Posts
Ari Herzog has begun a series on social media best practice in his blog, AriWriter.
Kicking it off is a fascinating interview with Utah's Chief Information Officer, David Fletcher, providing an insight into how Utah has implemented its online strategy, taking it to win the Best of the Web award for US state governments twice (so far), in 2003 and 2007.
Drawing a few highlights from David's piece...
The state has over 830 services online, was an early adopter of blogging by public servants, services such as Twitter (as covered by USA Today) and online chat (24x7) and the use of video online via Youtube. Do I need to also mention they use wikis?
For many of these initiatives Utah is leveraging free online technologies rather than reinventing the wheel and spending large amounts of public funds. And Utah isn't keeping the performance of Utah.gov a secret - they publish their analytics online.
In August this year the state instituted a 4-day work week for public servants, based on Utah's ability to provide so many services on a 24x7 basis online.
Amazingly, although the state only has 2.6 million residents, the Utah state portal receives over 1.1 million unique visits per month. That's a much higher rate of citizen online participation with government than we see in Australia (for example Australia.gov.au reportedly gets around half this number of visitors (not even unique visitors) for 8x as large a population).
The state has also cut down the time for businesses to register at local, state and federal levels - cutting what could be a several week process down to 30 minutes.
A number of their services have over an 80% adoption rate - which I take to mean that under 20 percent of registrations come via other channels.
And if you want to learn more about the state of Utah's online presence, you can visit David's blog or find him on Twitter at @dfletcher - he's truly walking the talk!
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
eGovernment best practice from Utah's CIO | Tweet |
Monday, November 17, 2008
Guest post: How you can increase traffic to Government websites with Government Press Releases | Tweet |
Today I welcome a post from guest blogger Cheryl Hardy, of the Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development (DIIRD), State Government of Victoria, Victoria, Australia.
Cheryl manages eGovernment Research in DIIRD and is a prime operative behind the Victorian eGovernment Resource Centre, which was one of the global top ten nominees for the World e-Democracy Awards 2008, winning a Special Mention, just behind award winners such as mybarackobama.com.
The eGovernment Resource Centre is, in my opinion, the single best resource for egovernment and online channel information in Australia.
How you can increase traffic to Government websites with Government Press Releases
You are a government web manager. Imagine you live in a perfect world. (Suspend reality for just a few minutes!) Imagine you had control over government press release content - (wow like that is going to happen!) then you could optimise its content and potentially bring a substantial increase in traffic to your website.
Keep imagining - To do this successfully you must use keywords (especially those that your target audience are using), in the content of the press release, and link these to strategic content pages on your website(s).
For example, the following press release was published on 15 September 2008 on a State Government website in Victoria: "BRUMBY GOVERNMENT UNTANGLES PLANNING RED TAPE".
There is some really great content in this release, but there are no links to where people can find out more information. Here is how I would have written this release (in my imaginary world) using keywords with links to relevant content, provided by Victorian Government websites, while making the content useful to the residents of Victoria:
Victorian Government untangles planning red tape
The Victorian Government has acted to remove unnecessary planning permits for some residential and commercial work, including rain water tanks and sheds in regional areas of the state.
Acting Planning Minister, Richard Wynne, said the Cutting Red Tape in Planning exemptions are part of the Victorian Government’s commitment to cut planning red tape.
It is estimated that up to 2,000 planning applications will no longer be required as a result of these changes. Victorians are encouraged to contact their local council to confirm what permits are required before they start any work so they fully understand the changes.
The implementation of Cutting Red Tape in Planning coincides with a reduction in permit application numbers from 54,788 to 49,587 over four years despite strong activity in the building industry.
During 2006-7, applications for residential alteration and additions, specifically targeted by the cutting red tape initiatives, dropped by over ten per cent. However, in the same period there has been ongoing increase in the number of building permits now at slightly over 100,000 reflecting Victoria’s growth.
The new exemptions will mean that:Cutting Red Tape in Planning is the Victorian Government's plan from which key improvement in planning have originated including:
- Rain water tanks in rural areas no longer need a planning permit regardless of size;
- Rain water tanks in industrial areas on longer need a planning permit provided they meet site and height requirements;
- Domestic sheds under 50 m2 no longer need a planning permit in farming zones (This document requires the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader). You can also convert PDF documents into alternative formats; and
- Minor domestic building work such as a pergola, deck, swimming pool no longer need planning permit in most areas that are not in a flood prone, heritage or environmentally significant area.
For more information visit the Planning section on the Department of Planning and Community Development website.
- Planning Applications Online;
- Making Local Policy Stronger (in pdf format - 778kb) (This document requires the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader). You can also convert PDF documents into alternative formats; and
- The Review of the Planning and Environment Act.
Forgetting search engine ranking for now, providing links to all this content provided by the Victorian Government achieves two things:
- the reader of the press release can find out more information about the topic very easily if they choose to; and
- visitor traffic is then driven out to the content providers. This is traffic they would not have received using the existing format of the press release
Do you have examples of press releases which could be rewritten to provide more usable content? Send in your examples - we could start a competition!
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Is the future portals or mash-ups? | Tweet |
While many governments around the world pursue the 'one portal' approach, a few commentators are arguing for a different type of model - many correct doors rather than one big door.
This means reaching out to embed government content in the websites citizens choose to visit rather than simply attempting to encourage all web users to go to a single central portal for all government-related content.
