Government 2.0: What’s your brand?

Fascinating article by Mark Drapeau.

Mark starts by reminding public sector workers that when you use the new tools, everything you do is open to sharing, interpretation and re-use. That affects your brand. He also says that you have to ask yourself the basics before adopting web 2.0 tools, starting with “What’s my message?” When it comes to my profession, I’ve had conversations with politicians from all political persuasions who fail to establish why they want to adopt web 2.0 tools. Their message is usually, “look everyone I have a twitter feed.”

Mark’s got a really interesting analysis on how US departments are using Twitter. Departments either tweet as enterprises of empowered individuals within departments. And the two approaches to using the medium generate different results:

“Currently, there is a dichotomy in government Twitter usage. Of the roughly 50 Enterprise and 25 Empowered Individual government users I keep track of , while on average each has been using Twitter for three months, they have opposite usage patterns. The median number of followers that an Enterprise has is 127, versus 57 for an Empowered Individual. Similarly, the median “grade” given at the new site Twitter Grader was 58 vs. 35 (scale of 0-100).