” letter to ask what’s wrong with the more established forms of communication.

Tip 7: Spell-check. this almost goes without saying, but it is surprising how many blog posts have spelling and/or grammatical errors. When spotted, such mistakes can generate satirical comments, spawn bad publicity in traditional and non-traditional media, and detract from your message. As the saying goes, “that’s why God made a spell-checker!”

Tip 8: Don’t give too much information. While it is great to be honest and open in your blog, you can do it to the extreme. Let the blog be a window into your thoughts, your work, and your travels, but remember the blunt admonition of the anonymous (2003) author of The Blogger Manifesto, “nobody gives a [expletive] about what you had for breakfast” (n.p.).

Tip 9: Consider multimedia. While you must concentrate on providing timely updates to your blog, making them interesting and well written, having good content is not enough. It is crucial that you have an easy-to-navigate, visually appealing layout to your blog. In today’s environment, there is a ratcheting up of blog standards, and in a short time
it will be almost expected that video and audio elements be included on blogs. While you must learn to walk before your run, you should seek out links to audio/video sources to go multimedia at no cost, then you can begin to consider recording and producing our own audio/video content to offer as posts or podcasts on your blog.

Tip 10: Be a student of blogging. You should make it a regular habit to spend time each day being exposed to blogs other than your own. Find favorite blogs (political and non-political) and subscribe to them using a news reader or aggregator program (using RSS or Atom feeds). With these tools, you can view updates from your favorites in one place, without having to surf to multiple sites. Finally, check out the top-ranked blogs (according to Technorati or ComScore), and use this as an opportunity to benchmark the best of the best.

Feel free to comment and add your own tips!

In my next blog entry I will be rounding up examples of effective Public Sector Marketing Blogs in action. Send links my way if you know any good ones.

The influence of Web 2.0 on American politics

I find it interesting that Social Media Networks show Barack Obama and Ron Paul as leaders for the Presidency (when using amount of “friends” as a popularity metric), whereas every traditional poll conducted recently shows Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani having commanding leads.

What are your thoughts on this?

Is it that the amount of people using online channels is far smaller and irrelevant? Does this prove that the amount of “friends” is meaningless? Maybe its the fact that Barack Obama and Ron Paul supporters are younger and/or have a more open attitude towards social media?

Personally, I think its a combination of factors. The main one being that Barack Obama and Ron Paul supporters have a particular radical attitude. They want change, they are influencers and trend setters in society, they are more liberal, they use new media channels, they want a new leader with the same mindset.

So why do traditional polls not show these candidates at the top while social media networks do? Simple: In terms of raw numbers across the nation, their supporters are still the minority even though they comprise the majority of actively engaged online users.

For more on this topic read this blog entry

US launches ‘MySpace for spies’

“Spies and teenagers normally have little in common but that is about to change as America’s intelligence agencies prepare to launch “A-Space”, an internal communications tool modelled on the popular social networking sites, Facebook and MySpace.

The Director of National Intelligence will open the site to the entire intelligence community in December. The move is the latest part of an ongoing effort to transform the analytical business following the failure to detect the 9/11 terrorist attacks or find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”

Incredible! Kudos to the CIA for realizing the powerful potential of social media networks. Now if only the Canadian government could learn from our neighbours down south and follow suite to reduce the bureaucracy and lack of communication within and amongst departments. What are we doing instead? Banning Facebook. Go figure.

Read the full article here:FT.com / World - US launches ‘MySpace for spies’

Interactive Online Annual Reports vs. Scanned PDF Online Annual Reports

Why is it that every government department seems to think that people actually “read” things online. Read this carefully: THEY DON’T!

People “scan” text…reading online is unpleasant and unnatural given screen limitations, eye fatigue and an expectation for rapid information access. Study after study has proven this over and over again.

A good example where many public sector organizations fail at this miserably is in publishing online annual reports. For some reason, they are always displayed as scanned copies (PDF format) of the print version. This used to be all great in the past if your website was meant to simply act as a storage of information/warehouse for people to come and print documents. However, for those of you that haven’t noticed, the web has changed, such a website purpose is no longer acceptable.

Your website must now be engaging and interactive, this is what web users are used to, this is what they demand! It should help users find what they are looking for quickly and efficiently. There is nothing quick and efficient about a PDF (note: PDF’s should always be offered as an option but not as the ONLY option).

Take a look at what the Civil Service Commission has done in the UK with its annual report. This is a great example of effective integration of a PDF document with an interactive Annual Report (click on the link once you get on this page):Civil Service Commissioners | News | Annual report for 2006-07

SurveyMonkey & FACEBOOK Polls - quick, efficient and cheap!

I often come across clients that dread the thought of having to do any sort of marketing research since they assume it requires hiring an expensive marketing research firm or using precious, overworked, internal resources. While this is true for a comprehensive in-depth analysis, a quick online survey is a different story. If you haven’t yet heard of services such as surveymonkey or the new Facebook Polls , then please join today and start saving taxpayer money!

Surveymonkey allows you to create and design your own online survey in minutes. Once you are done the design (numerous templates are available), you are provided with a link which can be sent to your list or posted on your website. What’s more, basic analysis is automatically done for you. For those wishing to do a more comprehensive analysis, the raw data can be downloaded and analyzed in a program of your choice (Excel, SPSS, SAS, etc…)

Facebook Polls is explained in this excerpt from an article by Alicja Gulajski of Market2world.com :

June 1st, 2007, Facebook Polls was launched. This product creates great value for marketers: this tool can be used to create brand awareness and gather critical information about your brand from Facebook community members.
For example:

Facebook Poll users create a question (with up to 5 answer choices) and are able to target the poll based on age, sex, location and even profile keywords. There is an initial $5 insertion fee, but the poll creator chooses the bid amount - the amount the user is willing to pay per response. Depending on the bid, and the anticipated results, Facebook estimates the wait time before results are received. Currently bids range from $.10 to $1.00 per response, according to TechCrunch.

The advantage of using Facebook Polls of course, is access to the more than 24 million active users, and over 100,000 new registrations per day since Jan. 2007. Not only is this a significant audience, it is segmented for you! You can target specific groups based on geographic areas, psychographic characteristics, age, etc…

What are you waiting for? Get started!

Ontario government bans FACEBOOK!

As a public sector marketing consultant , (trying to desperately get government to start adopting web 2.0/social media) I find the recent Ontario government decision to ban Facebook on provincial public servant computers absolutely ridiculous, yet not at all surprising.

The decision comes as a result of the fact that public servants had supposedly been wasting time “socializing” on the popular social networking site during work hours…

Well why don’t we ban work telephones then? how about e-mail? why not put shackles on all employees while we are at it?

The fact is, employees that want to waste time will always waste time. Instead of banning Facebook, the Ontario government should have looked into how it can leverage it as a tool to engage its employees and increase productivity. I see Facebook as an ideal tool to get rid of government silos and increase horizontal cooperation within departments.

Mark my words. This decision will be reversed sooner or later. The government can’t keep running away, social media is here to stay.