Can government leverage Twitter or is it just a big waste of time?

Okay, so I admit that I’ve been on the fence on this issue for quite a while now. Last year, I started off as a Twitter effectiveness denier, and then quickly found myself making use of it more and more (especially as new, sister-applications were developed). My own main use is simply “being in the know”. I love the fact that I find out about something AS IT HAPPENS. It’s a sense that not every type of person may appreciate, but it’s definitely worth something. Whether you like it or not, if you’re in communications or marketing, you may soon have no choice.

Consider these stats:

• 2.5 million monthly users
• Over 428,000 tweets a day
• Representation from nearly every country on earth

So what’s the big deal? Why should someone working in the government even care?

• These are conversations going on right now!
• You can easily filter, aggregate, and respond
• A single post can blow your PR release out of the water in terms of search engine visibility.
• The medium allows for amplification (via rss)

Tips to get started as a Twitter’ for a government department:

• Create a profile that clearly identifies you as an employee (e.g. JohnSmith@HealthCanada). You can have a separate “personal” account but I would recommend having one and one only since you should be speaking as a “human voice” anyway. Don’t forget to add a photo!
• Use Twhirl or Tweetdeck to manage everything and make your actual posts (instead of going to the web site). These apps are based on Adobe AIR, which essentially means they take very little system resources and are ridiculously easy to use.
• If you’re so desperate on time that you can’t even manage to write 140 characters, you can use Twittertise or Tweetlater to schedule Tweets if you do things on a regular schedule. For example, if your news release must go out everyday by 9am, have Twittertise send out a 9am tweet “Just posted a news release for Health Canada…” with a link. You even get to track responses and views.
• My personal favourite is of course Twitter Search which I use pretty much 90% of the time I’m doing anything related to Twitter. Use this to track what people are talking about RIGHT NOW! You can use specific keywords, names, or simply look at the trending topics if relevant. Note that once you enter a query and start browsing through the results, Twitter Search will post a little message mentioning how many new tweets were posted since you pressed enter. Type in Sarah Palin just for fun and see for yourself.
• Start following other government employees right now! (thank you Nedra Weinreich for reminding me). Here is a list of government Twitter users from the U.S and a list of U.K government Twitter users. I’m yet to find a Canadian list…perhaps I’ll make one myself one of these days.

Make no mistake, I fully understand that public sector organizations are in a different boat and have much more red tape and/or stagnancy than the private sector. However guess what? That doesn’t have to affect you! You can start using Twitter right now. As of now, it’s not blocked in most Canadian government departments and it’s free! As for communication policies, read over your employee contract, everything is there. The same rules apply as if you were having a dinner conversation or phone conversation with a concerned citizen.

That’s my two cents on Twitter for the day.  You can follow me at twitter.com/mikekujawski

Update on Social Media Policies in the Canadian Government

A while back I wrote a blog post about a special social-media task force set-up by Government of Canada CIO Ken Cochrane. The task force was set-up to examine social media best practices and develop government-wide policies on its usage accordingly. In a recent interview with InterGovWorld.com Ken Cochrane talks about the latest progress:

The CIO branch is expanding acceptable use policies for the Internet to cover off social media and other Web 2.0 technologies. “This policy work isn’t finished yet, but as we develop the rules more fully, we’ll share them across departments so they can adopt them.”

There are many aspects to sort out such as privacy, accessibility, and a code of conduct. Bilingual requirements are also a concern for this emerging area. “To encourage people to offer their ideas when using blogs, they must be allowed to do it quickly in their language of choice in order to make effective use of this medium. Instead of making it mandatory to translate everything, we summarize it all in both languages on a weekly basis. This seems to satisfy bilingual requirements.”

Cochrane also talks about the government exploring the use of Web 2.0 tools to engage citizens, and about a recently completed online survey to get Canadians’ views on the issues that garnered about 2,500 responses.

“They see Web 2.0 as interesting, but there was also cautionary feedback. They don’t want the government to use the technology just because it’s cool – they want such decisions to be based on solid business requirements,” he says. “Canadians expect the government to be serious.”

This is an interesting point, but I think it came out because there is a general misconception amongst the public about what exactly is Web 2.0 and social media. I would have liked to have seen the survey questions as well, to see if they were formulated properly. Too many people now think of Web 2.0 as a buzzword representing cool viral videos on YouTube, chatting on Facebook and catchy one word application names (tumblr, plaxo, flickr, twitter, jaiko, etc…). It’s not about being flashy and having all the latest tech gadgets, applications and tools, but rather about accepting the democratization of the web and about the fact that one-way, stagnant communication with taxpayers is no longer acceptable (in terms of government).

However, it’s good to see progress and discussion like this about Social Media going on internally in the government. I think this will help renew the outdated Treasury Board communication policies that currently exist, which significantly limit effective 2-way dialog and collaborative “citizen-2-government employee” engagement. Not only that, as Ken mentioned, Social Media and Web 2.0 tools and applications can be extremely beneficial for streamlining internal business processes and collaboration between work groups, which is something the government desperately needs.

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!