You may have seen the announcement this week that the official White House site is now linked to various social sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and others. (The box at left shows how the logos and live links from these sites are depicted on the White House website)
As we have seen throughout the election campaign and during President Obama's time in office thus far, this is one president who knows the value and importance of participating in new media. After all, he's still using a secure version of his Blackberry to stay in touch.
The point is that it's critical to stay connected to your audiences. You want your audiences to feel that that they have a place on your site to be part of the "conversation" - to have a say in what's going on.
However, in order for this to work, you'll need a moderator or editor who follows the postings from your audiences. Someone has to vet the content - which can be tricky. You certainly don't want to see anything negative or derogatory posted and if it is, you'll need to handle this carefully as a moderator while at the same time allowing the site to serve its purpose as a social medium. Do what the White House does and keep it on the social site so it's at least one degree removed from your site.
To make this work you must adopt an audience-first perspective, which is not always easy for institutions or organizations conditioned to one-way communication. You may be used to providing feeds but perhaps not to receiving feedback.
For a free consultation on staying connected or on other communications issues, please call us at at 626-799-1996 or email us at info@pcs-strategies.com.
Max Benavidez
President
Public Communications Strategies
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