Why aren't you leveraging mommy bloggers and building your agency's "brand"?
Our friends at Pew keep asking awesome questions! This time, it's Susannah Fox who has posted a brilliant blog post that discusses "Mobile, Social Health at the Library of Medicine."
Susannah was speaking to the senior staff of the National Library of Medicine and their jumping-off point was the Pew Internet Project’s latest research on internet penetration, mobile use, and the social life of health information." In the blog post, Susannah shares her outstanding notes from the meeting, which I recommend as required reading for all folks interested in Gov 2.0. But it's the examples and questions she asks at the end that are so fascinating:
- The FDA and CDC teamed up to spread the word about the Salmonella outbreak last year, fanning out across platforms to get the word out, including the development of a recall widget. How can the NLM leverage the power of mommy-bloggers or their equivalents?
- Health 2.0 Europe was alive with debate about government’s role in health and health care, including some heated exchanges about how to oversee the quality of online information. What if the NLM harnessed American ingenuity and the EU’s information quality focus? One answer: Pillbox
- Google features MedlinePlus among the first results for health condition searches, as we’ve discussed on e-patients.net. Now Google’s top results for drug searches also yield links to NLM pages, as reported by Eileen O’Brien on the SirenSong blog. Should the NLM seek more placements such as these? Should the NLM maintain its own brand or should the National Institutes of Health emerge as the stronger, overall brand?
- Procter & Gamble, among other companies, is scaling up their use of social media and cutting back on traditional market research. Their new research motto can be summarized as: “Listen more than ask.” How can the NLM harness the same techniques?
And these questions aren't only relevant to NLM...I'd like to re-frame them to understand what's happening at your agency:
1. How are you leveraging the power of mommy-bloggers or similar to "spread the word"?
2. How are you harnessing American ingenuity - the wisdom of your targeted crowd?
3. How are you using search engine ad placement?
4. Is your (sub-)agency having to fight for its own unique brand over and against another agency or its parent?
5. How are you "listening more than asking?"
Each probably deserve their own forum, but let's throw 'em out there and see what happens!
Tags: Pew Research Center, geeks gadgets, government 2.0, mobile technology
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Ted McLaughlan on -
Question #1, "leveraging the power of Mommy bloggers" - it's not simply about leveraging this niche, but operating a full-scale Internet Marketing campaign, much as any commercial concern is doing. SEO, PPC, vertical ad networks for both contextual and placed/direct advertising, optimization of messaging on social media and file-sharing sites, etc.. The biggest hurdle, in my opinion though, is the non-real-time, slow-moving governance required for approving budget and content production/distribution onto a real-time driven Internet, where ROI isn't always clear (but can be gauged along many different facets). All "public engagement" and "public relations" departments of many governmant agencies should include dedicated Internet Marketing swimlanes, operating as part of a larger, though updated, marketing and communications strategy (that itself is aligned with an updated digital asset/content management strategy).
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Permalink Reply by Suzanne Heurtin-Roberts on
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Sorry, I'm not an IT person. What's a mommy blogger?
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Permalink Reply by Andrew Krzmarzick on -
Hi Suzanne - essentially a mommy blogger is a woman who is a stay-at-home mom and uses a blog as a platform to (a) talk about her parenting experiences/adventures or (b) builds a web-based business around a niche product or service. This might not be a technical definition, but it's what I understand a mommy blogger to be!
Here's a dialogue between two "Mommy Bloggers" about whether or not the designation fits!
http://www.momunplugged.com/defining-mommy-blogger/
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Permalink Reply by Jay S. Daughtry, ChatterBachs on -
Suzanne, you can also think of it like the term "soccer mom". The sport is not all that important, but it conjures up an image of this demographic in the suburbs with mini-vans. To me the essential issue is... how is word of mouth influencing others? It's not always about big, expensive ad campaigns. Who do you trust? Who are you listening to? Obviously, "mommy bloggers" have the potential to be greatly influential because they have a platform... a place where they're actually giving advice, stating opinions, etc. and can also build their audience through contacts at PTAs, youth sports leagues, ballet lessons, Sunday School, Scout troops, the playground, etc.
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