Genachowski Lays Out the Plan — and the Problems

Yesterday self-professed “broadband nerd” Om Malik and Stacey Higginbotham of GigaOm hosted a revealing interview with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. It was a great opportunity to hear the Chairman in real time talk through some of the issues facing the commission as it races to prepare its national broadband plan by February. Genachowski was impressive — he comes across as a technologist who has landed in DC, not a lawyer looking for things to regulate.

Here’s the video link — it’s over an hour long. So while watching I took notes for you my loyal readers, and I jotted down the video times where Genachowski shared some interesting nuggets so you can listen for yourself if you’d like. Here they are, note I paraphrase slightly in spots for clarity:

• (57:00) “Historically, the FCC has focused on regulation of the network. Now, that can’t be the only perspective, with so much innovation happening at the edge. This perspective is what I’m trying to institutionalize at the FCC.”
• (46:45) “Bits are bits.”
• (44:30) “There are broadband deployment gaps, and there are broadband adoption gaps.”
• (44:00) “There are three broad sets of goals for the national plan: 1. Economic — an open, robust platform will be a productivity engine and an economic advantage globally; 2. Societal — pervasive broadband will benefit healthcare, education, public safety, energy; 3. Civic Engagement — spur participatory democracy and better government.”
• (39:00) “Sometimes people don’t realize that startups are small businesses.”
• (36:25) “There’s an historical comparison in what we’re going through now in the development of the electrical grid in the early 2oth century. In the last century we had household appliances, with the information grid we have waves of news apps.”
• (29:45) In response to a question from Om about the fact that most consumers today face a duopoly for broadband service: “What I’ve found at the FCC is that there isn’t much established literature around addressing what we have today. It’s not a monopoly — there are accepted ways to deal with that. It’s also not unfettered competition with a low barrier to entry, which also has accepted steps. It’s something in the middle, and it’s tough.”
• (24:00) “We have the chance to lead the world in mobile broadband, but the biggest risk is the lack of spectrum.”
• (17:30) In response to a question from the audience about the FCC sending a letter asking for information from Apple about refusing to allow Google Voice onto the iPhone: “Let’s look at the situation for a minute. What I want the FCC to be is proactive, to ask questions and to be informed. What we found was there was an agreement between Apple and AT&T to keep VoIP applications off the iPhone. Then, that decision was changed.”
• (10:00) In response to a question about open Internet and what acceptable network management should be: “The issues around Open Internet can be put into three buckets: 1. There is the bucket of things that almost all would agree clearly should not be allowed; 2. there is a bucket of things that clearly the government should allow and leave alone; 3. and then again there is a tricky middle ground. The goal of the FCC should be to make that middle category as small as possible, and to create a transparent, workable process for resolution.”

So that’s my take on this incredibly educational discussion. Here’s Stacey’s.

We don’t do policy work at Strategic, but I’m fortunate to have fast growth clients who are very involved in markets that are greatly affected by broadband. GovDelivery provides government to citizen communications and is leading the adoption of Gov’t 2.0 technologies by the federa government, BroadSoft is a VoIP application provider to hundreds of carriers and the authors of the Broadband Ignite blog, and TANDBERG is the leading provider of video conferencing that powers telework and  improves the delivery of education and healthcare (and is soon to be acquired by Cisco).

I’ve had conversations with these clients about the critical juncture this country is at vis-a-vis the migration to all IP networks. The entire regulatory structure currently administered by the FCC — with its reciprocal compensation, termination charges, subsidies, taxes dating back to the Spanish-American war — is a legacy of the circuit-switched past. Much of it makes no sense in an IP world in which “bits are bits.” Making sure the commission strikes the right balance in negotiating the “tricky middle ground” described by Genachowski will have far reaching implications on all businesses that rely on the Internet.

The FCC is facing a tabula rasa, with a chance to totally re-write the rules of the road. After watching yesterday’s interview and listening to Genachowski, I’ve got more faith they can get it right.

How to Measure the Value of Social Media?