This approach is described well in the Read Write Web article, E-Government Meets Web 2.0: Goodbye Portals, Hello Web Services, which states, in reference to the online channel that,Gartner's conclusion is that governments "should make sure that their information, services and applications are accessible through a variety of different channels, some of which are not controlled or directly owned by government."
This is similar to how government agencies already distribute physical publications beyond their own shopfronts - into libraries, doctors' surgeries, lawyers' offices and into the shopfronts of other government agencies. It also reflects how government has a presence at various community and commercial shows, festivals and other events.
In both these cases government reaches out into other organisations' venues in order to better reach citizens in the places they frequent.
I'm a proponent of this 'any door' approach being extended online. As an egovernment practitioner I do not necessarily care how people get to the information and services my agency provides online, provided that they get to them.
This means I am a supporter of central portals as an avenue outside my agency's own website to reach our customers. It also means I am a fan of greater cross-agency collaboration on information provision, where agencies with similar audiences work together to provide government information to citizens.
Most importantly it means I am a supporter of rss, mash-ups and embedded web services - any technology that allows my agency to reach beyond the confines of its own website to reach our customers in whatever websites they choose to visit - commercial, public or citizen-run.
After all, with research indicating that government sites only make up about two percent of online visits by Australians, if I want to magnify the effectiveness of my agency's tools and information online, I need to increase their reach.
For example (hypothetically), if my agency produced a video relevant to the customers of any organisation involved in the family law system, it would be worth our while to look at how we could reach beyond our own website traffic to the traffic of other involved websites.
Using Youtube, we could generate a video that can be embedded into any site across the family law system, thereby potentially magnifying the reach of its content.
Assuming that my agency has 10 percent of the traffic to the family law system, this could, with the agreement and support of other organisations, result in up to a 10x boost in traffic to the video - all targeted at the appropriate audience.
If we also had the video included in the australia.gov.au portal this would lift usage further, but in a less targeted way, as the portal does not specifically target the same audience as we are attempting to reach.
The approach in this scenario applies for any type of government information distribution online. It also means that government needs to think more about how it provides information online, and how easy and attractive it is for other organisations to embed the information, not just link to it.
Friday, November 07, 2008
Obama becomes the first internet President | Tweet |
With the conclusion of the US Presidential race, commentators are turning their attention to an analysis of how a relative newcomer could first defeat a more experienced contender for the Democratic nomination (Hillary Clinton), and then achieve a victory over an even more experienced Republican candidate (John McCain), albeit on the back of extremely low approval ratings for George Bush and some missteps by the Republican camp.
One of the key factors being identified, as was identified earlier in the campaign, was the polished use of the internet by Obama's team to build voter engagement and raise funds. Drawing on the experience of people such as one of the founders of Facebook, Obama was able to utilise online social networks to create the largest electoral machine in history.
For instance, as reported in Wired Magazine, Propelled by Internet, Barack Obama Wins Presidency,
Both Obama and Republican rival John McCain relied on the net to bolster their campaigns. But Obama's online success dwarfed his opponent's, and proved key to his winning the presidency. Volunteers used Obama's website to organize a thousand phone-banking events in the last week of the race -- and 150,000 other campaign-related events over the course of the campaign. Supporters created more than 35,000 groups clumped by affinities like geographical proximity and shared pop-cultural interests. By the end of the campaign, myBarackObama.com chalked up some 1.5 million accounts. And Obama raised a record-breaking $600 million in contributions from more than three million people, many of whom donated through the web.
The Australian also commented on this in Obama surfs the web to the White House, where it states,
"No one's going to say Obama won the election because of the internet but he wouldn't have been able to win without it," said Julie Germany, director of George Washington University's Institute for Politics Democracy & the Internet.
"From the very beginning the Obama campaign used the internet as a tool to organise all of its efforts online and offline," Ms Germany said. "It was like the central nervous system of the campaign."
This type of campaign is not limited to political ones - it could as easily be used to build a sustained movement on topical issues such as global warming.
I wonder when we will see these tools used in Australia to influence a political outcome - or when government will begin to use them to its benefit (maybe next year).
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Twitter as an opinion tool - as used to follow the US election | Tweet |
Just as organisations are beginning to listen to the conversations about them on forums, in blogs and in online newspaper comments, Twitter has become a powerful and important mechanism for tracking US public opinion during the US Presidential election.
In a custom-built application, Twitter has used its search and trending tools to build an updating commentary on the election, visible at http://election.twitter.com.
Thinking back to the days of tickertape news releases and stock updates, this is a high-tech equivalent reflecting the views of US Twitter users.
With the integration of a mention weighting system and positive/negative indications,it would be possible for any politician or organisation to get a 24/7 view of their public sentiment.
Any sudden changes in the normal flow of comments could then be mined to detect and pre-emptively prepare for issues before they reach the broader media.
For the sceptics, who do not see Twitter as a valid channel for government communication with the public or media, here's a list of US government 'A-list' Twitterers, including the White House, Senator Obama and a selection of State Governors and large US agencies.
And for those who like poetry and the big picture, 3D Twittervision provides an interesting global insight - particularly during major crises.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Do your customers expect you to be online? | Tweet |
The 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study in the US, has found that 93 percent of social media users believe a company should have a presence in social media, while 85 percent believe a company should not only be present but also interact with its customers via social media.
