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Chapter 2. What is Social Media?

One of GSA's missions is to provide citizens, customers, and partners with easy access to government information and services. 
 

Social media is different from traditional media

Sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and others are the first media that make it easy for anyone to reach large numbers of people without having great resources.  With social media, anyone who can consume information can produce it too.  On social media, information spreads not by broadcast, but through sharing. 

Social media tools can be extremely valuable for collaboration within and across an enterprise by enabling more efficient creation, sharing, and discovery of collective knowledge.  Government is constantly finding ways to use social media tools to communicate with citizens, discover their needs and ideas, deliver services more effectively, and work more efficiently across silos.  To learn more about some of these, you can explore the White House Innovations Gallery.  Here are two things to consider when deciding whether and how to use social media to get your work done.

 

Social media is about putting information where people are looking for it.

One of the Federal Government’s most important missions—especially here at GSA—is to provide citizens, customers, and partners with easy access to Government information and services.  We have many ways of doing this, but the rise of social media means we have to add new tools to our arsenal.  YouTube is now the second largest search engine in the world.  More than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) are shared each month on Facebook.  New Twitter users sign up at a rate of 300,000 per day.  These venues aren’t just where content is discovered, but where it is shared.  That’s why, when GSA publishes information through an article or press release, we also update our official Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/GSA.  It’s why when we want to communicate about the technology programs we make available to Federal agencies, we get the word out through our website, but also through Twitter at http://twitter.com/GSA_ITS.  Social media is a way of making sure that our message is in the places where our citizens, customers, employees, and stakeholders regularly interact, and that it reaches interested audiences we may not even know about.

 

Social media relates directly to GSA's mission of providing great solutions.

Because platforms like Facebook and Twitter are visually appealing, highly social, and often quite fun to use, it’s easy to see them as recreational, or something that stands alongside the “real” work of GSA.  There’s no question that, as with any tool or resource, all supervisors have a duty to ensure that GSA’s use of social media is focused and mission-oriented.  When meeting those criteria, social media can be an incredibly powerful tool, precisely because it connects us directly to such a diversity of audiences and opinions.  A collection of GSA’s social media endeavors can be found at:  http://www.gsa.gov/socialmedia.

Within GSA, there are various ways you can participate in and become more familiar with social media including:

GSA’s Social Media Center – An internal digital town hall where GSA employee can discover and discuss how to effectively use social media to serve GSA's mission.

GSA’s Online University – An internal training site where GSA employees are encouraged to take a Social Media Awareness course and an Ethics & Social Media course.

Salesforce Chatter – An internal platform for GSA employees to engage in conversations and join groups related to social media.

GSA’s Social Media Directory – A place on where anyone can learn about GSA’s Social Media sites and initiatives. A great way to stay updated on the latest news pertaining to social media.

GSA’s Center for Excellence in Digital Government – GSA’s program that works government-wide to help all agencies strengthen their social media practices.

Social Media Account Verification Tool – At this GSA-managed social media registry (available in English and Spanish), anyone can confirm the validity of a variety of government social media accounts.

Types of Social Media (From GSA managed site:  www.howto.gov/social-media)

 

Chapter 3. What "Official Use" Means > >