Social Media

Mashable’s Summermash in DC

Last night I attended Mashable‘s Summer Tour. It was at USAToday’s headquarters in McLean, VA (gorgeous building). It was really exciting to meet Adam Ostrow and the rest of the Mashable Team (after having read so many of their articles). It was cool brushing elbows with people from DCI Group, CGAP, Intridea, CouplesSpark, Parature andRead… Read more »

Reason No. 1 for “bite-sized” government: Play nice with the media.

Why get along with the media? You’ll fare better on the front page. I’m a former government news reporter and can tell you firsthand that secrecy—sometimes in the form of complicated terminology— leads to unfavorable stories, even if political decisions are well founded and necessary. I sat through countless city and county meetings. For theRead… Read more »

Convincing Local Governments

Notes From NAGWThe question I hear most often when I present about Morris County’s use of social media is “how did you convince your governing body to do this?” Governments need to be in social media because their constituents are in social media. It’s really that simple. Readership statistics tell the story. Newspaper readership isRead… Read more »

Monitoring and Measuring Wildlife (Social Media)

Danielle Brigida is the Digital Marketing Manager for the National Wildlife Federation (NWF). Her work has garnered national attention. She will be speaking at the Advanced New Media Strategies for Federal Government in October on “Monitoring and Measuring Traffic on New Media Sites.“ Danielle has been working at NWF for the past four years whereRead… Read more »

Late Bloomers and The Evolution of “Social”

“…[W]e live in a society with peculiar expectations about the time course of success. We think that if a child isn’t blossoming as fast as the others in grade school, he or she will be hard pressed to eventually flourish.” Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D Candidate, Yale, Psychology Today, November 2008 The Social Evolution is inRead… Read more »

The importance of the Twitter Retweet

Microsoft Research came out with some very interesting research looking specifically at the act of retweeting on Twitter. If you’d like to read the full paper it is available for download in PDF format. Note that the following Twitter pros were behind the research: Danah Boyd, Microsoft Research, @zephoria Scott Golder, Cornell / Microsoft Research,Read… Read more »

Social Media for Gov Conference: Agency Blogs

I’m currently at a conference on Social Media for Government. Curtis “Bob” Burns from TSA is speaking on “How to engage the public with an agency blog.” The TSA Blog was launched in 2008; so far there are 250 posts, with over 2 million visitors and over 30,000 published comments. It is a successful exampleRead… Read more »

Web 2.0: Is the public sector really behind the private sector?

In the first of what could become and ongoing discussion series I join Leila Sadeghi, Ph.D., to discuss a recent Harris Interactive poll. Leila Sadeghi, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor with the Center for Executive Leadership in Government at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. This first post has been interesting, a joint writingRead… Read more »

Attributes of the Social Unit

As we continue to explore The Social Ecosystem it is time we discuss The Social Unit. The Social Unit is the smallest part and represents both people as well as teams. The Social Unit is never the strategic visionary but is responsible for executing the strategies defined by The Social Organization. The two primary attributesRead… Read more »

I had my own Wimbledon Moment (or… “Life Lessons from Tennis”)

I had my own Wimbledon moment this week. Played tennis with a friend to a 5-5 tie Tuesday morning. Then like Mahut I finished that set this morning and lost 8-6 and then lost the 2nd set 6-2. Life lessons from tennis… I play better if I’m not thinking ahead to the next point orRead… Read more »