LocalGovChat

Sorry for the mess we had last week with the delayed search. Let’s get back into it tonight! See everyone at 9 EST!

Are we just spraying our residents with messages?

In the current local government structure, most social media and open government efforts are coming from one of two places: either the public affairs shop or the IT department. And while we’ve discussed the importance of integrating responsibilities and efforts before, we have not clearly stated that neither have solid marketing chops. Some may, most don’t.

Most can identify stakeholders and create public affairs tactics, we can make pretty web sites, and we can do outreach. They are tons of extremely talented people.

But what do we know about really, truly marketing our services.

A section of a recent post by @geoffliving made me really think hard about how most agencies are handling their #gov20 efforts in terms of strategy. His quote:

Most media relations aces do not comprehend marketing. Direct marketers do not understand crowdsourcing. Advertisers rarely understand the long term relationship work that business developers and fundraising pros participate in. Like the sword fencers, specialists are just specialists.

To be a true strategist, a chief marketing officer, a leader of a communications department, one must have first hand knowledge of as many communications and marketing disciplines as possible. The insights drawn from one discipline lead to integration as well as the hybrid deployment of individual tactics. This creates the ability to wage campaigns using a wide a variety of best practices.

Especially in local government where marketing campaign s are using self implemented, do we know when to go look for or ask for help? Do we know our audiences? Do we have time or resources to really dig into the subsets of residents? Do we collect the right data? Do we collect enough data? Are we marketing our #gov20 services using non-#gov20 tactics?

Are we too closely tied to the politics side to be as nimble as we’d like to be?

While this conversation takes place more often in corporate marketing and advertising circles, I thought it would be interesting to discuss your strategies, tactics, and your depth in terms of marketing your services.

Join us tonight on #localgovchat at 9 EST. Not sure how? Read this.

Thanks again to Nick Grossman from @transpocamp for a rapid fire chat last week. If you missed, here is the transcript filled with golden quotes and links.

I am trapped in a project tonight, so unless we find a guest moderator, we’ll postpone and get back into action next Wednesday, March 2 at 9 EST! Feel free to email me at michael (dot) s (dot) rupert (at) gmail or tweet me at @rupertmike  if you’d like to guest moderate.

Thanks everyone for their continued support!

Digging In with Open Transportation Data

Tomorrow we’ll have special guest Nick Grossman, of OpenPlans.org, to discuss the upcoming Transportation Camps – in NYC on March 5-6 and in SF on March 19-20. There is a ton of buzz about these events and some very interesting topics being thrown out for discussion.

OpenPlans is doing some really exciting things with open data and open source software delivering real results for citizens. Most recently they opened up bus line information in Brooklyn at a fraction of the original estimates.

But even more importantly they seem to really understand the importance of integrating open data and open source initiatives with journalism, public outreach and marketing. Just take a peak at their initiatives and you’ll be blown away.

We’ll try to cover as much as we can tomorrow, but would love to focus on:

• What type of data governments should be prioritizing for release, what are gov’s missing?
• Will we see developer, civic hacker burnout soon?
• Are we just beginning, at a plateau or dying in terms of #gov20?
• … and a preview of the Transporation Camps in NYC and SF

This should be an extremely good chat tomorrow so please join us at 9 EST. Don’t know what #localgovchat is but want in on the action? Read this: http://localgovchat.com/2010/03/03/so-what-is-this-localgovchat-thingy/

For more on Transportation Camp, visit http://transportationcamp.org/

Is Cory Booker Hurting the City of Newark?

There has been a lot of hype surrounding Cory Booker and his prolific tweeting during the recent snowstorms that have bombarded the Northeast in recent weeks. And while his personality seems more than genuine, his energy contagious, and his passion unquestioned, he is hurting his own government.

From a public relations perspective, he is a huge success. Mr. Booker has brought more positive national attention to Newark than, well, it has probably ever received. His passion undoubtedly lead to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg sending millions to support schools. He is a big, huge, monstrous personality (although shrinking from his new #letsmove health campaign). Any city would be lucky to have a champion like Mr. Booker leading the government. He has become Newark’s brand. It’s Booker country – at least from the outside looking in.

There is one problem. Mr. Booker is one election away from being gone – along with his one million plus followers. He has allowed his personal brand – and it is an amazing personal brand – to overshadow the government.

