Public Relations Strategery

My company, Booz Allen Hamilton, is actively hiring consultants who “get” social media.  Let me explain – as I mentioned in one my earlier posts, I’m currently a consultant within the Strategic Communications team at Booz Allen.  What does this mean?  I’m part of the team that handles crisis comms, change communications, stakeholder outreach, public relations, media relations, etc.  One of the other areas that we’ve branched out into social media consulting.  This is the team that I lead, and I can tell you that my background in communications has heavily influenced my team’s approach to social media.  For example, I can’t stand when clients ask me to “do a social media strategy.”  I don’t believe in “social media strategies” – that implies that they’re created in a vacuum and that they’re separate from other strategies.  My social media strategy is to integrate social media principles and applications into existing communications, collaboration, and/or knowledge management strategies.

Some of the things that I look for in potential candidates are:

• Experience in using social media applications behind the corporate firewall – both as an individual and as a community manager
• Demonstrated ability to incorporate social media into existing strategic communications, collaboration and/or knowledge management plans
• Consulting experience working with clients in the public sector
• At least a year of “traditional” communications experience where you were responsible for developing tactical products
• Knowledge of the unique challenges that face public sector clients when trying to implement social media
• Familiarity (not proficiency) with all kinds of social media applications (if you’ve never heard of MediaWiki or Twitter, no need to apply)
• A desire to be a part of a small, but growing, diverse team of professionals who are focused on helping our clients integrate social media into their strategies – not on selling a specific piece of software.

If you think you’d be a good fit, head on over to the Booz Allen website to check out the official job posting and/or submit your resume.  The system will ask you to create a profile before submitting your resume – please make sure that you mention my name (Steve Radick) in your entry so that I can be alerted to your interest and follow up.  Looking forward to seeing who’s out there!

So yesterday, I came across this article on Federal Computer Week – “FBI Creates Knowledge Wiki” – and my first thought was, “wow, that’s great – more and more government agencies are getting into the social media game!”  However, after about five seconds, I had a more cynical thought – is this just the evolution of “cylinders of excellence?”  Corporate intranets are notorious for their stovepiped walled gardens where information is cordoned off depening on a user’s accesses (do I have edit privileges?  Oh, I only have contributor status? How much more do I have to do to make it into the “edit” club?).  The theory that everyone’s information had to be safeguarded from others’ nefarious schemes within their own organization dominated the traditional Intranet culture.  I hate to see this mindset continue, especially with social media applications behind the firewall.

Enter Intellipedia, the gold standard of wikis behind the firewall.  Intellipedia is the Intelligence Community’s wiki that is open and editable to anyone with the appropriate clearances within any of the 16 Intelligence Agencies (keep in mind that the FBI is included in this).  So, it was with a little curiosity and cynicism that after reading about Bureaupedia, I went over to eMarv’s unofficial Intellipedia blog to see what he had to say about the matter. As I suspected, he has many of the same concerns I do.

Intellipedia is available only to those individuals with the appropriate clearances in the U.S. Intelligence Community – not the general public.  Its users are those with whom the government trusts to keep secret information that could damage national security.  Intellipedia isn’t Wikipedia, yet sometimes I get the feeling government organizations believe that the chaotic nature of Wikipedia repeats itself on internal wikis like Intellipedia.  Maybe the -opedia at the end of every internal wiki fosters this feeling, but on pretty much every internal wiki that I’ve seen, vandalism hasn’t even been an issue – increasing and maintaining user adoption has been a much bigger concern.  And why is that, you ask?

Because building and maintaing a large enterprise-wide wiki like Intellipedia or the wiki available behind my company firewall, is a LOT of hard work.  You need gardeners to clean up formatting, coaches to help people get comfortable with collaboration, trainers to teach the actual tool, techie guys to manage bandwidth, and so on and so on.  You can’t just install a wiki, say this is what it’s going to do, and let people have at it – it won’t work.  That’s why things like Bureaupedia are so frustrating to see.  Intellipedia has already done the hardest part – they have a vibrant community (more than 37,000 users according to Wikipedia) with the infrastructure already in place.  Why recreate the wheel?

Now I understand that there really is some information that can’t or shouldn’t be shared beyond the FBI – that’s absolutely expected, and I’m not advocating that everything the has should be shared on Intellipedia.  However, what I am advocating is that instead of creating Bureaupedia, I would have rather seen the FBI first make the big splash into using Intellipedia, with a much smaller mention of how an internal wiki was created for those things that can’t be shared beyond the FBI.

Anyone have any other insight into the how Bureaupedia works?  I’d be interested in knowing their split of technical staff vs. change management staff and if they have a plan/strategy for how to teach users when and where to use Intellipedia or Bureaupedia.  Rolling any enterprise-wide social media application is a tough chore – a chore made much easier if you can tap into existing communities like Intellipedia.

Photo Courtesy of http://www.uscg.mil/

The Coast Guard’s top officer, Commandant Adm. Thad W. Allen, recently discussed the need for the Coast Guard to start using social media like Facebook and blogs to improve communication amongst one another and with the public (Read the full article over at MarineLink).

