February 2, 2011
Devastating Spill, Devastating Feelings
Originally published on The Huffington Post on January 28, 2011.
“I didn’t know what to do with myself”
“I have to make house payments and boat payments”
“I worry about myself and my wife. I don’t know how we can make it.”
“What can I do to survive?…I have a thousand questions and no answers…this problem is the worst of my life!”
These poignant quotes are from Gulf residents who were profiled in the final report released by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill two weeks ago. Led by Co-Chairs Senator Bob Graham and Bill Reilly, the Commission was charged by President Obama to determine the causes of the disaster and recommend reforms.
The gut-wrencher for me was Chapter Six. It delves into the impact of the spill — not just on nature and the economy — but on human health (both physical and mental). Shortly after the spill, many coastal residents reported being stressed, worried and sad. Reports of domestic violence increased. And in one study, parents reported that more than one-third of their children were suffering mental or physical health effects.
And the long term impacts? The report acknowledges that many of the long-term psychological effects of the oil spill remain unknown. But we do know from other disasters –including Katrina — that depression, substance abuse and psychological disorders can disrupt people’s lives for years to come.
Filed under: Campaigns, Federal Government Communications, Uncategorized
Tags: Campaigns, Gulf Oil Spill, Mental Health, U.S. Surgeon General
December 9, 2010
YouTube: Best Practices & Tips for Success
Does your YouTube channel need a boost? We have a few tips to share…
Last week, the Ad Council and Google hosted a seminar on some best practices for YouTube. We tried to go beyond the basics and covered things like analytics, increasing traffic to your channel and the latest tools.
Our top-notch panel included YouTube, Blue State Digital, It Gets Better Project, EPA, and Natural Resources Defense Council.
Click here for the presentations…and before you go, a few tips:
YouTube’s Roy Daiany (Display Account Manager) covered “7 Ways To Get Your Videos Discovered”:
- Categorize and Tag Your Content
- Add annotations, captions, subtitles
- Get Interactive with Google Moderator
- Share Your Uploads & Channel Activity
- Enable Embedding
- Add Subscribe Button to Your Website
- Utilize Paid Media (things like Pre-Roll InStream, InVideo Overlay, banners)
- Track Your Performance with YouTube Insight
Blue State Digital discussed the wildly successful It Gets Better Project which was recently created to inspire hope for LGBT teenagers facing harassment. Within two months, this project–which started with one YouTube video–turned into a worldwide movement, inspiring over 5000 user-created videos and over 15 million views. How did they do so much so quickly?
- Create a simple page that could capture emails and collect videos
- Work with YouTube’s API
- Help keep the barrier to entry low
- Make the page shareable over social networks like Facebook and Twitter
Kay Morrison from EPA, talked about the unique challenges facing Federal agencies—things like 508 requirements, disclaimers, cookies and copyright issues.
And the Natural Resources Defense Council provided some great case studies and discussed the Hot Spot tool. That’s where you can view the ups-and-downs of viewership at each moment in your video. Bottom line? Keep your video short (no more than 1 ½ minutes) and display your “call to action” throughout your video, not at the end.
And finally, we didn’t cover what makes a good YouTube video but you can learn more by viewing a previous webinar (hosted by GSA’s Web Manager University) that featured YouTube’s Steve Grove (Head of News and Politics). I like these points in particular:
What if I don’t have any resources?
- Use a Flip cam
- Build a hub, aggregate content
- Find volunteers on YouTube
- Get local schools (civics classes) to do video projects for govt.
- Use slide shows/animations if you don’t have video
- It doesn’t have to be glamorous…just authentic!
Filed under: Campaigns, Communications, Federal Government Communications, Internet, New Media, Social Media
Tags: changing behavior, Social Media, Website Traffic, YouTube
November 9, 2010
Are you ready for a challenge?
Yesterday, the Ad Council, Google and GSA’s Center for New Media & Citizen Engagement hosted a panel on Federal Government challenges. Challenges can be a great way to promote open government and innovation and take many forms—idea suggestions, creation of logos, videos, games, mobile apps, etc.
Panelists from USDA, NASA, HHS and ChallengePost talked about the do’s and don’ts, how to get started, best practices, legalities, ROI, etc.
To start–GSA has created a great platform–www.challenge.gov—which allows agencies to post challenges. They’ve listed 40 different challenges and you can sort by time left, prize amount, agency of topic. For a fact sheet on Challenge.gov and other resources provided by GSA, click here.
If you want the cliff notes version, here are some helpful tweets from the event:
- Challenges are a great way to tap into a community outside the beltway.
- Consider: Do you want challenge to engage large orgs or small/individuals? What resources will they need to compete?
- Challenges have big ROI in aggregate of submissions.
- Many challenges are half R&D, half marketing/awareness.
- Most difficult thing about Challenge? It’s the anxiety of not knowing what you will get at the end!
- Challenge winners should retain status & recognition.
- Value of Data or Apps challenges is in the totality of all the submissions and not only the winners
- Tech problems usually need hard $ incentive. A challenge about awareness may do fine w/ nonmonetary incentives
- High prizes may discourage community participation as it raises the appeal for professionals rather than do gooder’s
- What’s the right incentive/prize? Depends. People motivated by status, recognition, competition, not just $.
- Check out EPA “GameDay” challenge as way to do behavior change. Find it at http://challenge.gov/EPA
- 3 ways to do intellectual property in #challenges: submitter keeps rights, rights transferred to agency, creative commons.
- 90% of entries come in last 48 hours of a challenge.
Filed under: Federal Government Communications, Internet, Social Media
Tags: crowdsourcing, Online Contests
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