Today I read an interesting article about how few friends or followers government organizations have on social media. The article mentions a county government had 418 followers on Twitter and 159 on Facebook despite serving a population of more than 340,000 people.
For those who believe that these number are low, I did some research in preparation for one of my sessions at the Gartner Symposium in Orlando, and found out that this is the same across the board.
As of today, the US Environmental protection Agency has 3,874 fans on Facebook and the US portal USA.gov has 3,976 fans (on a US population exceeding 300 million), while the State of Rhode Island has 188 fans. It is the same in all countries, in all tiers of government: people do not really care.
Of course in some cases a small but vibrant community of friends or followers is more than enough, but reality is that web 2.0 is about connecting people: government organizations are institutions and not people, so the connection does not come natural. That’s also why politicians or individual officials can be far more popular than their own agencies: I do follow a person, I do not follow an institution.
While quite a few new media consultants and strategists drive their government clients into establishing a presence in mainstream social media (such as Facebook or Twitter), I remain convinced that – in most cases – this is a waste of resources, and it can possibly turn into an embarrassment when numbers are so low. While many worry about the security implications of web 2.0, they should rather worry about being relevant.
And how do you know whether you can be relevant unless you explore whether and how citizens are already gathering in communities that they create, on platforms they choose, and on their own terms? If this is the case, it is probably more sensible to join them rather than create a new avenue and hope that they will come (because, in most cases, they won’t).
6 responses so far ↓
1 Per Olsson // Dec 1, 2009 at 5:24 pm
I think your right about joining instead of creating a new platform since so much come for free, in the form of already built communities, moving to the visitors instead of inviting them and asking them to move their focus away from something their used to to something new.
2 david osimo // Dec 1, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Just to say how much I agree on this. It is not much different from the idea of “putting services online”. Luckily, in this case, it is much less expensive so trial and error is the way.
3 Tweets that mention Relevance and not Security is the Number One Risk for Government on Social Media -- Topsy.com // Dec 1, 2009 at 6:47 pm
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4 uberVU - social comments // Dec 2, 2009 at 7:13 am
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5 Nick Jones // Dec 2, 2009 at 7:56 am
Why is this surprising? It’s called “social networking” because it’s about personal social relationships. I have social relationships with people, not government organisations. I don’t go out for drinks with the government, I don’t date the government, I don’t meet the government for dinner. Government isn’t my friend, it’s more of a necessary evil.
6 Andrea Di Maio // Dec 2, 2009 at 8:05 am
Glad to see there is overwhelming agreement. Indeed, as Nick says, why should I be seeing government as a friend? Actually if I am in the business of selling to government I’m certainly interested in following news about RFPs, and if I live in an area that is subject to extreme weather condition I’m certainly interested in getting weather updates and advisories. However, I guess people who have such a vested interest would feel more natural to subscribe to government feeds on a government web site than to be following government as fans or friends.
For how straightforward this looks like, I still meet a considerable number of government folks who are being advised by their communication officers or by consultants of all sorts that they must establish a presence on Facebook and the likes. To me, these look like the conversations I have been having for almost ten years, trying to talk people out of the idea of developing a government portal as a single point of contact.
I just hope we won’t see the emergence of official benchmarks measuring Facebook presence to replace the equally useless benchmarks comparing the on-line maturity of government services across different jurisdictions.
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