With 60 percent of Americans now reportedly using online social networks, this means that more than 50 percent of the US population believes that the organisations they engage with require a social media presence.
Extrapolating this to Australia, which generally runs a few years behind the US, there's strong reasons to look seriously at engaging via social media channels.
It is estimated that almost half of all Australians use online social media (Neilsen). As such I'd expect that at least a third of Australians would similarly want to find Australian organisations represented at social media sites and around a quarter expect to engage them online.
As Australian Anthill's Brad Howarth suggests in the article, Not just for kids - social networks just grew up, If social networking isn’t part of your marketing strategy, the only person’s time you’re wasting is your own.
Here's a couple of other interesting findings from Cone's report on how organisations are expected by their customers to engage,
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
50 ideas on using Twitter for organisations | Tweet |
Following from my post this morning on Telstra's use of Twitter, Chris Brogan wrote an excellent piece last month on how organisations can use Twitter to better engage their customers titled, 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business.
For me (as it was for Chris) the number one reason or idea for using this type of tool is for listening to your constituency. Hearing what real people are saying about your organisation, services and topic area provides an ongoing temperature of public opinion.
Another key reason in my view is for building an organisation's online reputation.
Most communicators understand that their organisation's public reputation shapes how people engage with them, thereby influencing their capacity to send messages out to their customers as well as their capacity to provide effective customer service.
However in my view few Australian organisations (particularly in the public sector) have as yet grasped how important it is to establish a sound online reputation. Assuming that their past reputation will carry over only goes so far, and it can rapidly be damaged through inept online engagement (or no online engagement at all!)
Laurel Papworth explains this well in her article, Twitter: Reputation Management in Social Networks.
She uses the diagram (illustrated below) to explain the stages in development from creating an online profile (not simply a 'corporate' website!!) to building reputation and trust-based relationships.
Incidentally, the power of Twitter to allow customers to self-organise rapidly is demonstrated in one of the most recent posts in Laurel's blog, Twitter Agency - crowd sourced consultancy.
Telstra does Twitter | Tweet |
Telstra recently took up 'tweeting' as a channel for providing customer service.
Discussed via their Nowwearetalking site, there's been a lot of initial feedback on the approach taken.
Telstra has also linked to some of the broader online commentary in their post.
This step helps legitimise Twitter and microblogging as a customer service option for Australian organisations.
It also provides insights for other organisations so they can learn from both Telstra's missteps and successes.
I'm watching carefully to see how Telstra's foray into microblogging goes. The channel has been used successfully in the US.
When executed well I believe it has customer service and marketing/PR benefits in some, but not all, service delivery areas.
Monday, October 06, 2008
Storytelling as a blogging style | Tweet |
There are many different approaches to writing a blog post.
The Lost Art of Blogging provides an example of one of the more effective in The Homeric way of blogging : storytelling.
Humans respond strongly to stories and there is no reason why this technique should be less useful in official communications than in personal ones.
After all, the most effective business cases tell a story, as do many excellent advertisements.
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Stop focusing on the fold | Tweet |
Research since 1997 has indicated that the 'fold' in webpages (the bottom of the first visible screen of a webpage) is no longer a hard barrier for people.
However the myth of the fold still persists in many web designs.
Boxes and arrows has hosted an excellent article by Milissa Tarquini, Blasting the Myth of the Fold.
In the article Milissa provides a clear call to web designers to move beyond the fold-based design of the past and recognise that, provided the site's purpose is clear in the first visible screen, placing important content below the fold does not make it unfindable for web users.
She compares the clickthrough rates of items of a number of AOL pages, finding that in many cases links below the fold receive as many, and sometimes more, clicks than items at the top of the page that are supposedly more visible.
One of the interesting findings reported is that due to different browser resolutions and rendering engines, there is little consistency in where the fold occurs in web pages anyway. The most common fold line is experienced by only 10% of web users as variations in PC screens and browsers means that the fold appears differently to different site visitors.
Milissa's advice is to instead provide visual cues and compelling content to encourage users to scroll through your page, thereby no longer forcing designers to cram in all the important content into the first screen that appears.
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
One (government) portal to rule them all... | Tweet |
Uganda has become the latest nation to announce that it is following a centralised government portal strategy, launching a statewide web portal managed by their Ministry of ICT.
This reflects the approach taken in many other nations, including Australia (www.australia.gov.au and www.business.gov.au) to provide a central face to government online, to a greater or lessor degree.
Given the enthusiasm for this approach in the virtual world, are we likely to see a similar approach to government shopfronts, phone and paper-based transactions reflected at federal level over time?
We've certainly seen some state-based jurisdictions move to single shopfronts - at least in smaller jurisdictions.
However if this isn't the strategy in these channels, what is the rationale for providing different messages in different mediums?
Doesn't it weaken the argument for citizens to not need to know which agency they are dealing with?
- A single central port of call online
- Department/Agency-based offices and paper correspondence
- Service-based phone numbers
What's your view?
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Cut costs by expanding your intranet | Tweet |
Cost cutting is a fact of life across public and private sectors.
At some point every few years (or every year in some cases) organisations decide that the most effective way to improve productivity or profits is to reduce expenditures.
Intranets are a common target of cost cutting, either by delaying improvements to infrastructure, cancelling new functionality, reducing author training or cutting intranet staff numbers.
