Confessions of a Dyslexic Journalist: April 2009

Create and Manage your digital professional identity

By 1st Lt. Olivia Cobiskey
EPI Director of Marketing - Media

There is a revolution happening.

The Internet is no longer a sandbox that can be walled off, it is fully integrated into all elements of business and society as pointed out by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li in Groundwell; winning in a world transformed by social technologies.

Faced with this shift in information management and social networking and a generational move towards more technology-centric millennials moving up its ranks the military has begun to embrace, in some cases slowly, the changing patterns of communication and social interaction in a Web 2.0 world.

In August 2008, the Coast Guard started to create a digital professional identity using social media platforms on the Internet. First they created a "celebrity" page for the commandant, then came a Coast Guard page on Facebook, they launched a channel on YouTube to post videos and responses from service members, started posting photos from Coast Guard events on Flickr and finally they offered news and opinions through podcasts. All these platforms were updated frequently, sometimes daily.

The U.S. Navy wasn't far behind and has a presence on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and Ning.

"It's part of the way you communicate now," Navy Capt. Jeff Breslau, a U.S. Pacific Command spokesman told the Associated Press in an interview about the Northern Commands social networking sites on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and MySpace. "There's no reason why we can't talk directly to the public and now we have the tools to do it."

In January, the Air Force made social media a priority - having its Public Affairs department shift from traditional outreach to Facebook, a Blog and Twitter. Social networking tools help the military fulfill the intent of DoD Directive (DoDD) 5230.09: that accurate and timely information be made available to the public and the news media to help the public analyze and understand defense strategy and national security issues. Furthermore, social networking tools also allow Soldiers to correct erroneous information quickly.

The Army is making the shift too by using Twitter, Flickr, iReport - CNN's citizen journalists' site, and YouTube and Vimeo as their primary video sites they are using.

The Army.mil Web team in Crystal City is also developing both Facebook and MySpace pages.

The Marines is the last service to jump on the social networking bandwagon. They have very inactive official sites on Twitter and Facebook. However, Marine Col. Bob Sommers of the Marine For Life program recently embraced the social media philosophy and his staff is developing Marine For Life sites on Twitter, Facebook and blogstop to help the organization reach out to its members.

This reticence to shape a digital identity and embrace these new tools has created some problems. It's simple, if you are not willing to meet the communities need and create places for them to meet, the community will create them for you. Now faced with dozens of "unofficial" sites some services will have to fight for legitimacy on the Web.

To get a better view of your service's digital identity, type it into Google. See how many hits you get. Typing "US Army" into Facebook's search tool gets 500 results. Many of the pages look legitimate, some have the new U.S. Army logo, and the largest has 1,741 members. However, the U.S. Army does not have an "official" Facebook page. This is not unusual. Anyone can create a Facebook group page using the name or some variation of "US Army."

Here are some steps to make sure the service members can distinguish between your services legitimate Web presence and the not so legitimate Web presence.

Decide how to brand your digital identity.

A digital identity is your service's presence on the Web - the sites and accounts you register for and create help determine how people view and interact with your service online. Make sure your brand is sticky - that it is visually identifiable.

Social media is helping to create a separate identify for the U.S. Army Reserve, which is usually lumped in with the National Guard.

Twitter, LinkedIn, Go Daddy, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace - it can be overwhelming.

"Go slow," said Andrea Baker, director of Technology Solutions and Social Web Evangelist from Navstar, Inc. from Falls Church Va. "Start small – it's a myth that this is about youth, it's not generational. We have 20 year olds who don't get it and we have 60 year olds who do."

Army Reserve Communication started off with a Blog, "My Army Reserve," to help get information to Reserve Soldiers who are unemployed, under employed or looking to change careers for the Employer Partnership Initiative, an Army Reserve initiative to help build partnerships between corporate America and the Reserves. Next they created a My Army Reserve pages on Twitter and Flickr.

As a brand, My Army Reserve is simple and clean. The My, provides the viewer with a sense of ownership. Before creating the blog, staff at Army Reserve Communication and the Army Reserve's Employer Partnership Initiative seeded and gathered information from dozens of social media sites and their users.

Join the conversation

Identify the sites that might work for your service, base, unit and hang out on them. Start by sharing your ideas. Don't just respond with a "Ditto!" or a "Hoorah," but actually add something of value to the conversation. Help people solve their problem, listen to what they are saying and ask them what they'd like to see from an official site. Social Media is about the power of one - grassroots vs. top down, Baker said.

Once you've identified the best tools for your group - build your destination

Build it and they will come

According to Seth Godin in Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, marketing use to be about advertising, now it's about communicating with your tribe or any group of people, large or small who are connected to one another, a leader and an idea. In this new media world there is little tolerance for companies that are not authentic in their representation. Initiatives succeed when companies and organization create content the serves its communities interest. Four steps to help determine what to communicate and how:

1. Focus on a community's interests
2. The editorial mission: build value for the community
3. Who and what
4. Inspire your community

By participating in the online conversation the military will be able to build goodwill and trust in the community.

Embrace your inner gardener

Don't just communicate - facilitate. Continue to virally seed the Internet - tell people about you and what you do - continue to build your digital identity. On the Army Reserve Web site - the Employer Partnership Initiative has added hyperlinks to its various social media sites. This helps build its official digital identity.