Recently I participated in a very timely online conversation on the topic of quantifying the success of social media. I’ve been a member of the Ad-Marketing listserv for a long time, originally started by the Morino Institute. Thanks to Mitch Arnowitz for keeping the list alive.

This is a very hot topic right now, with more PR and marketing budget dollars being dedicated to social media. Social media has rapidly achieved a level long held by PR in general. It’s generally acknowledged to be a valuable commodity, but it’s difficult to measure.

The responses to Mitch’s inquiry were very interesting. Lynn Miller of Miller Strategic Marketing talked about the value of Twitter that hard to measure quantitatively:

With regard to your list of success metrics for social media – I suggest you add a qualitative category to cover “learnings.” This could be anything from insights into consumer wants, complaints, trends, etc., to competitive insights, relationships formed, etc. One might say that you cover this under “Traction in Social Networks,” but I actually think it is quite different. Many people are so fixated on followers that they regard that as “traction,” even when they’ve LEARNED nothing from those “followers” because the encounters are so superficial.

Susan Kuhn Frost suggested not focusing too much on empirical data to support social media efforts, and shared how it has led to new relationships and opportunities for her:

Hi Mitch, I personally look at social media as relationship building, learning, and opportunity seeking. I would say that as I understand it more, I change what I do to seek a better return. So I don’t burden it with too much demand for measurable success in the beginning. I value the learning process as much as I value the results it brings. That said, I am looking essentially to create and sieze new opportunities. Conversations, visits to my blog, comments on my blog, signups to my e-mail list are all indicators that I am moving in the right direction, and as I get better I expect these indicators to go up. But I have had many “successes” that don’t follow that path, but come strictly out of individual relationships. So, my “metrics” are about relationships: — richer relationships with people I know but don’t see much, but who I now work more frequently with,– new relationships that develop online and lead to in person working relationships and opportunities, — learning from (and access to) leaders in several fields which increases my value, — building relationships with people in other countries, esp. England and Australia, whom I learn from– being more able to help others because I have access to so many people and information…

Dirk Johnson of ROI Websites was having none of it. He feels that in most cases social media can’t justify the spend and as a result will fall to budget cuts.

I think that every business is going to establish their own criteria for “success” with this. Things like event promotion and event communication fall into the productivity category, and are not really in the lead generation category. Nothing wrong with that, but if someone is at an “event”, (however that is defined, online, etc), and
tweeting, then they are already on the radar screen. Maybe I am reading that one wrong.

In the end though, it really all comes down to lead generation/sales/ROI.

A $50K per year employee typically needs to generate ten to twenty times that amount of new sales to justify their seat. That is a very tall order, in a lot of situations. Can a newly hired “social networker”, usually new to the business, generate a million bucks in new sales inside Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter?

It might happen. If not, then they are just more overhead.

You just might be hiring a genuine slacker that views the Web and social networks as entertainment. Many of these postings are aimed directly at attracting that type of person as applicants.

Despite all the Kool-aid being drunk over this subject, this could all just evaporate as a business fad as quickly as it has come on. Mainly due to follower overload, etc. At some point, there becomes too much info to follow, and so most of us begin to ignore most of it.

Again, I know it works in certain environments, but the call for real, verifiable ROI will only get louder from now on, as the costs of doing all of this start to hit the bottom line.

Mayra Ruiz-McPherson – @marketingmisfit — talks about a “sphere of influence” (SOI) as opposed to ROI:

At the recent BlogPotomac event held a few weeks ago, someone (I think one of the speakers) shared or coined the phrase “SOI” for “Sphere of Influence” vs. “ROI” for “Return of Investment.” And I think the SOI term is actually really rather far, far more accurate, more so than ROI which implies some kind of direct monetary return which is *not* what the social web is meant to do or cause, no matter HOW much marketers or sales people or CEOs and senior execs wish it would. Social networks were primarily established for folks to communicate and share information. It is us, the marketing/PR/sales peeps, who are imposing ROI-type of expecations onto a scene that actually openly rejects being sold to.