In some cases these decisions are justified, however with intranets often lacking high-level representation and sponsorship, there are cases where these cuts have serious negative impacts on the entire organisation.
So are there ways to position an intranet to avoid damaging cost cuts, and even increase the budget to the area in order to generate savings elsewhere?
I believe there are - and ways to make the intranet a central tool in a cost savings approach.
It may seem counter-intuitive to some, but I often advocate increasing intranet funding during cost cutting exercises as a lower cost channel for engaging staff and sharing information.
However for this to get traction, there are some preventative steps I believe an intranet manager needs to take to position the intranet,
1) Quantify and promote usage and satisfaction with the intranet
The value of an intranet is largely measured on the amount of use it receives by staff. This measure is, however, often more driven by perception than by actual numbers.
This is because senior leadership is generally the group least likely to make extensive use of an intranet - they have staff to make use of it on their behalf. However this group may (mistakenly) believe that intranet usage reflects their own personal use of the channel.
Quantifying and promoting the actual levels of intranet usage and satisfaction (and what functions staff are using) helps senior management understand the true value of the channel to the organisation beyond their personal experience. This leads to according it a higher priority within organisational planning.
During cost cutting this knowledge can shift the discussion from the potential savings in cutting back on intranet services to the increased cost of shifting to less efficient (and more expensive) communications and information sharing channels.
2) Identify a senior-level sponsor
Given that an intranet can benefit all parts of an organisation, provided the intranet's benefits and usage are quantitified and promoted, it becomes easier to identify a senior-level sponsor.
The most useful sponsor (for an intranet manager) is the senior executive with most to gain from an effective intranet - normally from a group with a significant need to share information or communicate in the most efficient way possible.
It is also important that the sponsor's area is regarded as business critical by the organisation, thereby ensuring they are well listened to in senior meetings.
3) Take appropriate steps to increase intranet awareness and usage
This should be an ongoing activity for all intranet managers.
Find out what tools or information would aid staff, make them available via the intranet and promote their availability.
This progressively grows an intranet's presence within an organisation while providing cost-savings as people aggregate towards the channel rather than using less efficient ways of accessing the tools and information they need in their roles.
4) Identify business processes the intranet can perform more cost-effectively than via other channels
This is the 'meat' in the cost-cutting sandwich. Before, or during, cost-cutting initiatives, it is important to identify productivity gains and business process efficiencies that can be moved by shifting functions to the intranet channel from other channels.
Start by building a list of potential efficiencies based on areas of savings including;
With the above preventative measures in place, the next time your organisation needs to cut costs your intranet can be positioned as a tool to support cost savings rather than as a service to be trimmed.
Also see:
Friday, September 05, 2008
Online is a service option, not just a media channel | Tweet |
As I mentioned at the end of my earlier post about the Googlisation of the US election, we're now entering a phase in the internet's development where it is shifting from being a media channel towards a service channel.
Many organisations in the private sector have already recognised this and I am seeing the beginnings of this understanding in the public sector as well.
When the internet was first popularised by web browsers it was a technical toy, with the first websites for organisations commonly developed by programmers in technology teams and a few IT-savvy marketers.
Within five years the Marketing and Communications team began to take a leading interest, with a ferocious tussle for control of the platform between technologists and communicators taking place in many organisations. This battle is still going on in many organisations, where IT refuses to let go of certain aspects of web that sit more readily in the communications area, such as
While these battles continue, the internet has moved on, with the introductions of organisations whose sole or major service channel is online, including well known organisations such as eBay, Amazon and Second Life (yes it's a service channel!) and hundreds of thousands of lessor known, but still very successful players.
For these organisations online isn't an adjacent to other channels, it is their primary or sole channel, representing the core of their business.
This has led into Web 2.0, the communal empowerment of the web, which has seen the ease of generating and interacting with content skyrocket, lowering the barriers to creativity and demonstrating comprehensively that people want to participate and if the medium is sufficiently simple they will.
This has led to the current online 'mashup', where across the global internet we can see aspects of all generations of the web, technologists clinging to power, communicators using olde worlde 'shout marketing' techniques, sales organisations pumping products through ever easier purchasing funnels and the growing swell of social networks and people power.
Naturally many organisations are confused and bewildered by the complexity and scope of potential online options, most simply do not understand, with top management mired in views shaped by their experience and education.
The tendency for all of us is to fall back on 'safe' classical models, treating the online medium as a 'technology', a media channel add-on, a basic form-filling medium or a time-waster for habitual networkers.
However as billion dollar companies can be built (or destroyed) and the outcomes of political careers changed through the agency of the internet, it is a far more serious enabler than many organisations have realised.
My view is that it is now time to rethink how our organisations regard the online channel, casting aside preconceptions and experiential models and reflecting on the internet's relationship with us, rather than our relationship with the internet.
From my perspective I view online as an engagement channel - combining service delivery, consultation and communication into a single medium, an enabling driver at the core of how organisations interact with their stakeholders, customers, staff and shareholders.
Where customers do not have internet access the online channel still facilitates and support relationships, enabling improvements in internal information sharing, efficiency and interactions between organisations, thereby improving the experience of engaging via phone or face-to-face channels.
Many organisations are not sufficiently mature to have restructured around the internet as a central enabling driver and I see the online channel commonly 'owned' and 'managed' by Communications, IT or, at the intranet level, in HR.
