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Being Proactive & Prepared for Response in Social Media - U.S. Air Force

There is an excellent business process workflow map published by the U.S. Air Force Public Affairs Agency - Emerging Technology Division addressing their standard of operations for reputation management and response in social media.

It's simple, clear and addresses the way in which the U.S. Air Force Public Affairs intends to engage online. For any organization assessing their level of engagement -- what it is or will be, this visual decision map may help create a framework for discussion and planning.

Special thanks to Joey deVilla for sharing this at Global Nerdy.

US Now | Mass Collaboration Online Can Transform

There is an exciting new British documentary that just debuted in London on December 3, 2008 at the RSA. The film, US Now explores how mass collaboration, the internet and its power to transform society has extraordinary potential to transform institutional structures, like government, broaden citizen participation and, "deepen" democracy. Each perspective included in this film constructively looks at simply, "the potential" of what lies ahead. With that, includes the challenges and some of the structural barriers to date, but given the timeliness of this documentary, there is also the sense, that the time is now to leverage and utilize what we have used, learned, built, and participate in to take such institutions like "government," go beyond "e-government" and create a richer, more interactive, participatory democratic government. The film looks at the potential and the opportunity to "unbundling and reconstituting" the institutional ways to create greater access and broaden the participatory role of the citizen. It's an interesting and extremely timely exploration in these new time ahead.

Us Now tells the stories of online networks that are challenging the existing notion of hierarchy, such as Wikipedia, Facebook and others.  For the first time, this film brings together leading-edge visionaries in the field of participative governance to describe the future of government. Us Now follows the stories of the people that are redefining what is an institution. The film explores common organizational structures plotting the fate of a football club owned and run by its fans, a bank in which everyone is the manager, a global network whose members share their homes with strangers and asks politicians and thinkers what all this means for society.

"There's a whole new model emerging where we become part of the government," says film contributor, Don Tapscott.

There are great clips available online now and will culminate in an hour long documentary to be released publicly in January 2009.

View some of these clips now to see how exciting the dialogue and critical thinking is.

Governments Getting with the Internet

Social Networking

Organizations & Democracy

Models For Government

iMediaConnection: The art of self defense against brand-jacking

As a follow up to our earlier post today, we came across another good article further emphasizing the need to actively monitor and protect your brand.

Tim Lynch, senior experience design specialist at Molecular, explores the concept of brand-jacking. "If your brand is online, it's susceptible to consumer influence -- both benign and malicious. See what steps your company can take to mitigate the risks."

Read More >>

Deloitte: The Future of Collaborative Government & Web 2.0

As a strategic marketing and communications firm providing services to the State of California, we have the privilege of working with many innovative and progressive state departments, public and local agencies, who are driving inventive strategies to meet the demand of processing business, delivering program services, responding to ongoing State and Federal legislation, adapting to election and State budget cycles, as well as supporting the rapidly increasing activity and demand to stay competitive (compatible, connected, integrated) with "sister" agencies, business partners (vendors and suppliers),  citizens, and other reliant stakeholders.

Deloitte currently has an excellent report out on e-government that addresses the challenges "conventional government" is facing and will continue to face with emerging risk - Change Your World or the World Will Change You - The future of collaborative government and Web 2.0.

Premise for eGovernments in the Era of Web 2.0
Deloitte writes, "Today’s tech-savvy world demands tech-savvy government. Increasingly connected citizens and stakeholders are asking governments to deliver services more rapidly and efficiently. Yet the public service bureaucracies that form the governmental backbone often take a conservative approach to adopting the latest Internet-based technologies to accelerate service delivery.

Developing a “Government 2.0” culture is more involved than simply setting up a wiki or a blog. It requires leadership, investments in technology, organizational change, and risk-taking to overcome cultural, process, technology and policy hurdles.

In the end, increased levels of collaboration will result in enhanced service delivery through all operational and policy-making functions of government.  This culture will allow tomorrow’s government to do more with less."

