Why aren’t you using Google Docs yet?

I’m always blown away whenever I step outside of the social media fishbowl/community and step into reality.

Which reality am I referring to?

The one where the vast majority of intelligent people in the workforce have never used, let alone heard of free tools such as Google Docs (assuming it’s not blocked).

What is it?

Google Docs is the ultimate tool for when you need wiki functionality, but don’t necessarily want to open it up to the public and/or you just have a short term initiative in mind.

What makes it great?

People are already used to using it (most don’t know they are)

How is that possible?

It uses the same menus, icons and basic features as Microsoft Office products (Excel, PowerPoint, Word)

What’s the difference?

Any amount of people can work on the exact same document collaboratively in real-time. No more emails and/or documents with tracked changes!

Show me how!

Watch this video to get an idea of what I’m talking about…

So please , do yourself a favour (if you’re not already all over this) and start saving yourself and your organization some valuable time today!

Finding and following a niche community in 60 seconds

One of my favourite tools for instantaneously finding and interacting with a niche community is WeFollow. I call this a tool because it is one of thousands of websites that leverage the Twitter database for a very specific purpose. In this case that purpose is to help organize Twitter users according to 3 categories that people self-classify themselves under.When you first log onto the site, this is exactly what it asks you to do. As a result, it’s essentially a categorical folksonomy of Twitter.

For example, I have classified my presence on Twitter under the following keywords/hashtags: gov20, marketingstrategy, socialmediamarketing.

Notice that if you click on any of the above 3 categories, you can see who else has classified themselves under that particular term. This list is organized by “amount” of followers, which can be a good indicator of the quality of an individuals tweets and/or their level of influence (of course, this is not always the case as there are numerous other factors involved).

Putting the self-classification aside, a quick use of WeFollow is the search function. Let’s say I wanted to stay up to date on the niche sport of “parkour“. Here are the steps I would take to instantaneously be aware of all the latest happenings in that community:

1. Create a Twitter account if you don’t already have one
2. Go to WeFollow.com
3. Type in the niche category that you are looking for where it says “type in tag” (top right hand side of the screen). It will auto populate if it exists.
4. Click on the “follow” button for the first 20 people on the list.
5. Download Tweetdeck if you don’t already have it
6. Use the “create group” feature on Tweetdeck to create a group of the 20 people you just added. Call it “parkour community influencers”. This will create a a filtered column of tweets coming from that select group of 20 people.
7. Use the “search” feature and type in the query “#parkour”. This will create a filtered column of all tweets related to “parkour” (from anyone).
8. Spend 5 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes in the afternoon looking at the tweets in the above two columns. You will quickly discover lots of relevant links being shared, as well as photos, videos, and news…all in real-time!

After a few days you will know who produces relevant content and who you can go without (i.e. by “unfollowing” them). At this point you can interact with individuals by asking your own questions, adding to their thoughts, and/or contributing your own new content.

Try it out with a personal hobby of yours at first (e.g. photography or sailing). That’s the easiest way to get a good hang of it before applying anything from an organizational perspective.

For all of you marketers out there, this is a great way to identify and interact with all of those previously hard-to-reach “long tail” target audiences.

How social media can bring strategic marketing thinking into government

It’s been almost 4 years since we started the Centre of Excellence for Public Sector Marketing (CEPSM) . We set forth a very clear mission: To advance the marketing discipline in the public sector. How have we gone about doing this? Through our core functions of speaking, training and consulting.

The definition

Here’s how I like to simplify the marketing definition, whenever anyone asks: “A strategic process and set of tools wrapped in a philosophy for helping an organization do what it wants to do.”

People forget that marketing is first and foremost a process that helps organizations attain their objectives as effectively and efficiently as possible. It follows  a specific process and various frameworks (such as the 4P’s) that have been developed over many decades.

Why did we start CEPSM ?

• Marketing is one of  the most misunderstood functions in the public sector, often confused with “promotion” and “marketing communications”.
• A major primary research study on The State of Marketing in the Public and Non-Profit Sectors reinforced our beliefs early on.
• There is confusion between the “marketing” function and the “communications” function. In some cases the two are falsely seen as the same thing.
• There is a very evident lack of marketing expertise within the government environment. People are being put into senior “marketing” positions having never taken a single marketing course in their lives, let alone attained a business degree.
• Marketing is perceived as an “art” with no attention being paid to the “science” side. Big mistake.

What has changed?

Very little so far. Having worked with over 50 government clients I can say there is still a tremendous issue with people working in silos and not sharing experiences with each other, thus repeating the same mistakes. Tactics are still being developed without any strategies to guide them. Something needs to be done at a more holistic level.

Every year about 15-20 people go through our Professional Certificate in Public Sector and Non-Profit Marketing (through Carleton University). This course (or something equivalent) should be a mandatory prerequisite for anyone taking on a “marketing” position in government, or a “communications” position that has marketing elements to it. The problem is that people think marketing is some “fluffy” position that is responsible for glossy brochures and tv ads. As a result, any kind of formal training is often ignored. This is especially frustrating for people that actually have marketing/business degrees and are put into these positions surrounded by people (often their bosses) who don’t (I have met plenty).

What keeps me believing?

I have recently noticed an interesting rise in thirst for strategic marketing thinking in government. The neat thing is that most people don’t know that they’re asking for it , albeit indirectly. I’m referring to the thirst for my niche, i.e. anything to do with web 2.0, gov 2.0, social media, etc…

When it comes to social media marketing, there is a lot more interest than pure old “marketing”. Thanks to this, I have been invited to numerous senior management speaking engagements , conference presentations, and workshop courses. The  interesting part is that what I teach in my social media marketing workshops, is essentially  “marketing 101″ with a modern twist that takes into account the necessary organizational culture change that is needed to integrate social media  into an organizational strategy. Therefore I am able to put forth basic marketing principles and get people thinking using the strategic mindset that is “marketing”.

My conclusion from all of this….

…the “sexiness” of social media is a great opportunity to push forward “strategic thinking” and the “marketing process” in government! Especially since social media is something that very few people understand, but almost all want to participate in. Of course there are elements of the marketing process that social media has re-defined (e.g. marketing research can be crowd-sourced, niche audiences can be easily found, feedback can be collaborative, etc…) but the importance of  having a “strategy before tactics” will stand the test of time.