What form should a government blog take?
There’s an excellent and very active discussion over at Adriel Hampton’s blog regarding, Templating a Government 2.0 Blog.
The discussion ranges beyond the pure technical and moderation challenges of establishing a blog (which are very easy to overcome) and into the mindset of government.
In fact my view of the discussion is that setting up and running a blog is easy – changing government’s approach to support blogging is the tough part.
Fortunately there are now many excellent examples of well-established government blogs so it is clearly possible to change government mindsets.
As a side issue, per Phillip Sheldrake’s post at Marcoms professionals, Continuous engagement… the death of market research, it is important to differentiate between a blog and market research, or as is very clearly stated in a post over at Online Consultation, Market research is not community engagement.
Blogs are designed to continually engage and live for a sustained period of time. Market research generally takes place periodically, occurring over shorter periods.
So you’re establishing a ‘blog’ simply to ask questions for a limited period, you should clearly consider its goals and whether you’re simply using a blog-like format for market research, or are actually created an ongoing dialogue with your audience – a blog.
The difference in goals may influence your approach in order to maximise the effectiveness of the medium, and avoid audience confusion when audience expectations may not be met.
Thanks for the reference to Municipalist! Love to get connected to Australian bloggers and Gov 2.0’ers. Love your blog. Stay in touch! — Craig Colgan, Washington, D.C. http://www.municipalist.com
Will do!
I read your blog regularly Craig