#TBT: Government Marketing in an Age of Social Media

I've started to do some "Throw Back Thursday" (#TBT) type updates of old posts. This is a fun concept from Instagram and Facebook, and I thought I'd try it here.

This is one of my first blog posts back in 2007. Pretty terrible, no headline, etc.

Clearly, the impact of social media has changed from those early days.

...I recently moderated a panel discussion at a AMA-DC event in downtown DC entitled "Government Marketing in an Age of Social Media". The panelists (Jay McCargo, Toni Lee Rudnicki and Mark Root) were in general agreement that there has been minimal impact of "social media" among government marketers. However, all three agreed that web 2.0 marketing techniques will become more acceptable in time among the government contracting community.

This article in GCN backs this theory up: Web 2.0: Second verse, different than the first

Spring Reading

I am procrastinating on my annual bout of spring cleaning. It's only March, I know. But I feel like I'm already ready for May! How about you?

While you are daydreaming about summer, take a few minutes and read these five must-read marketing articles:

1. 16 Copywriting Mistakes You’re Probably Making (and How to Fix Them), Shanelle Mullin
2. Report: More than half of app users bail within 30 days of download, Fierce CMO
3. What's hot in B2B website design, Patrick Goreman
4. 50 Split Testing Ideas (You Can Run Today!) Neil Patel
5. What’s Next? 8 Trends I’m Excited About, Medium

Want to learn more about Honeycomb and how we are helping our clients address their strategic and tactical marketing priorities? Feel free to call me anytime.

Lead Generation? You Are Not Doing It Right.

Lead Generation is the Most Important Thing for B2B marketers. Are you doing it right? Probably not.

Spending all day on social media and getting no results should tell you something. Are you integrating marketing with sales? Are you creating compelling content that is targeted to specific issues?

Learn more by reading this fine post...

5 Keys to Revolutionary Lead Generation - The Cogent Coach

Reading List - June 7

Here are the articles and posts I've been reading...quite a hodgepodge. Read anything interesting lately? Send me the link at jeff@honeycomb-consulting.com

B-to-g marketers leverage social media to build relationships with federal employees - Direct Marketing News


The 5 Pillars of Social Media Strategy by Brian Solis, on the Networking Exchange Blog

Top 50 #Mobile Twitter Influencers by Jen Cohen on SAP's mobile blog

The 8 Keys to Successful Branding - Why 'Mad Men' and Whisky Are Not Going To Cut It by Matt Symonds, Forbes


Why the surge in obesity? - Consider the Evidence

Summary- the obesity epidemic started in 1980. The only variable changed around the same time is Calories in the Food Supply. Everything else that can plausibly explain the nation's weight gain- levels of exercise, hours spent TV watching, sedentary jobs, daily commutes in cars- aren't correlated with the change in adult obesity rates around 1980. Basically, everyone in America started eating more, a lot more, around 1980.

St. Bernanke's Fight Against the Deflation Dragon By Lance Roberts of Streettalk Live

Excuse me for geeking out on the economics front for a moment, but this is an excellent article on, what I think is a very much overlooked part of our troubles, the collapse of the velocity of money, which has happened despite the huge increase in the supply of money. Something for all you tea partiers to chew on...

Plus, for all you 99%-ers, check out this chart:

Kind of hard to blame rising inequality on recent events, when this is a trend that started in the late 1970's. Which is also when people started eating too much and getting fat. Coincidence? Correlation?

Why working-class people vote conservative - Jonathan Haidt, The Guardian

And check out the middle finger on the gentleman's book cover. LOL

All Men Can’t Jump - David Stipp, Slate

Quote:

There's no denying it—our kind started substituting brains for brawn long ago, and it shows: We can't begin to compete with animals when it comes to the raw ingredients of athletic prowess. Yet being the absurdly self-enthralled species we are, we crowd into arenas and stadiums to marvel at our pathetic physical abilities as if they were something special. But there is one exception to our general paltriness: We're the right honorable kings and queens of the planet when it comes to long-distance running.

Small is Beautiful in Government Contracting?

The always prescient Nick Wakeman at Washington Technology has a good article out today about trends he is hearing from the market place. Entitled "Welcome to a New Era of Government Contracting", Nick compiles his take-aways from a finance seminar on the government market organized by Raymond James.The pressure to accomplish a mission while cutting costs is impacting government leaders and the contracting industry in some interesting ways...

Is insourcing dead? Is the era of big systems integrators ruling the roost coming to a close? Will the defense cuts save the economy?

These were some of the dominant themes I heard executives and others talking about at investment bank Raymond James' 10th Annual Government Services & Technology Summit on Thursday.

A variety of public and private companies gave presentations on their strategies. Because three presentations were usually going on simultaneously in different rooms, I couldn’t hear all of them, but the ones I did hear often shared similar themes.

The easy one to explain is the death of insourcing. Several executives and other speakers commented that a year ago insourcing was a big concern, but not so much now as Defense Secretary Robert Gates has publicly admitted that the cost savings he envisioned from moving contractor jobs to government jobs did not materialize. 

Well, so much for that effort...however, I think it is indicative that government leaders are getting more creative and experimenting with new methods to cut costs, reorganize processes while maintaining their missions. More...

The theme that people came back to repeatedly was this idea that size and bulk are not the measures of success they once were for government contractors.

Brian Gesuale, senior vice president of Raymond James, used two leading companies of the past decade as examples.

In the mid-2000s, CACI International and SRA International both were rewarded with growing market valuations as they grew. But while they have continued to grow larger, both have seen the value of their stock decline, Gesuale said.

“The supersizing strategy is not the strategy going forward,” he said.

Instead, Gesuale and other speakers emphasized the need to build value by focusing in on niche capabilities that are close to the customer’s mission.

