Follow the highlights of the press conference as they’re tweeted by the attendees. Links to be added later.

Better Buy Project: Better Buy is a joint project of the National Academy of Public Administration and the American Council for Technology-Industry Advisory Council in conjunction with the General Services Administration. The Project is an experiment dedicated to the belief that there’s a lot of room for improvement in the way government buys products and services.

Pic by @kellyolson of @BetterBuyProj team members @marydavie, @ltrudeau, @estherburgess talking with @jmgovit of @fednewsradio at #elc09

Marc Hausman

An interesting blog post by Marc Hausman of Strategic Communications Group got me to thinking. In his post he admits that one of their social media campaigns is not delivering on all 8-cylinders for their client. Although results are far ahead of expectations when it comes to creating awareness and positioning they fell far short of expectations in generating leads.

Exploiting one of the primary advantages social media affords companies, it’s adaptability, Marc’s firm has decided to add a Webinar into the mix in an effort to communicate more formally with the social media “audience” they’ve established. Trying to convert Webinar attendees into actual prospects is a far cry easier than herding the cats roaming across social networks, the twitter-verse, and elsewhere online. It’s a great idea.

Marc went on to explain that clients want and expect measurable “results” from their investment in social media. I don’t blame them for trying. The problem is in setting realistic expectations. I don’t believe anyone can predict how valuable engaging with clients and strangers on social media platforms will ultimately be for any given company.

Communicating via social media is akin to “being there”. By that I mean the same “being there” that you experience when attending a conference, trade show, or professional networking event. There must be great value in “being there” or no one would invest the time and money it requires to attend these offline networking opportunities. We’ve all heard the phrase, “it only takes one new client…”.

So my advice to Marc’s clients is to be patient with efforts to position your firm as one that is an industry leader and active member of the community. As long as you are doing no harm, keeping your investment within your comfort range, and continuing to see growth in connections, subscribers, attendees, etc…, it should prove to be a better investment than any traditional form of media can deliver.

Marc’s blog: Strategic Guy

Follow Marc on Twitter: @StrategicGuy

For the highlights visit Valerie’s page on Public Relations Examiner at: examiner.com – valeriesimon

WARNING! SOCIAL MEDIA IS ADDICTIVE

Just wade through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or numerous other sites and you’ll spot addicts who can’t seem to pull away from their keyboards long enough to take a ____. <@dcoakley is wondering why writing this is feeling so therapeutic? #twitteraholic>

Yes, there are plenty of automated spam machines designed to spoil the party, but there are some humans that are actually competitive with these machines. I suppose it’s the rush of getting new followers, friends, replies, or comments some other form of attention. Whatever it is there are millions of people addicted or bordering on addiction.

So enter into the world of GovCon 2.0 with your eyes wide open and your objectives clearly spelled out. You can benefit from social media, but like your mom always said, “do everything in moderation”.

The video below is from the Social Media Addicts Association. I encourage you to watch it to help you understand just how bad it can get. (2:26)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Some random twitterholic, not me..

To better understand where the term “GovCon 2.0″ came from it’s helpful to look at the term “Web 2.0″ and what it means.

Wikipedia defines Web 2.0 this way:

“Web 2.0” refers to web development and web design that facilitates interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Examples of Web 2.0 include web-based communities, hosted services, web applications, social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashups and folksonomies. A Web 2.0 site allows its users to interact with other users or to change website content, in contrast to non-interactive websites where users are limited to the passive viewing of information that is provided to them. Wikipedia: Web 2.0

So according to this definition Web 2.0 is all about developing Websites that are interactive allowing for the sharing of information, collaboration, and interoperability. This sounds nothing like the “brochure” Websites that dominate the Web today. But there are exceptions, which we will highlight in the days ahead.

The examples given in the description on Wikipedia include: (We’ve added brief definitions to assist those who are aren’t as familiar with Web 2.0 and the terms used.)

• Online communities: An online community is a group of people that primarily interact via an internet social network service or instant messages rather than face to face, for social, professional, educational or other purposes. If the mechanism is a computer network, it is called an online community. Online communities have also become a supplemental form of communication between people who know each other primarily in real life. Many means are used in social software separately or in combination, including text-based chatrooms and forums that use voice, video text or avatars. Significant socio-technical change may have resulted from the proliferation of such Internet-based social networks.

• Hosted services: A Web Service (also Webservice) is defined by the W3C as “a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. It has an interface described in a machine-processable format (specifically WSDL). Other systems interact with the Web service in a manner prescribed by its description using SOAP-messages, typically conveyed using HTTP with an XML serialization in conjunction with other Web-related standards.”

• Web applications: In software engineering, a web application or webapp is an application that is accessed via a web browser over a network such as the Internet or an intranet. It is also a computer software application that is coded in a browser-supported language (such as HTML, JavaScript, Java, etc.) and reliant on a common web browser to render the application executable.

• Social-networking sites: A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail and instant messaging services.

• Video-sharing sites

• Wikis: The word “wiki” is a Hawaiian word for “fast”. A wiki is a website that uses wiki software, allowing the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked Web pages, using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor, within the browser. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites, to power community websites, for personal note taking, in corporate intranets, and in knowledge management systems.

• Blogs

• Mashups: In web development, a mashup is a web page or application that combines data or functionality from two or more external sources to create a new service. The term mashup implies easy, fast integration, frequently using open APIs and data sources to produce results that were not the original reason for producing the raw source data. An example of a mashup is the use of cartographic data to add location information to real estate data, thereby creating a new and distinct Web service that was not originally provided by either source.

• Folksonomies: A folksonomy is a system of classification derived from the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content; this practice is also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, social indexing, and social tagging.

In upcoming posts we’ll explore the most widely used Web 2.0 tools by businesses and by government contractors in particular, as well as, identify some of the leaders in adopting these tools and how your business can learn from their successes and failures.

YouTube is highly popular among younger people and the SBA is intent on reaching this audience with its message about the importance of entrepreneurship, and the significant role small business plays in the economy. They also understand how effective the median is for disseminating information on the agency’s programs and services to entrepreneurs wherever there’s an internet connection.

“With millions of visitors, most of them under 35, YouTube offers a prime opportunity to use current technology and the appeal of a popular online platform to further promote the agency’s programs and services,” said SBA Administrator Karen G. Mills.  “By expanding its outreach, SBA will be providing more current and potential entrepreneurs with the necessary tools to start, grow and succeed in their businesses.”

Their content will include more in-depth information about SBA programs, government contracting opportunities, exporting as a way to increase market share, SBA counseling and training on how to start and grow a small business, and small business success stories. Videos will also cover current topics like how small businesses can take advantage of the Recovery Act loan programs, obtain assistance after natural disasters, and other timely topics.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Press release: SBA Launches YouTube Channel

GovCon Directory: SBA YouTube Channel

The SBA has come a long way since its founding on July 30, 1953