March 26, 2010

Making Sure You Count

Mar. 26, 2010 at 12:38 PM | By Kate Malone | Comment Count

While some industries have taken a long time to catch onto social media, the government in particular always seems to lag behind the rest of us. It took matters of national security for the military to finally take steps to establish guidelines for its use. Most recently the Census Bureau is trying something new- a public relations campaign for the 2010 census.

In many ways, the Census Bureau faces the same problems as any admissions department – trying to start a dialog and encourage people to take specific actions. In other ways it faces its own unique challenges – trying to reach every single person in the country. As the Census occurs only every 10 years, this is the first year that the Bureau has employed a social media campaign. A very comprehensive campaign at that. With a presence on every major site (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, blog), the Bureau is maximizing its reach.

When I came across this article, I thought the most interesting thing about it was that I hadn’t heard there was any social media presence at all. The Census outreach that I’ve seen has mostly consisted of traditional advertising- bus ads, people stationed outside of Metro stops and the mail sent to my house. Since their target audience is all US citizens and I pay close attention to the goings on in the social media world, I feel like I should have known about this earlier.

I think the problem lies in having a useful product but poor promotion. I cannot recall any of the ads, signs or mail that I’ve received directing me to website, much less a social media site. From what I can tell, the Facebook site has been useful to many people, who can ask questions through Facebook and even see how the census data is used. Why not spend more effort in directing people to these resources? Even a quick scan of the census website shows social media takes a backseat- the social media icons are small and hard to find amidst all the other text. It’s easy to think that just having a Facebook page or blog will be enough to reap the benefits that come from social media. But it’s equally, if not more important to direct people to your site through more traditional forms of advertising.