Yes, there are definite cases where participating in the social web can lead to ROI; not negating that at all. However, the primary focus should be SOI and SOI should directly and indirectly facilitate ROI over time. Just as in real life … sales people have to establish connections, develop/build/nurture relationships and at some point … the fruit of these efforts may *or may not* materialize into sales leads. Ideally we’d love for every sales person to convert every sales lead into a revenue generating account. BUT that is not always realistic … and this scenario also applies to the social web. Not sure why folks can’t translate these every day sales-related scenarios onto the social web … seems like lots of folks believe that simply by engaging on the social scene, soon they’ll see lots of $$$ trickling in in a matter of days or weeks. Not the case. Possible??? Yes …but shouldn’t be expected just like non-virtual/real life sales/biz dev scenarios.

Based on my experiences handling social media activities for clients over the last 24 months, there is no question social media contributes to sales and revenue growth. It’s not always easy to measure, and it does take time. Mark Hausman of Strategic wrote a good post last month where he talks about quantifiable ROI as the “last mile.” We’ve had clients who could show a direct correlation between social media activity and lead generation. But we’ve also had clients who experience the value of social media in harder to quantify ways.

GovDelivery uses their widely followed Twitter stream (over 1450 followers) to provide near real-time customer support. Their excellent corporate blog has also led to media opportunities for their CEO, Scott Burns, who had become a “go-to” guy on all questions Government 2.0.

TANDBERG public sector has also used its new public sector blog to highlight the company’s leadership in government video teleconferencing. The blog focuses entirely on government video, and helped land a profile piece in this month’s Washington Technology.

David Kellogg also writes an excellent thought leadership blog on enterprise search for his company Mark Logic.

For Microsoft’s State and Local business group, what began as a YouTube channel is becoming an online community. Strategic launched The Bright Side of Government to help Microsoft collect user generated videos from state and local customers. It has become such a strong brand that it is being expanded into a full online community, with a blog, open forums and multiple social distribution channels.

Enterprise deal capture can also be supported via social media. While I can’t give specifics, Strategic has helped clients through a prioritization of key deals they are pursuing, and then an intensive social media audit of the participation patterns of the prospects. We then help our clients engage the prospects in their chosen online environment.

So is quantifying the sales benefits of social media difficult? You bet! But as you travel down the social media road towards the last mile, a lot of positive things will happen.

SRO Crowd at Public Communication Roundtable

This morning I attended a packed Public Communication event put on by the Federal Consulting Group and GovDelivery. Over 120 government PA Officers and IT and Web Managers came to hear how agencies are using new digital channels and automated email alerts to better share their content with the public. We heard from a panel of experts who are really “walking the walk” when it comes to using technology in innovative ways to better disseminate their content.

Sheila Campbell is Team Leader for USA.gov’s Web Best Practices and oversees their Gov Gab blog. The ground-breaking blog just celebrated its first birthday. Sheila shared with the audience the many reasons for launching a blog — public access, exposing more people to your content, giving government a human face, SEO, opening up your culture and engaging more citizens in conversation. She also addressed some of the perceived barriers to 2.0 tools like blogs, all of which can be addressed — legal, privacy, security, authenticity of content and employee access to 2.0 applications. Sheila told us it’s all about managing risk vs. the public benefit of new communication channels.

Jeff Morin is Senior Web Editor for the EPA. The success story he shared was around the online promotion the EPA gave to Earth Day last April. He described how the agency created a “Green Tip of the Day,” that citizens could subscribe to during the countdown to Earth Day. That feature eventually became the Earth Day widget, which people could download and place on their sites. The most popular tips were also made into audio podcasts that could be easily shared. Together these new applications produced over 300,000 additional visitors to the EPA web site.

Maxine Teller is New Media Strategist for the Department of Defense, New Media Directorate. She was all about video — videos to support Warrior Care Month. She pointed out that 65% of the members of the armed forces were born in 1982 or later, meaning they’ve grown up in a digital culture. The Directorate’s use of online video began for that internal audience, but has since also been shared externally. The Directorate uses GovDelivery email alerts to alert subscribers whenever new video or other content is updated. Starting in July 2007 with GovDelivery, they already have accumulated 47,000 subscribers, and over 300,000 emails have been sent supporting Warrior Care Month. Maxine also described a very smart program called Bloggers Roundtable, in which the Directorate gives access to senior level military officials to hundreds of bloggers, who then post the information to their readers.