Download Deloitte's Report >>

AIGA Initiative - Get Out the Vote 2008

AIGA, the professional association for design has taken the charge to "Get Out the Vote," by creating an outlet for AIGA members (to participate, you gotta join) to design around the simple message to vote on election day 2008.Through print posters and YouTube submissions, AIGA has welcomed designers to "create" around this important call to action.

Since 2000, the AIGA initiative has welcomed the design and distribution of videos, motion graphic pieces as well as print materials like Get out the Vote posters.

"AIGA invites its members to create nonpartisan videos and motion graphics pieces that inspire the American public to participate in the electoral process and vote for a presidential candidate in the 2008 general election."

This year, the Get Out the Vote 2008 posters reflect a wide variety of styles and treatments, including many familiar iconic pop culture influences.

As AIGA notes, "good design makes choices clear."

Be sure to view the rest at AIGA Get Out the Vote 2008 posters, including the set of 24 posters chosen for professional printing and national distribution.  You can also download any of them available on the AIGA Web site as PDFs to save and print, like this one!

Also, be sure to view and share the video of 50 selected posters as well as the AIGA YouTube channel for more info.

Rethinking the User Experience - AdWeek

AdWeek touches on User Experience this week in an article - Rethinking the User Experience, Web designers should consider how using a site reflects upon the brand. It's a great overview of how user experience (UX) is integral to the design and development of online interactions and perceptions. It is a helpful overview to see and understand how many different disciplines, from accessbility to usability play a role under UX design. Moreover, the article makes a clear connection that good user experience is equally tied to positive reinforcement of the brand. Good experience is a good reflection on the brand. Good experience design helps to establish and reinforce positive relationships, increased customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.

Bridging the Gap - Shopping Made Simple

Gap is one of those great brands and retail experiences that has taken some blows financially over the recent years. When you think of great, inspiring lifestyle brands, building extraordinary brand loyalty, the Gap is on par with Apple, Volkswagen, IKEA and now Target (of all brands), in my opinion.

But, the Gap has struggled financially as well in its classic identity. Today, I read a great article in Business Week about "A Fashion Guy Gets Gap Back to Basics." While Design chief Patrick Robinson is taking the Gap back to the quality of the basic, classic styles the Gap is known (and loved for), he also quotes he can "design the best T-shirt,...but if we don't put it in the right stores in the right amount of sizes," then it is out of his hands. Robinson says, "It's going to take this whole company to [succeed]."

From my morning read about the Gap to an email this afternoon, I received word that the Gap and its affiliate brands, Old Navy, Banana Republic and Piperlime, have launched Shopping Made Simple an integrated online shopping experience that allows online consumers to browse and buy from all four stores adding to one shopping bag with integrated check out. Additionally, another convenience built into the online shopping experience is one seven dollar flat shipping rate* and free returns.

The Gap and its affiliate brands are aggregating to create an experience much like what many consumers have come to expect by shopping online at Amazon.

As mentioned in earlier posts, Tis the Season to Redesign, which means we will be seeing more innovation in e-commerce and enhanced user experience models to optimize convenience, increase satisaction and build loyalty for the upcoming shopping season. This new 4-in-1 shopping experience by Gap is a competitive way to streamline the shopping experience around the consumer -- making it "simple" and convenient to shop with the Gap online.

Looks like the Gap is bridging the "gaps" of past challenges and unifying the brand experience to benefit the consumer.

Go Gap!

*Exception: Piperlime orders ship free.

Is Your Web Experience Accessible? WCAG 2.0 at a Glance

Accessibility is important to user experience design
Let me say this up front... making your Web site accessible adds another layer of optimization to your user experience design. Making your website accessible not only removes the barriers of access to certain groups of individuals, but by design, it has inherent benefits and techniques to improve usability and interaction overall.

Good user-centered design means accessible design
Often in our consultation, we see fear, confusion and sometimes even indifference ("Our website doesn't necessitate accessibility compliance. Our users want more, not less.") when it comes to Web accessibility compliance. Such resistance is easily overcome when "compliance" can be understood first as a fundamental commitment embedded within your website strategy and secondly, as a continuous process improvement, thereafter.

