"Network Solutions - Small business conversations and working together for small business success" - 2 new articles
Challenges to Government Social Media Participation: An Outsider’s PerspectiveThe main reason I went to Government 2.0 Camp was to get first-hand info on specific challenges and barriers faced by Web 2.0 advocates in government. It’s easy to say, well, government should get on blogs and Facebook and Twitter and whatnot, but beyond the traditional risk-averseness of large institutions, I wanted to see what else was keeping them from doing it. I mean, there’s stuff like the federal government’s prohibition on persistent cookies, as well as the fact that they have to be a lot more sensitive to Section 508 Accessibility issues (an area where the private sector could learn a few things), the digital divide considerations, personal privacy, etc. But because it’s government, there’s whole ‘nother cultural and even regulatory barriers. There were three sessions I attended that I’ll be drawing from here (note, session recaps may not be available): Social Media/Executive vs. Agency Level with David Almacy, former White House Internet Director; Social Media Subcouncil - What is it? with IRS’s Jaqi Ross; and Running a Federal Blog with Jeffrey Levy of the EPA. (I’m going to focus on federal government issues here.) Just Like Private Industry, Only Very, Very Different On top of that, as David Almacy pointed out, the Executive Office of the President is also different from agencies (for example, it’s subject to the Presidential Records Act, etc.), and what they’re able to do or not do on Whitehouse.gov doesn’t automatically roll down to the agencies. There’s also a sensitivity to using third-party service providers, which we kind of take for granted in the public sector, either because of incompatible user agreements, or the desire to be not seen as favoring any one service (though that last bit seems to be fading). Mitigating Factors And during the White House Internet town hall last week, they used Google Moderator to handle questions, though they handled registration, instead of using Google accounts. In another example, the EPA’s blog uses Wordpress, hosted on EPA servers, though they don’t use user accounts for people to comment. (The process they used to set up and publish the blog, as well as the review policy and comment policy, was also pretty similar to what I’ve experienced with corporate blogs.) The Social Media Subcouncil Of course, social media isn’t a silver bullet for government’s (or society’s) problems. And besides getting it right, everyone is still trying to figure out how to measure social media return on investment and success metrics. So at least the public sector has that in common with everyone else. Anyway, I’ll continue following the work of Government 2.0 Club and similar organizations, and maybe even see what’s going on in the Social Media Subcouncil, since what they’re doing is important to participatory government. It matters. One Year and 500 Posts - The Best of the Best and the Future is Looking Bright
I wanted to take the opportunity to thank Shashi Bellamkonda, our Social Media Swami, and the man responsible for launching this social media “road trip” and evangelizing both internally and externally to people growing it into the award-winning social media destination for small businesses on the Internet. In typical TV Show fashion we are going to take a look at the last 500 posts and highlight all those who have contributed in our version of “flashbacks” while sparing you from the cheesy music and soft camera lense fades. We will then look forward about our refined mission, our expanding team and what you should expect from us for the next 500 posts. So let’s turn on the way back machine and begin…. Best of Shashi Bellamkonda - “The Swami” Who doesn’t know the Swami? Or in the case of the picture to the left, the Cowboy. He got that hat at SXSW and he now has two names. He has been the driving force with helping Network Solutions dive into the social media pool. Under his leadership we have grown into a family of blogs covering numerous small business related topics. Our presence on twitter as @netsolcares has helped transform our reputation management program so much that he won the 2008 Excellence in New Communications Award. Here are some of his best posts from the last year: 10 Reasons to Use Facebook for Business How Small Businesses Can Use Social Media How I became a Social Media Swami at Network Solutions Aesops Fables and Corporate Blogs A Hard Sell? Social Media and Your Boss - Part 2 Becoming an Expert Best of Connie Bensen - “Queen of Community”