The Q&A was lively, but I didn’t take notes since I was shooting some video interviews — hope to have those up soon. If you’re in this space definitely register for the next event — but do it early!

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Government 2.0 — It’s Not Just the Feds

Earlier this week I brokered a conversation between two people I knew would hit it off. Pam Broviak is an online publisher, Director of Public Works for LaSalle, Illinois and a leading thinker about Government 2.0 at the local level. She put together a few months ago a group called MuniGov 2.0, which already boasts an impressive membership list: https://sites.google.com/site/munigov20/Home

Zach Stabenow is co-founder of GovDelivery, a company (and client) that automates, personalizes and delivers digital communications solely for public sector clients. GovDelivery has government customers large and small, from agencies like DHS and DoJ to cities like Ann Arbor, Charlotte and Palo Alto. Zach focuses on state and local for GovDelivery, and in fact knew a good number of MuniGov 2.0 members.

Both Pam and Zach agreed some kind of central repository of best 2.0 practices at the local level is needed, and in fact that is what Pam hopes her group becomes. Pam and MuniGov partner Bill Greeves have started a Muni group on GovLoop, but that group (an excellent resource) is more federally focused. Both Pam and Zach report a lot more interest and willingness to learn about 2.0 tools at local levels, especially transit authorities. Today the interest comes from inside government departments, not so much from elected officials.

Pam talked about how Government 2.0 can seem a little intimidating when someone is just starting out. Zach said what often helps there is GovDelivery’s multi-tenant SaaS platform, which allows government clients to just worry about the message, not the technology. GovDelivery has just added the ability to support tag clouds, blog management and cross-agency promotion of content to the platform, making adoption very easy for clients.

Pam shared a great Twitter story that struck me as innovative and simple at the same time. There was a major construction project in the city of LaSalle that was causing traffic congestion in a particular housing subdivision. To keep the residents as informed as possible, Pam started a Twitter stream with constant construction updates of project progress. Eventually even the contractor and the local paper were following the stream. So simple, yet how many departments of public works would think to do it?

If you’ve got information to share on 2.0 efforts at the local level, drop a comment or consider joining Pam’s group.

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Talking Government 2.0

Last week I took part in a fascinating discussion around Government 2.0, i.e. the use of Web 2.0 tools by government agencies. I connected my client Scott Burns of GovDelivery with Mark Drapeau, who has made a name for himself locally by blogging on Government 2.0 on Mashable. Mark is an Associate Research Fellow at the National Defense University’s Center for Technology and National Security Policy, and here’s a link if you haven’t read any of his stuff: http://mashable.com/author/mark-drapeau/.

GovDelivery had just released some new 2.0 functionality (http://tinyurl.com/3oyavw) for government clients and that was the original purpose for the call. But the conversation went far beyond that announcement, starting with Mark’s frustration with the status of 2.0 in government and even the term itself. He feels there is a lot more talk than action in DC around Government 2.0, and that many have learned the buzzwords but few are implementing. In his view government is very detached from a lot of the exciting things happening in places like Silicon Valley, Boston and New York.

So what does the term mean exactly? Mark and Scott distilled it down to “using new technologies for better communication between people,” which is pretty easy to understand. Unfortunately Mark feels government is NOT really taking advantage of social software for better communication internally or externally.

He mentioned some exceptions, and highlighted NASA’s CoLab project, which he later posted on. Scott pointed out that there are a lot of government success stories out there, but GovDelivery began with a focus on helping government agencies improve “the basics” of communication with the public first, and is now working in more 2.0 features. Here’s how he laid out the process the company has followed:

• Establish a secure, multi-tenant Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that automates, personalizes and ensures the delivery of government emails
• Offer RSS feeds and APIs so additional channels can be pulled into government web sites
• Beta launch the 2.0 Collaboration Network (earlier this year), which allows agencies to cross-promote topics of interest during the subscription process, a kind of Amazon “others liked this” feature that results in big increases in subscriber numbers
• Add the ability to easily implement blog management and tag clouds, and start to bring the citizen into the conversation

Scott and Mark tossed around some really interesting ideas. Possible projects included a wiki that contains best practices for start ups, a series of posts around how to gradually implement 2.0 functions into an agency’s communication strategy, and pulling together recommendations on how government decision-makers can get in better touch with early stage technology companies.