“Whether you’re a civilian, auxilarist, reservist, active duty, contractor or retiree, to understand that when you’re blogging, that’s no different than operating in a social environment on a Coast Guard base or anyplace else,” he said. “We have a duty to the American public; we have a duty to each other to be guardians of each other. And to the extent that we have core values, I think we need to demonstrate that as we operate on a daily basis in the blogosphere.”

When I saw this, I was simultaneously impressed and skeptical. One the one hand, I applaud the Commandant on his realization that social media has the potential to improve the Coast Guard’s ability to communicate, especially in times of crisis. On the other, I’m skeptical that the Coast Guard as a whole will be able to really commit to using social media, or if the Commandant will be the only one to really embrace this approach. I love that he’s not just talking about using Facebook, but that he’s personally engaged with it. However, will the Coast Guard middle management buy into using blogs to communicate with the public and with each other? Or, will they too experience the issues encountered by General James Cartwright when he brought blogging to U.S. Strategic Command?

One of the things that I’ve seen happen time and again when supporting my clients implement social media in their organizations, especially government organizations, is that it’s not the leaders who need to be convinced – they’re leaders for a reason. They’re visionaries; they’re innovative thinkers who understand the potential of social media. It’s not the junior employees – they’ve grown up in this culture of information sharing. It’s the middle management who need to be convinced. These are the stakeholders who will make or break the social media initiative.

Middle managers are typically of the Baby Boomer generation, have been with the organization for a while, and are often set in their ways. They’re often too senior to be able to take risks and try new things yet too junior to be directly impacted by the proclamation of the organization’s leadership. However, as General Cartwright experienced, they can severely inhibit the ability of the organization to realize the potential of social media. The key is to show these middle managers how social media can help them be more efficient, communicate better, and most importantly, how it will help them in a very real way, in their day-to-day work.

I’m really looking forward to seeing how this plays out – it will be interesting to see how social media changes the way the Coast Guard communicates both internally and externally. The Coast Guard is lucky to have a leader who understands how social media is fundamentally changing the way the government interacts with the public – I just hope that the rest of the organization realizes this opportunity as well. Here’s to you Commandant Adm. Thad Allen – good luck in your endeavors!

If you were reading the news or traveling by plane today, you probably already know about the JetBlue evacuation of JFK airport in New York today.  Turns out the evacuation was precautionary, and ended up being just two paperweights that resembled grenades.  However, to a social media dork like me, the really fascinating part of this story was that I was there (I was one of the evacuees at JFK this morning), and I was directly involved in bringing the story to light (I, along with a few others tweeted about the incident as it happened).

So, why does this matter?  And even more importantly, what does it have to do with emergency response?

Let’s take a look at the timeline for some more information –

Twitter Search Results for

7:54 AM – I tweeted that “Sooo…JFK airport is being evacuated right now….just great.”  Right around this same time, @almacy, @johnhamilton22, and @imnotobsessed also tweeted similar messages about the evacuation.

7:59 AM – One of the people who follow my tweets, Mark Drapeau (@cheeky_geeky) saw my tweet and began re-tweeting so that now, both of our networks of followers would get the information.

8:00 AM – I overhear some JetBlue employees saying that “some idiot had hand grenades in his bag”

Scene outside JetBlue Terminal at JFK

8:03 AM – @almacy posted a picture of the scene

8:05 AM – Mainstream media begins to catch on – Geraldo Rivera on the scene!

8:06 AM – BlogsofWar posts the running Twitter traffic

8:13 AM – FOX5 in New York finally reports on the story but with no real information and no mention of “grenades”

8:23 AM – First references to the “grenades” on mainstream media

8:50 AM – Crisis averted, and everyone is let back in to the terminal

We’ve already seen examples of this in the London bombings and the Virginia Tech shootings – today’s evacuation is another sign of the times, albeit on a much smaller scale.  Think about the potential impact that Twitter, blogs, and other social media could have on emergency response efforts.

Government agencies should advise first-responders to start monitoring the social media world, including Twitter, Facebook, and the blogosphere just as they do the police scanner.  Where the police scanner gave the average Joe a way to learn about what was happening in their neighborhood before the mainstream media could report on it, tools like Twitter do this and more.  Now, not only can people learn what’s going on from people who are involved first-hand and in real-time, they can also use these tools to share this information with anyone else who is monitoring them (like I did).

If this morning’s evacuation had been a serious threat, think about the potential benefits that could have been realized if the government agencies involved were using Twitter.

• They would have a real-time timeline of what happened from the time the announcement happened
• They would be able to pinpoint to the minute where people were, and what they were doing
• They could use the pictures taken at the scene and posted to the web to identify who was where and when
• Families and friends are notified en masse of people’s statuses
• Agencies would know what information (and mis-information) is being spread on the ground and could use that to dispel rumors and correct mis-information

Now, I’m not nieve enough to suggest that FEMA should be monitoring Twitter all the time and jumping anytime there’s mention of a disaster.  I’m merely suggesting that government agencies and mainstream media need to place a greater emphasis on mining these sources, and training their staff on how to use the informaton that’s available to them.

I know that there are some real risks to this approach as well – hoaxes would seem to be that much easier to pull off, for example.  Are there others?  What other benefits do you see?  What obstacles exist?

For more information on this topic, refer to these two excellent blogs, who also had an opinion on the  power of Twitter.

• “Let’s Network!”
• The 60 Second Marketer