I believe there is now a strong case in the public sector to begin shifting ownership into the service delivery area, using the internet as both an effective, lower-cost service option and as an enabler under telephony and face-to-face channels.
IT and Communications still remain involved, as their expertise is required to develop and shape the systems and messages delivered, but the bulk of measurable business outcomes are in service delivery areas - including interaction and delivery time metrics, customer satisfaction, service consistency and business efficiency.
At my agency, who I see as one of the leaders in thinking around the online channel, if still managing the technology challenges and building an understanding of how to apply the channel to address business goals, we've just made an internal shift reflecting the online channel being a service option.
We've shifted the management of our online channel such that our Service Delivery area owns the service delivery aspect of our online presence, with the delivery on their goals facilitated by my team in the Communications area and the technology team.
We're also beginning the process of increasing the Service Delivery area's involvement and influence over our intranet, which extends its focus on facilitating customer service provision through supporting front-line staff.
I am very positive about these changes, they are enabling us to make some immediate service quality improvements - some by managing customer expectations, some by changing system behaviours.
Over the next several years I expect to see enormous business value delivered for the government as this model becomes firmly embedded, both for customer engagement to improve our customer approach, as a channel for effective service delivery as well as information provision and by enabling staff to provide ever-improving customer service.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Website/intranet redesign or realignment - is there good reason for change? | Tweet |
My team's web designer forwarded me the article Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign from A List Apart earlier this week.
It looks at the justification behind design decisions - whether to change the design, layout and information architecture of a website or product - dividing it into two camps.
Redesigners - who base their decision on emotional responses to aesthetics.
It’s been 2 years since our last redesign.
Our current stuff just looks old.
A redesign would bring new traffic to the site.
Realigners - who based their decision on strategic objectives and user needs.
Market trends have shifted. Should our website be adjusted accordingly?I don't believe the line is ever that clear cut, sometimes aesthetics are used to sell strategic changes and sometimes vice versa. I also do not agree that realigners are 'better' designers (for whatever value of 'better').
Our users’ needs have changed. Do we need to adapt?
We’ve added 3 new sections and a slew of new content to the site over the last 12 months. Are we presenting content as effectively as we can?
Our current website does little to convey the strength of our product offering.
Does our online presence enhance or devalue our overall brand perception?
However I do feel the article does touch on a key factor for management, of websites or any other system or people, perceptual versus objective truth.
Often as web managers we are the closest to our own sites, seeing blemishes that are less visible to others. On the other hand we may also accept and overlook fallacies and faults that others perceive as major flaws. It's a little like being in a relationship. We often simultaneously see more and less in our partner than others can from an external perspective.
Therefore when deciding whether to make design or IA changes it is crucial to step outside our own emotional engagement and seek the views of our audiences, our peers, management and neutral parties.
Otherwise we may - knowingly or unknowingly - be primarily driven by our own personal views or emotional responses, while publicly justifying changes based on organisational goals or audience need (or simply on the ultimate reason that 'it looks better').
I can think of times in the past where for personal or organisational reasons I've redesigned a website or intranet simply due to aesthetics. I can think of more times when there were reasons driven by audience needs or organisational realignment.
I can also remember times when I made aesthetic choices, but justified them as strategic decisions.
These are the decisions to be guarded against as they are, in my view, the most likely to lead to errors of judgment.
It's about being honest with yourself and understanding your own drivers.
Do you operate as more of a realigner or redesigner?
What would your peers say?
Monday, August 11, 2008
Online engagement - learning from the private sector | Tweet |
A few months ago a PR agency representing the National Australia Bank (NAB) made a series of comments on AFL blogs advertising NAB services.
This incident has been discussed in publications such as Marketing Magazine, NAB spamming: maybe it's time to take dance lessons and Crickey, NAB spams blogs to spruik its SMS banking, which confirmed that the approach was endorsed by the NAB. From the Crikey article,
Crikey's article went on to point out that the NAB had a strong anti-spamming message on its website, which did not seem to apply to how the bank chose to engage with others.NAB media relations spokesperson Felicity Glennie-Holmes confirmed that the message was indeed from the bank. The idea to spam the comments sections of private blogs was a recommendation of PR agency Cox+Inall, part of the BWM group, and had been undertaken by Cox+Inall with the bank’s full knowledge and approval.
Cox+Inall had searched for blogs that included AFL coverage and were “well-enough read to attract readers who might be interested in our offer,” said Ms Glennie-Holmes. No-one at NAB or at Cox+Inall had considered approaching blog owners first for permission before posting their promotional messages, she said.
“Blogs are a public forum”, said Ms Glennie-Holmes. NAB and Cox+Inall felt this meant commercial interests could feel free to contribute unsolicited and irrelevant commercial material as comments, placing the onus on blog moderators to reject or delete unwanted comments.
The incident has created a great deal of concern across the blogging community and a number of people I have spoken have lowered their view of the NAB.
An example of the backlash is this Youtube video looking at how NAB would feel if people came onto NAB property to advertise their own services. It's cheap and grainy - but the point is clear, respect the rights of others in their own spaces.
Bloggers have also contacted NAB directly to complain about this incident and a recorded interview was published online, as reported by Better Communications Results, StewArtMedia and NAB’s comment spam.
What can be learnt from this
I believe there are a couple of things communications professionals can learn from the NAB's experience.
Understand the channel and medium before engaging
The view of the NAB was that blogs were public forums, available for commercial comment.