What you resist, persists.
I am a true believer that if you create a holistic user experience, your website will include accessibility methods in design and development to maximize your functionality, features, design and content. I also believe, and have seen it time and time again, if the design and development does not facilitate varying degrees of accessibility compliance (based upon user expectations and interaction design) the Web experience will remain compromised and reveal itself in user satisfaction ratings, traffic metrics, online reputation, etc.

Most Web strategies get teams excited when measurable tactics are taken in SEO or even multivariate testing, for example. But, today, with "engagement" as the key metric, we challenge our client teams to include accessibility as part of the equation. If everyone can use a website more efficiently (minimizing barriers), can you imagine how all measurements will improve!?

Often, the biggest challenge we see our client teams face regarding compliance starts with the questions, like:

• Who needs to play a role in Web accessibility on our Web team?
• Where do we begin?
• How do we make our website more accessible?
• How do we manage our Web site to remain accessible?

For years, the W3C has worked to define important guidelines to establish a structure for compliance. Unfortunately, the Web Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), while comprehensive, have tended to be complex and quite frankly, a little overwhelming to most business users who are trying to guide Web initiatives that include accessibility.

Today, Andrea Hill, Social Interaction Designer/Developer and blogger, explores the WCAG and addresses the question What’s the deal with… Web Accessibility and WCAG? It's a great post noting the basis for WCAG and the evolving improvements in WCAG 2.0. Her post inspired me today to add to this conversation.

Related Sources:

• Web Accessibility: WCAG 2.0 at a Glance
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Overview
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0

The Great Debate on Comment Fragmentation

I just came across a really refreshing blog by Alexander van Elsas on new media and technologies and their effect on social behavior. He has a ton of really insightful posts, including a recent post where he states some great points on why "the conversation" needs to be kept open and free. In fact, van Elsas asks - Can we have more fragmentation, please! While some argue that "comment fragmentation" is hurting the the ability to keep a coherent conversation alive, van Elsas and others point out that the true essence of conversation cannot be restricted by time, place or community. It's open and once published should have a life of its own.

The fundamental argument over comment fragmentation needs to go back to the original concepts of social media and how "creating conversation" was key. Where it starts to get tricky though, is how do publishers keep the conversation going "attached" to the originator who started the thread. This can be a big issue for "brands" trying to use blogs and social networks to connect with their customers and create conversation in new ways a la Social Media Marketing and PR 2.0.

van Elsas writes:
"While the idea of being able to track and follow a conversation that you might have started sounds good, I personally believe that centralising discussion is not a good thing. Conversations are by definition not bounded by time or space. They happen here and there, now and then. It is an illusion to think we can centralize discussions...

Social media technology and services have ensured that the conversation can take place anywhere. That’s the power of social media. It isn’t about media, content or distribution. It is about being able to interact anywhere we want.

It helps us to move away from destinations. It helps the user and the conversation to be set free. It enables what I call the user centric web. The web where the user, and not the destination is important."

It may be a hard pill to swallow, but any time any one tries to "control" a conversation, it is always doomed to fail. I think van Elsas point on the large scale really show that as we talk about "creating conversation," we also have to be ready for it to change, spread, disconnect and take a life of its own.

At that point, the publisher, then has the opportunity (and perhaps) obligation if wanting to stay connected to the conversation to particpate and co-contribute to the conversations lifespan thereafter.

Related Posts:

• Who Owns All These Comments? - ReadWriteWeb
• Comments are not creative content - Get over it! - WinExtra
• FriendFeed Loving and Why Conversation Fragmentation is Your Friend, Not Your Enemy - Robert Seidman 
• Let's Get Serious About FriendFeed; the 1995 Message Board, the Smart Consolidator and the Stolen Conversation - Allen Stern, CenterWorks

Related Tools & Services:

• Shyftr
• Disqus
• IntenseDebate
• YackTrack
• FriendFeed
• Seesmic

Emergence of the "Chief Blogger"

BtoB Magazine reveals the emergence of “chief blogger” as a corporate job title and the mixed feelings about CEO blogs.

Read the article: Businesses embrace blogging :: BtoB Magazine.