Connie joined the team in July as the first community manager and wrote tons of great stuff until her departure in October. She has moved on to work with other companies to help build their communities. Her presence is missed but we still have her awesome content. Here are a few of her greatest hits: Building Your Business Online Series (6 Parts) Building Your Brand Series (5 Parts) 10 Reasons to Choose Network Solutions to Register Your Domain Name Use Social Networking to Grow Your Small Business Does Your Business Need a Community? Best of Steve Fisher - “Part Pinky, Part Brain”
In November I “leveled up” and became the Social Media and Community Manager under the guidance and mentorship of “The Swami”. Over that time we have increased the size of our team, launched new blogs, brought in tons of guest contributors and done Social Media training courses for groups here at Network Solutions. I have had some great experiences meeting extremely talented small business owners and have had the opportunity to interview many great entrepreneurs. Most are customers of Network Solutions and it is always great to reach out to those who might become customers in the future. Here are my favorite posts over the last year: The Business Plan Series (15 Parts) The Marketing Plan Series (15 Parts) Rules for Entrepreneurs - Rule #1: Make Sure Your Business Card Doesn't Get Thrown Out Getting Productive in 2009 - Spending a Year with GTD Thoughts on Coworking: What is it and is it for you? Best of Jill Foster - “Our Most Passionate Blogger”
Here is some her best stuff from Solutions Are Power: Web 2.0 in mostly plain English: a workshop take down Obama's White House: forecasts & challenges for digital America Ego surfs and action plans: your roadmap to transparency Best of Joe Loong - “King of the Subject Line” Joe knows how to write a catchy subject line. So much that most of his posts stay in the top read posts. You might call that search engine bait but we call it good content. Joe joined around the same time as Jill and has written some really informative and timely stories as well as providing great coverage of our local events. Here are a few of his golden “SEO bait” posts: Fake Your Way to Being a Social Media Expert: Strategies for Keeping Up Stupid Link Tricks: A Daisy Chain of URL Shorteners 5 Stories of Twittering Gone Bad Using Bacon and Social Media to Promote Your Business How to Write Catchy, Clicky Blog Headlines Looking to the Future As we begin our journey writing our next 500 posts, we have two new bloggers that will be gracing our pages in the next week. They are Ken Yeung and Michael Dougherty. Ken Yeung - “Mr. Everywhere” Ken is someone I have known for about three years and while he was here in DC he was always the guy with a camera taking really awesome photos that showed up on his Flickr feed. I saw him at almost every event and I called him “Mr. Everywhere”. Now that he is living in San Francisco, I consider him our new West Coast blogger and correspondent. Most importantly he is a great writer and brings a new perspective along with new topics that this blog has been looking to expand into for a while. He has a great marketing background and will be writing about online marketing, and because he is on the west coast, covering events in that region to expand beyond the many DC events you have read about. Michael Dougherty - “Wicked Java”
In his other life, Mike is also a budding film Director and accomplished screenwriter. In the interest of full disclosure, we are both co-founders of a non-profit film production company called Big Damn Fan Films that is about to begin principal photography on Browncoats:Redemption, a project that is based on the Firefly/Serenity universe created by Joss Whedon. The project will raise money for five select charities and will be released in Fall of 2010. Our experiences using Social Media and Marketing might be a topic of discussion once in a while but only in the interest of lessons learned that we can pass on to our small business/future entrepreneur readership. We are excited to have these two new team members on board and the future is looking extremely bright. The Future Looks BrightThanks for coming to the blog, being a regular reader and growing with us. If you found us for the first time with this post, please subscribe because we are only getting started. We are committed to bringing you relevant, informative and CCC content we hope helps you grow your business. We are partners with you in this journey and if there is any topic you want to hear about, please let us know in the comments. See you at post #1000… More Recent Articles
|
For all of our readers out there, we are marking a milestone of our 500th post here at 
 |
Click here to safely unsubscribe now from "Network Solutions - Small business conversations and working together for small business success" or change subscription settings
Unsubscribe from all current and future newsletters powered by FeedBlitz
| Your requested content delivery powered by FeedBlitz, LLC, 9 Thoreau Way, Sudbury, MA 01776, USA. +1.978.776.9498 |
No comments:
Post a Comment
Keep a civil tongue.