In this case I feel that the NAB did not initially build a strong understanding of the online channel and consider how the medium of blogs actually function.
While blogs are available publicly, they are usually owned by a single individual and operated in a highly personal way. Just as people would take offense if an advertiser came into their home and started talking to their family and friends about a commercial offering, blog owners are proprietory about their blogs and need to be approached and engaged in an appropriate way.
This applies equally for an situation where an organisation engages with someone else's online property - be it a blog, forum or chatroom.
It is important for the organisation to take the time to understand the appropriate ground rules for the venue, consult appropriately and engage with the full agreement of the site operator.
Respect others
Respecting others is part of the social 'glue' that holds civilisation together. By stepping into someone's space and shouting a message an organisation, or individual, can be demonstrating a lack of respect.
While the internet is a public service, and blogs and forums publicly accessible, they still have rules of engagement - just like a public event.
An organisation seeking to engage within the online medium needs to spend the time observing to understand the social rules and codes of conduct before diving in.
This demonstrates respect for others and demonstrably changes the reception the organisation will receive.
Online engagement must add value
In this case the NAB posted commercial messages unlinked to the discussions taking place in the blog.
There did not appear to be any planning or thought around building credibility with the audience or adding value with the comments.
For organisations engaging online it is not sufficient to rely on the branding and established reputation in other mediums. Organisations need to think about what they bring to the forum or blog and what value they add to the conversation.
An organisation that provides adds value to the online conversation (speaking with), rather than advertising (speaking to) will build credibility and gain opportunities to communicate its message in more engaging ways - thereby being more successful.
Use an honest voice
In the NAB incident, a PR agency posted the comments - and they were posted anonymously, not as an official representation of the NAB.
When engaging online if you want to be taken seriously as an organisation you must represent yourself as who you are. Use an honest and real voice, advertising agencies can only take you so far, organisations will achieve far greater credibility and cut through if it is an actual representative of the organisation making the posts, using their true voice (not pre-processed PR statements).
This is very hard for organisations to understand, given the formal nature of engagement in other mediums - the best example is to think of the online channel as talkback radio and engage accordingly.
In conclusion
Thre's a lot of material available in print and online discussing the right and wrong approaches to online engagement. Most of it follows the same general theme as my points above, understand the medium, be respectful of others, add value to the conversation and use an honest voice.
Take advantage of this when developing your online engagement strategy and you'll avoid many of the mistakes organisations first face when making a decision to use the online channel actively.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Should there be paid advertisements on Australian government websites? | Tweet |
The Investments blog posted a thought-provoking post a few days ago, asking Should Government Websites Be Allowed to Post Google Ads to Offset Deficient Budgets?
This was based on a question put to 'Father of the internet' and Google head evangelist, Vinton Cerf, who was asked at an eGovernment seminar,
"if he thought that there was a way for Google to have special “Google AdSense” for government websites. He smiled one of his famous smiles and indicated he liked the question very much."This post went on to raise the point that certain advertising may be appropriate on government website, related to not-for-profit support organisations and services that help users of government services.
The hosting of these ads would provide a revenue stream for government sites, helping to offset their costs. Ads could be carefully placed with a disclaimer to ensure it was clear to visitors that these were advertisement and manage any legal issues around endorsement.
It is an intriguing concept, and not entirely dissimilar to how CSIRO commercialises intellectual capital or agencies such as ABS have monetised their reports and products.
Now I'm not the first to suggest this be considered for Australian government sites.
Net Traveller author, Tom Worthington, made a slightly different suggestion in a post on January 2007,
Governments may not wish to have paid commercial advertising on their web sites, but perhaps they could have internal government advertising. Each government web page could have a space reserved for advertising. Normally this would be used to promote government initiatives and publicize web sites (in effect the Government's own Google AdWords). The reserved space would also be used to advise the public of emergency information (emergency information is an area where Federal and State Australian governments do poorly online and as a result are placing the lives of citizens at risk).
There is also at least one government site in Australia already featuring paid commercial advertising. Ourbrisbane.com, owned and operated by the Brisbane City Council.
This site features ads for services such as Seek and RSVP as well as other advertisers.
Looking around the world, there are other examples of the acceptance of advertising on government sites.
US experience
In the US while there is an overall policy that government sites should not feature paid advertising, exemptions can be granted, as detailed in Webcontent.gov, the guide to managing US government websites.
I've found evidence that advertising has government sites in the US offering paid advertising for at least four years, as evidenced by this article in Slashdot on 27 July 2004, Advertising Hits Arizona County Government Website,
Maricopa County, home to 3.4 million people in the Phoenix metropolitan area, has seen their GIS website "become an every day tool for realtors, developers, mortgage and title companies, appraisers, inspectors, attorneys and many other professionals associated with the real estate industry." As a result, they are now accepting bids for Web advertisements. As the county is one of the best-run in the nation, this could set quite the precedent.The Maricopa County website is still delivering paid advertising to Phoenix's citizens today.
UK experience
In the UK there is an even more pragmatic approach.
Within the UK Cabinet's guidelines for web site management is included a guide for buying and selling advertising and sponsorship space which states;
Advertising on the web is envisaged as being a revenue stream for government websites. It can reduce the cost of providing government information and services, which saves the taxpayer money or results in better quality services and faster delivery of information and services on-line. It is a perfectly legitimate thing to do as long as the guidelines are adhered to.This guideline was first written in 2002 and remains in force today, six years later, indicating to me that there has not been any major backlash by citizens towards advertising on government sites.