Other services, like the Army have added short bios like "Official U.S. Army Twitter: news, images, video from Army.mil about our brave Soldiers around the world. (Following does not=endorsement.)," to help separate themselves from the other users like "usarmy_87" or "US_ARMY."

Be your own architect, engineer and designer

With 500 search results for "U.S. Marine" on Facebook, the Marines are going to have to come up with something innovative and new to integrate those various communities and bring them together.

It's not enough for a fresh, strapping brand to be out there showing people the trail from where everyone is to where everyone might be going next. What's really important is when that brand DEFINES the path. Remember community has power - as articulated by Kevin Rose, the creator of Digg, in his blog post Digg This: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-63-56-88-c0.

How do we measure success?

The success of the social media initiative has been measured primarily in number of fans/followers and number of hits to the various sites.

Scott Meis, a senior project and social media director at Carolyn Grisko & Associates, Inc., a Chicago strategic communication firm, felt the Navy has done an excellent job using social media tools pointing to its U.S. Navy Healthcare page on Facebook.

"For a number of reasons, brands are struggling to maximize use of Facebook but this works because it focuses specifically on targeted, niche recruitment and provides a channel for easy, immediate feedback," Meis, a former Naval Officer wrote on his blog. "Double kudos to the Navy for their Ning-hosted Navy for Moms networking site. Moms of course a key online demographic and Navy Moms in particular happen to be the most passionate people out there."

In only a matter of months, the Army Reserve Employer Partnership Initiative Facebook page had 144 "fans," the LinkedIn group had 65 members, its blog had 10 and its Twitter page had 90 followers. Like the Coast Guard, EPI updates its sites daily, if not weekly and community interaction continues to grow. EPI used Google Analytics and bit.ly to gather data to help decide how to move forward with its social media effort.

A sense of play

Baker said the Intelink community uses a character from Strongbad, Trogdor to kind of poke someone that isn't working within the parameters set by the community. Remember to keep a sense of humor and play while creating and managing your digital identity.

This revolution will not be minimalized

The number of companies using social media will continue to increase as more of the X and Y generation enter the workforce. Facebook recently took the lead with about 68 million unique visitors. Twitter is the third-biggest social media site in the country and LinkedIn is fifth with about 11 million visitors.

The new Presidential administration has directed an unprecedented level of transparency and openness in government and is "committed to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation and collaboration, executive departments and agencies should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public."

While the military's social media initiative has seen a great response, there is still anxiety in the service about information control and integrity. There is also some degree of discomfort among lower level staff in regard to communicating directly with senior leadership, which clearly is a factor of the service's structure this initiative attempts to change. These are things that can be addressed and changed in time. These tools are not going to go away and the longer each service waits the longer it is going to take to build goodwill and trust in the community.

The most important questions is: The revolution has started, are you going to add your voice to the conversation or let someone else speak for you?

*While reading this article you were virally exposed to two books, three wikis, five articles, and 36 social media sites.

*While writing this article I participated in five discussions on Twitter, two discussions on Facebook, listened to two books on my iPod, posted the Army Reserve Social Media Policy to the wiki Intelink to get feedback, I posted four articles to Facebook, texted two people on my phone and listened to one book on my iPod.

SITES TO CONSIDER WHEN DEVELOPING A DIGITAL IDENTITY

Blip.tv -- A video blogging and podcasting service for those interested in creating shows on the Web.

Digg -- This is another example of a social bookmarking site, though it operates as more of a popularity contest for Web sites, podcasts and videos based on users' choices.

Facebook -- A social networking site on which users can share messages, photos, personal information, etc. Though the site was originally only open to college students, it is now open to anyone.

Flickr -- A photo-sharing site. Here is a recent New York Times article about Flickr that news organizations might find interesting.

LinkedIn -- A business-contact networking site that "links" you to other professionals.

MySpace -- A social networking site similar to Facebook, but with fewer privacy settings and originally created to help musician share their music.

NowPublic -- A citizen journalism site that runs primarily off of contributing content from its users. The site also has a rating system that gives registered users the option of flagging/rating content. Posting to the site can help drive traffic to your blog and other creative work.

Ourmedia -- A site that video producers and podcasters can use to post their videos and other creative content. The site features a "Personal Media Learning Center," which includes resources for anyone looking to learn more about creating videoblogs, podcasts, digital stories, as well as tips for writing on the Web.

Second Life -- As its Web sites puts it, Second Life is a "3-D online digital world imagined and created by its residents." Users can purchase their own lands and essentially create another identity online.

Social Blogging, Wordpress, Blogspot -- Sites you can visit to set up a blog.

SpinXpress -- A site that videobloggers can use to collaborate with others on projects. Videobloggers can create a group, add the people they're working with to the group and then drag in the files they want to share with everyone. Each group has a built-in wiki and discussion forum.

Twitter -- a microblogging tool that uses 140 characters in bursts of text - at its most basic level, Twitter is a networking tool that helps users keep abreast of what friends or strangers are doing. For public affairs professionals it is a resource for publishing work, finding story ideas and communicating with other PAOs.

Upcoming -- A site that people can use to post upcoming events and look at events that others in their "Upcoming" network have posted.

Wikipedia -- Some organizations create their own Wikipedia page to serve as an online resource for Web surfers.

YouTube -- A site on which users can upload videos or watch videos that other journalists have created.

Confessions of a Dyslexic Journalist

Thursday, April 02, 2009

Embracing Social Media to Military Advantage

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Colorado Employers Eager to Hire, Support Army Reservists

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