Whether you call it Government 2.0 or not, there is a lot of innovation going on around better communication with citizens. And these two guys will continue to be leaders around the issue.

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The Key Ingredient for Thought Leadership — Thoughts

Thought leadership is very important in public relations. It is incredibly powerful when your client is seen an an expert in his or her field, and it makes earned media coverage much easier to secure.

But sometimes clients assume that thought leadership is simply a process PR pros have mastered, when it really starts with them. Some can’t devote much time to PR activities that don’t specifically tout their company. Others are very conservative with public statements, and avoid taking a clear position on issues affecting their market.

That may be appropriate in certain situations, but it does not lead to thought leadership.

Successful thought leadership requires four things:

• Deep market understanding

• Time invested into supporting the PR effort

• The willingness and ability to articulate interesting positions on relevant issues

• The ability to execute quickly

Recently one of my clients had a success that demonstrates well how the process can work. The client is GovDelivery, and Scott Burns is the CEO and Co-Founder. www.govdelivery.com

A couple of months ago there was an excellent post from Tim Lee in Ars Technica about a research paper out of Princeton University. Basically the paper was saying that government web sites were failures and the focus should be on sharing better structured information directly with the public: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080603-study-gov-websites-should-focus-on-rss-xmlnot-redesigns.html

Because GovDelivery serves so many federal, state and local government entities, Scott has a clear, front line understanding of the challenges government web masters face. While the Princeton paper raised some good points, it is flat out wrong about the failure of government web sites to serve the public.

So Scott invested the time to write a detailed post on his Reach the Public blog, clearly expressing his views and taking issue with the Princeton paper:

http://govdelivery.com/blog/2008/06/structured-content-has-benefit.html

That post in turn attracted the attention of Federal Computer Week, which offered Scott a contributed article based on his blog post. The column ran on August 4:

http://www.fcw.com/print/22_24/comment/153323-1.html

Know your market, invest the time, articulate an interesting position — and then execute. This kind of success is exactly what we mean at Strategic Communications Group when we talk about “great work for great clients.”

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Chateauneuf-du-Kick Off Meeting

Ok, so a week after saying this job doesn’t often mix business and wine it happens again. Tuesday night we conducted a kick-off meeting with Scott and Jennie from our new client GovDelivery.  With relatively little fanfare, this company has become the dominant provider of email and digital subscription management services delivered. These services are made available via a software as a service (SaaS) platform.

What does all that mean? It means that millions of citizens can interact electronically with government, at the federal, state and local levels. They receive highly personalized emails on topics they have requested, receiving vital information on national security, drug testing and when the local bridge will be under construction. GovDelivery clients include the Department of State, the Department of Commerce, the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis and the British Parliament. You’ll be hearing more about them soon.

After the launch meeting we went down the street to Ray’s the Classics, sister restaurant of Ray’s the Steaks in Arlington VA. It’s an excellent place that offers better food and value than the the old-line steak places. Here’s the Washingtonian review.

So there are four of us, three ordering steak. What’s best to order to please everyone? Decided on Chateauneuf-du-Pape at a moderately expensive price point the waiter — who was solid and old school — confirmed was good. It was — very flavorable but medium body, tart but not overly, strong enough to complement the meat but not overpowering or tannic. Not amazing, but very solid. And most importantly, the client seemed to enjoy it!

Chateauneuf is in the southern part of the Rhone Valley and can vary a lot due to it being a mixture of different grapes, not straight Syrah. This one was a:

Domaine Paul Autard, Chateauneuf-du-Pape 2005

Probably retails for around $30-$35. It shouldn’t disappoint, and neither should Ray’s, whether the Silver Spring or Arlington locations.