Best of 2015 from Global Voices

Global Voices is an interesting site with content on a variety of sites all over the world.

Click on image for list of posts

 

It is worth following for insights from different perspectives.

Curation Contributes to Amazing Instagram Account

According to Mashable one government agency, the Interior Department, has Instagram figured out. This image is of the super moon in late June. "Beautiful photo of the #Moon over #TurretArch in #Arches National Park last night." Take a look at their Instagram account and marvel at the images that document the natural beauty of the United States. Don't the images make you want to visit some of these places? And maybe submit a photo to their summer contest (2013)? Notice that the contest is posted on the White House blog. Interior has a news page, but I don't find a blog. The White House would probably have more followers anyway!

Huff Post calls it "an impressively well-curated Instagram account." Director of Digital Strategy Tim Fullerton  explained some of their practices to Mashable.

Their Instagram page has over 200,000 followers at present, another testimony to the power of the channel. And their social media concentration on Instagram suggests a good understanding of the channels available.

First posted July 1, 2013. Updated March 11, 2014.

Is the New DARPA Search Engine for Good-or for Mischief?

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has posted a proposal and descriptions of a new project called Memex. According to the RRP the project "envisions a new paradigm, where one can quickly and thoroughly organize a subset of the Internet relevant to one's interests." That's being translated as a deeper dive into content than existing search engines.

Media Post says that the search engine will initially be used to organize content from many platforms about human trafficking. The aim is to uncover trafficking strategies and presumably human traffickers. The objective is clearly a social good.

What about the underlying technology? How else can it be used? The name apparently was taken from the classic article by Vannevar Bush in which he argues for using the collective wisdom of the ages.

How do we feel about more 'big data' in the hands of government?

Creating Brand Personality for the Mars Curiosity Rover

I'm one of 1.49 million followers of NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity on Twitter. That’s a hefty following, whether for a government agency or for a robot millions of miles away!

It’s fascinating on several dimensions. What Curiosity is doing is interesting, even to the non-scientist.  As a marketer I’m intrigued by the way in which the NASA communications people have established and consistently executed a delightful brand personality.  A little digging shows it to be no accident.

The social media team is led by Veronica McGregor who has been Tweeting  for NASA  since the Mars Phoenix in 2008. Most NASA missions have a Twitter feed, so there is considerable institutional knowledge. One thing the rover teams learned early on was that first person was more engaging than third. It’s also easier to humanize the vehicle and give it a personality. The Mars has frequently been described as “sassy.” McGregor told Forbes:

“Back when Twitter was new, we tried tweeting both ways – in the first and third person. We always got more feedback when we were in first person. It’s also an advantage given the 140 character limit – ‘I am’ is a lot shorter than ‘The spacecraft is.’”
“It’s easier to anthropomorphize rovers,” added Smith. “The cameras make it look like she has eyes. So it’s tempting to think of the rover as a bodacious chick on the surface of another planet with a rock vaporizing laser on her head.

The rover started Tweeting on November 19, 2008 with a naming contest announced by Pixar robot WALL-E. Curiosity was suggested by a Kansas 6th grader, won the online voting, and was announced by NASA in March 2009. All pretty standard stuff–effective in generating awareness of the mission but time consuming. Curiosity’s Facebook page was started in mid-2010; the actual Mars landing was August 2011. So, as usual, this is no social media fluke. It took time, lots of effort, and a real understanding of social media and the various target audiences who might be interested.

How do the three women on the team do it? Have they made any mistakes in execution? This Bloomberg video gives a lot of insight into those questions.

What constitutes a good brand personality? Brand consultancy Amicus identifies key dimensions:

1. Demonstrates a Brand’s Passion and Expertise … Defining the Brand’s Ultimate Purpose and Differentiating It from the Competitive Set.
2. Creates an Affinity with Targeted Customer Segments … Touching and Energizing their Motivations.
3. Projects the Brand’s Core Values and Beliefs … Describing How Customer’s can Expect to be Treated.
4. Communicates an Over-Arching Tone, Style, and Attitude about the Brand’s Experience and Customer Interactions.

They go on to say, “Personality gives a brand dimension and depth. It can breathe life into inanimate images. It can be the cornerstone for service delivery … and connecting emotionally with customers.”

The personality must carry through at all touchpoints to be effective, It must also persist over time, although it can grow and develop, just like a real personality. The Mars Curiosity Rover is still going strong--and still tweeting--almost 2 years later. It recently sent back an image of Earth as seen from Mars. The tiny speck in all that space is awe-inspiring.



The @MarsCuriosity team makes it look easy. It takes consistent creativity over time which is not easy to sustain. We can all learn a lot from them!

First published on Nov. 6, 2012. Updated Dec 7 2012 and Feb 11, 2014.

Snow in Atlanta—on Facebook and Twitter

It’s late morning on Thursday, January 30—two days after the paralyzing snow storm in the South. Atlanta, of course, is the poster child. I’ve been looking around, and there is plenty of both good and bad social media to go around.

First on the “good list” has to be the SnowedInAtlanta Facebook page. It was started by an experienced Facebook user, Michelle Sollicito who lives in Marietta, GA. Looking at her page, it looks like she started it about 4:45 p.m. on Tuesday.  As I write this Thursday morning the page has over 55 thousand followers.

At this moment it is still quite active, much of it with people inquiring about road conditions. Over the past 2 days it has been filled with requests for information and help but also with people offering to help people stranded in nearby areas, people who have welcomed children home or found missing relatives, even a lost cat who wandered into someone’s home. 

Notice that Michelle has pinned today’s emergency management report to the top of the page. If you read further you find that the page has spawned a large number of neighborhood-specific pages to systematize the process of getting the right type of help to the people who need it. Also note the petition (on the White House site) to honor Michelle for her unstinting effort over the last almost-48 hours.

There is also “plenty of blame to go around” on social media. Can we have civility—not northerners goading southerners for not being able to handle the rare ice or snow storm? And government officials like Mayor Reed certainly should not respond to uncivil and ill-informed posts from outside his city/state.

Mayor Reed @KasimReed may never recover from his post on Monday that says that Atlanta is ready for the snow storm. Both government officials and corporate execs take note! His tweets have changed their tone in the past two days—some informative, more retweeting information from state and local agencies. He (or more probably his staff) have also been careful to retweet items (from political followers?) who are reporting what great shape some parts of the city are in!

Governor Deal @GovernorDeal doesn’t score any higher on my “good use of twitter” scale. He will have a hard time living down the tweet at 3:05 p.m. on January 28 touting his introduction of Mayor Reed as he won the Georgian of the Year award. The next tweet was the twitter page announcement of the emergency declaration at 7:42 p.m. that evening.  Beginning on January 29 there are an uncountable number of retweets mostly from the Georgia DOT and the 511 reporting line. Those are useful information, but putting all them on the governor’s page makes it hard to find anything of value.  Michelle’s solution of links to area-specific information makes a lot more sense (quel surprise!!!).

We all owe a great debt of gratitude to citizens like Michelle, especially those who jump in to provide important services when our government fails us.

Politicians should train their staffs in the effective use of social platforms. It might also be wise to train them in what improves the politician’s brand image and what makes them look venal and self-serving.