“We want to be close to the flagpole of the agency” is how Vangent CEO Mac Curtis described it during his presentation.

In other words, whatever your company sells, you need to be able to tie it directly to supporting the mission of the agency. 

Well, no truer words have been spoken....

The Changing Landscape: Enterprise

I've been busy over the last few weeks developing a series of events in partnership with the Software and Information Industry Association (www.siia.net) that will take a look at the transformations occurring right now in three critical areas. Each of these areas (enterprise, mobile and security) are wrestling with dramatic change that is raising technology, regulatory, and cultural issues while generating tremendous business opportunities and creating real value for customers. Each of these events will feature insight from panelists with differing perspectives on all of these issues as well as peek into what the future might look like given today’s trends.

The first panel discussion (scheduled for next Tuesday morning) will cover the issues and trends in the changing landscape of enterprise software. Such issues include SaaS, outsourcing, integration complexity, Oracle's acquisition spree, Google's new SaaS app package, etc. A special focus will also be on the impact of change among government enterprises.

If you are going to be around the DC area, please click on the link below and register!

The SIIA Changing Landscape Series: Enterprise

Panelists: Tony DeSomma, Vice President, Oracle Public Sector Practice, BearingPoint
Tom Mazur, VP Government Sales, Lagan
Gary Golding, Edison Venture Fund
Moderator: Jeff Majka, Director of Marketing and Business Development, Strategic Communications Group
Date: July 31, 2007
Time: 8am to 10am
Location: SIIA DC office, 1090 Vermont Avenue, 6^th Floor, Washington DC
Attendees: 50 people
Registration Fee: SIIA members $20/non-members $40

Please register here: http://www.siia.net/events/prereg.asp?eventid=756

Enterprise Amnesia? Jeff Jones wrote about an interesting concept about the short comings of today's model of the enterprise back in June. The title of this post was "Why Faster Systems Can Make Organizations Dumber Faster."Apparently, despite all the many, many software and hardware products designed to make enterprises smarter, there is a gap between what a company knows and what it can act on.

As Jeff says,

"This problem – an inability to locate and act upon what one knows – is getting worse because faster systems are producing information substantially faster than traditional sensemaking algorithms (using these same fast systems) can keep up."

He futher explains what will be needed to close the gap,

"And, if you have been following my blog, this will come as no surprise. Enterprise intelligence is going to have everything to do with such things as semantic reconciliation, persistent context, discoverability, perpetual analytics and incremental learning. All in real time, of course."

Compare this forward thinking problem solving with the news out last Friday in Government Executive:

"Pentagon Still Burdened With Multiple Back-Office Systems"

Right out of the Tofflers' book "Revolutionary Wealth": the speed gap between society and government is going to be a drag on the development of both.

There was a very interesting webinar this morning organized by Washington Technology magazine and featuring Ray Bjorkland of FedSources.

Here is couple of tidbits I found interesting:

• there will be fewer government opportunities over the next few years but those that exist will be bigger
• it is increasingly important to get on an IDIQ contract or get on an existing team
• pure A-76 contracts will be rare, but mostly used for small scale staff augmentation deals
• the impact of the 2008 election will be minimal until the 2009 budget due to the length of the government budgeting cycle (well....duh)
• eGov initiatives seem to have broad based bi-partisan support and won't see much change over the next few years
• IPv6 is not a high risk change for government, but poses a huge managerial and cultural challenge. Will the government develop and implement a viable plan for all the ancillary changes that need to be addressed? Still up the in air.
• there a strong resurgence of interest and budgets in health IT. Electronic health records are driving budget growth as well as funds to directly support warfighter and veterans
• there will be increasing collaboration among government agencies, ie IWIN with DOJ/DHS. However, in the end, most contracts of this sort tend to get driven by one or another of the agencies involved.

As part of my company's new marketing campaign, I've been sitting down with local marketing leaders to pick their brains. My goal has been to develop content that can serve as valuable information, tips, inside scoop and help guides for fellow marketing peers.

My interview with Toni Lee Rudnicki is posted below. Here I'd like to share a video podcast I shot with Mark Root, Executive Director of Corporate Communications at ManTech International. ManTech is a publicly traded (NASDAQ:MANT) IT and technical services firm serving federal government customers. Mark has some very interesting and enlightening nuggets to share about the "how, where, when and why" of government marketing.

Earlier in March I pulled together an event with the local chapter of the American Marketing Association on the impact of "social media" in the government space. The general feeling of the panelists was that the government market was going to be particularly slow in adapting blogs, wikis, twitter and whatnot.

Now there is a McKinsey report profiled on BusinessWeek that shows that corporations in the private sector remain reluctant to embrace "social media." My feeling is that companies and government will do a little experimental toe dipping here and there, but most will stay behind the curve for a while more.

If even a master PR guy like Steve Rubel can get in trouble and have to apologize, imagine how much fear some traditional minded corporate executives are going to have.

It's always interesting to me how the government and it's technology needs interact with the private sector, especially the VC driven tech community. Something like the Internet only occurred because of an long term partnership between government and private companies (and non-profits like universities). But each respective culture couldn't be more different and thus prone to miscommunication.

So here is an article by Irving Berger entitled "The Web and The Long, 'Soft' War" on AlwaysOn. I know he doesn't claim to speak for any particular group, but, to me, Irving's comments are a good insight into perceptions of government by the "tech community."

As I work for a PR agency with a big chunk of clients who are private sector companies selling into the government, we often say that we are translating commercial value propositions into compelling messages tailored for a government purchaser's specific needs. Too often, commercial technology vendors approach the government with a ROI message looking to make a quick buck. These companies often fail to grow their business. It good to read that Irving understands the strengths of government (at times, a long term outlook) as well as it's obvious shortcomings (ponderous slowness and political interference).