What do you think?
So what do you think of the idea of placing paid advertising on Australian government websites?
Would it be appropriate for your website?
Would a revenue stream help raise the profile of your site in the department?
Monday, July 07, 2008
Digital influence - Online is the most influential medium | Tweet |
Eyeballs is the primary measure of choice of all mass medias - how many people viewed a television program, listened to a radio station, read a newspaper or magazine, or visited a website.
It's a great measure for the advertising industry as it's relatively easy to quantify and track over time and simple to value.
It's also easy for advertisers. They simply pick a demographic, choose the programs that attract the most eyeballs (and divide by two) and lay down the cash.
When it comes to reporting the process is equally simple - the cash invested divided by the number of reported eyeballs (divided by two) equals your cost per contact, and can then be compared again the number of sales or actions taken to provide a view of the advertising's ROI.
This is where the June 2008 Digital Influence report comes in.
Digital influence
After surveying 5,000 people in England, Germany and France, Fleishman-Hillard Research determined that in terms of influence the internet has double the influence of the second most influential mass medium - television. Radio was third and print trailed far behind.
This was calculated using a combination of the time consumers spend on each medium and the importance attached to each in their daily lives (charts below for UK).
Major conclusions
The report reached five major conclusions, which I've paraphrased here:
- Organisations significantly underspend ad dollars on the online channel.
It's time to rethink the media mix, and not simply rely on advertising agencies to pick the channels. Many ad agencies still do not 'get' the net and, in any case, receive higher margins on other channels.
Note that I do not entirely agree with this conclusion - I'd like to see advertising measured in terms of reach rather than dollars. Television can be an expensive medium to use and therefore, even if online is your major medium in terms of reach, your TV ads could cost significantly more. - There are different types of online behaviour - marketers must formulate the right approach for maximum effect.
The report distinguishes 5 different behaviour types, research, communication, commerce, publishing and mobility. People have different goals in mind when engaging in different behaviours and recognition of this should impact on the design and message of advertisements.
Personally I'd add 'relaxation' and 'networking' as behaviour types as well. - Depending on the involvement level of decisions, people use the internet in different ways.
Certain decisions are more heavily influenced by online than others - such as travel, consumer IT purchases and political choices, which all tend to involve significant online influence, whereas charitable donations and utility selection choices don't.
I've not seen a compario - People see the benefits of the internet, but still have strong concerns that need addressing.
Security, privacy and content quality/accuracy are the top concerns of internet users. These need to be addressed as a baseline in all online engagement. - Different countries/cultures use the internet differently, requiring different approaches. If you're marketing across cultures and nations, be aware that it's not one-size-fits-all. Culture does have a large impact on the style of usage of services such as blogs, wikis and mobile internet - backed up by local access costs and differences in behaviour.
Key learnings
My key learnings out of this study were that:
- Traditional media still work well to create awareness, however online is the most effective in generating an action or change in behaviour
- Internet is still growing in reach and influence, all other mass mediums are shrinking
- Print is becoming more niche focused
- The marketing mix needs to be rethought - not in terms of medium, but in terms of goals. If awareness is the goal, the current mix still delivers effective outcomes. If trust and action are the primary goals, online needs a much higher weighting
To give the report itself the last word...
The Internet today is the most important source of information for millions of consumers and organizational stakeholders, impacting personal and corporate reputations, brand perceptions, product consideration, buying decisions and the management of issues, among other things.
Beyond having a robust Web site that meets the expectations of today’s digitally savvy consumer, all companies need to monitor their presence on the search engines, their Wikipedia entry, and online conversations involving their organization, brand, or issue.
Beyond that, it is becoming increasingly essential for organizations to engage and interact directly with audiences online and through mobile handheld devices.
Friday, July 04, 2008
How authentic are government communicators? | Tweet |
Are government communicators - and their agencies - perceived as authentic?
If you believe the Authentic Enterprise report from the Arthur W. Page society, this is one of the most critical questions for government in the digital age.
The report looks at three converging trends for corporate and government communications in the 21st society,
- The digital network economy
"...providing interlinked, low cost (even free) and easy-to-use ways to communicate, to publish and to broadcast, to work and to organize people with common interests. This is driving a shift in the way people interact with each other and with companies and institutions. It changes how dialogue occurs, how perceptions are shaped and how relationships are forged." - The reality of a global economy
"Free trade agreements, the Internet and the emergence of highly skilled populations in developing regions have created a “flat world.” This is reshaping the footprint – and even the idea – of the corporation. It’s shifting from a hierarchical, monolithic, multinational model to one that is horizontal, networked and globally integrated." - The appearance and empowerment of myriad new stakeholders:
"...there is now a diverse array of communities, interests, nongovernmental organizations and individuals. Many of these new players represent important interests, while others are not legitimate stakeholders, but rather simply adversarial or malicious.
Regardless of motive, all are far more able to collaborate among themselves around shared interests and to reach large audiences.