As of 9:53 pm on 1/11 2011, Mr. Booker had 1,066,308 followers. The City of Newark has just 1,722 followers. The header advertising the city’s official Twitter handle isn’t correct either. It’s @cityofnewarknj, not @cityofnewark.

UPDATE: The City of Newark fixed their homepage (and we exchanged a few great DMs with Mayor Brooker). Great respose!

In one of Geoff Livingston’s more provocative posts (one I go back to it often) “I Don’t Care About Your Personal Brand” he uses a Clue Train-style list of 25 Personal Branding Manifestos that he applies to marketing corporations, but these manifestos can just as easily be applied to government.

Mr. Livingston states, while linking to a Brian Solis post:

“But while momentarily interesting, your personal brand won’t build real value for the market – unless your personal reputation revolves around delivering consistent regular value to your community.”

From a government operations perspective, Mr. Booker’s community is Newark. Those are who he serves at the pleasure of.

If Mr. Booker leaves, any value he has added to the City of Newark, at this point all but disappears when the next mayor takes office.

In a related post on personal branding, Mr. Livingston states it best:

“Further, personal brands and rock stars undermine teams and the kind of collaborative cultures necessary for corporate success. It’s about we, not me. This is a universal facet of all successful life relationships — personal or business.”

“Government” could easily be inserted into this statement.

As a public relations professional, Mr. Booker is truly the epitome of the online political rockstar. He is doing amazing work and doing groundbreaking social media outreach for an elected official. He is a PR hero.

As a government communicator, he needs to use this internet stardom to build value by supporting and pushing the City of Newark’s social media presence so it can be sustained beyond Mr. Booker. As the Social Media Club mantra goes “If you get, share it.”

If @cityofnewarknj or other 311-type accounts were established, promoted and staffed with the trained people, they could have probably answered this question right away. Instead, as Mr. Booker was heading to a television appearance, he sent Ms. Brown a phone number.

Join us on Wednesday, January 12 at 9 p.m. on Twitter for #localgovchat to discuss personal branding, emergency response among other local government issues.

Elections are over and new leaders are being introduced in local governments across the U.S. and certainly in the countries of many of our #localgovchat regulars. They are going to want to “hit the ground running” and will certainly be creating dramatic “The First 100 Days” lists. In the just the past two weeks, I’ve had three or four different local government leaders approach me about how to start using social media for their agency. Sure it might make a splash. It shows the new administration will be open and transparent as they carry our their agenda, right? Plus it’s THE thing to do. So hot right now, right?

Without rehashing the thousands of beware of the shiny new toy meme, or that tools are not strategies, let’s fill tonight’s chat with real lessons learned. Let’s explain how we’ve failed and how we’ve been successful. Let’s talk about tweets or posts we wish would could take back but also how we handled and moved on. Let’s talk about dealing with trolls and also how to use these tools to promote our agency and provide excellent customer service. How have we moved people from our social media world into our real world?

My hope is the transcript for tonight’s chat can be used by some of the folks that are calling me and probably calling many of the #localgovchat regulars. Will you help? Join us tonight at 9 pm EST.

I have been doing staff trainings at work for the past week trying to “socialize” customer service. I have been surprised at just how infrequently staff are using the website. They are using online apps to get their work done, enterprise apps for data entry, but they instead of getting emails from customers and sending links, they are calling and verbally providing information that is readily available online. They are looking up dates, reports, forms and other detailed information anyone can get online with just a few key strokes, and calling people back.

While many of “us” give out our email openly and frequently without hesitation, some I’ve talked said asking for email can be seen as an intrusion. Yet they do not hesitate to ask for home or cell phone numbers? Are you seeing this?

One thing we’ve done is create a list of trackable, shortened “hot links” for staff to email to residents and as a reference tool. This is a useful analytics tool while also preventing staff from having to paste and worry about long URLs. What are you doing?

The phone and direct outreach will be necessary until we can bridge the digital divide. But if we are going to get citizens engaged online, we need to break the phone culture and empower residents to grab the information instead of asking for us to hand it over. It’s there for the taking, we need to show staff how to show them where it is.

Join us tonight at 9 EST for more at #localgovchat.