Business Innovates with Social Networking while Government Entity Stagnates
Posted by Dan Ronken on Sun, Feb 21, 2010
A good friend shared an internal memo written by a county government situated just outside of a large metropolitan city. It basically said there is "little evidence to show that social networking tools such as Facebook, Twitter provide a return on investment of time and effort" so we will not be participating in these mediums. They'll upload some videos to You tube (because it's free), but that's it.
They're waiting until there are more case studies. But, as marketing guru Seth Godin has stated, “by the time there is a case study in your specific industry, it’s going to be way too late for you to catch up.” He may be referring to private industry, but it rings true in the public sector as well. Just ask my friend Laura Stevens, creator of Smile Conference.
Continuing on, they claimed that maintaining a well developed message is just too hard and time consuming. What they don’t seem to understand is that the old model of one way communication is on its death bed. Social networking is not about 'pushing' your messaging out there. It's about engaging in dialog with your citizens and providing them with pertinent and timely information.
The memo closes with, “please feel free to contact the communications staff for further explanation.” Really?? Why not finish with 'please contact communications staff if you would like to contribute to this discussion?' I suppose that would put them at risk of losing the well developed message in the memo.
What do you think? Should local governments spend time and energy communicating on social media? Leave a comment and let us know your thoughts!
Photo Credit: missliz