As it states in the report,
"The quality of the company’s products and services (or lack thereof) is apparent to all customers and potential customers. Its treatment of employees and retirees is visible across the corporation and to potential employees and public interest groups. Its citizenship, environmental behavior, corporate governance standards, executive compensation practices and public policy recommendations are transparent to all."The upshot is that public and private organisations that wish to continue to thrive need to rethink their approach in a holistic way, not simply shifting their externally communications messages, but making authentic and lasting changes in how they conduct business, deliver customer service, treat staff and address environmental and governance issues.
What does this specifically mean for government communicators?
I've already begun exploring this topic in previous posts - we're already seeing greater online scrutiny and more information available on government agencies in channels that agencies have limited influence or control over.
Over time it will become increasingly important for departments or senior public officials to walk their talk every time, as any differences between message and reality will become more obvious and widely known, potentially creating embarrassment and more for governments or the individuals involved.
Where message and action are not consistent PR issues will arise faster, from unexpected angles and potentially do lasting damage to the credibility of government agencies and the government of the day.
That's not an epitaph any government communicator should like to have.
So what can government agencies do?
There's an opportunity right now for government agencies to join the online conversations, establish credibility (being government isn't automatic credibility anymore) and become an opinion leader, rather than an opinion victim.
While government communicators cannot control these discussions, we can at least ensure we're in the loop, able to explain misunderstandings before they spiral out of control and correct agency mistakes before they become damaging.
This does mean making hard decisions - comment approvals cannot take weeks, the audience's language must be used rather than jargon and bureaucratise, honesty and authenticity are paramount, to the extent of admitting (and rectifying) mistakes and, as the biggest kid on the block, government agencies have to play very gently or be perceived as bullies.
The alternative is for government communicators to fall back on the old approach - make no comment, only engage via 'official' channels and hope the storms that arise will blow over.
There are examples already of how poorly this has worked for organisations elsewhere in the world.
How to take action
- Search for mentions of your agency on the internet and discover some of the centres of discussion and debate. Gauge their tone and approach and whether they would welcome official representation, familiarise yourself with the appropriate way to write for the audience.
- Prepare internal policies on online engagement - how should your organisation react to or address negative blog or forum posts?
- Prepare an engagement strategy that provides the flexibility to communicate the facts, with as little spin as possible, then get it approved and get involved in the discussion.
eGov review: Vic Graduated Licensing System | Tweet |
The Victorian government has impressed me for several years for their commitment to the effective use of the online channel in government initiatives.
Their Graduated Licensing System (GLS) for young drivers has been extremely well-supported online, with one of the most creative approaches to the channel I've seen in government.
I don't know the budget for the development, however they have made good use of cheap open-source applications, using the Joomla content management system (one I use personally) for the website and using Youtube for storage and distribution of the campaign video.
The video created for the GLS was the highlight for me - it is quite watchable, full of humour and very unlike a traditional government advertisement. In fact I first discovered this site through people recommending the video on blogs.
The website is well designed to appeal to the main target market - young drivers - using strong imagery and fewer words that your average government website. The navigation is clear and the text effectively customised for the different audiences, but consistently retaining the same voice and with minimal jargon.
The site is designed to function effectively across Firefox and Internet Explorer and has well formed code and metadata, so realistically a few tweaks would make this complete.
Interestingly enough, the site's government branding is placed at the bottom of the page. Given the audience this may help make the site feel more friendly and less formal.
I found many parts of the website a little disappointing. The body text in the site is quite small and there is no control built into the site to allow adjustments to text size. While this is acceptable for the main audience, one of the secondary audiences - the parents of young drivers - could have difficulty reading the small text, particularly as it is white on black.
There is a search function, which is a positive, particularly as there is no site map. However it is unusually placed in the middle-right side of the site, detached from the top menu and most frequent placement for this type of function.
The search results did not appear to be optimised well either. A search on 'GLS', the initials of the system, presented as the top result the new radio campaign. A page actually explaining the GLS did not appear at all in the first (of 5) pages of results.
The FAQ section could also do with some refinement. Firstly it presents results in question then answer format, but without a list of questions at the top. This means that someone seeking an answer has to read down the page in the hoping of finding it. This is made even harder as the questions are in gray text, on the site's black background, making them easy to miss as they are less visible than the rest of the text.
So in conclusion, it's a good campaign, with an excellent video for the medium and backed by a decent website.
With some refinements to the text sizing (such as a control to change name), search placement and results weighting and to the presentation of the FAQs, it could be a great site.
Thursday, July 03, 2008
10 reasons government agencies should not advertise online | Tweet |
1) Our traditional ad agency tells us so - and as radio, print and television advertising is more profitable for them, they must be right!
2) It's easier to simply build a bells and whistles website, promote it via traditional means for a month and then ignore it. Our audience will find it, really.
3) Our audience doesn't use the internet - unlike the other 90% of the population
4) The internet is unsafe because you don't know what people will say - you can trust print/radio/television journalists to only say what we want them to say
5) If we don't advertise online, people won't say bad things about us online
6) We can more accurately measure the success of our campaigns online and they don't always work - it's better not to know we're wasting money
7) Because our senior executives haven't gotten the hang of email yet, and we know that our executives (who approve our ad design and spend) think and act exactly in the same way as our customers, even though they earn more, are degree-qualified, much older and live in Canberra
8) Because if people don't like our campaign that much, they might say so and our feelings would be hurt
9) Because Australians don't really use the internet as much as the figures say they do, they just leave it turned on in the next room while they are busy watching ads on TV
10) Because radio, print and television have always worked for us in the past, and always will
