I’m old enough to remember the early days of the web. Back then (not too long ago, the 1990s), organizations didn’t take this online medium seriously. The web site paled in importance to the newsletter or magazine, at least according the leaders of the time. After all, who reads things on a computer? The Internet was a place for nerds and geeks, for them to discuss Star Trek trivia and learn arcane HTML codes.

If you ran a company or a nonprofit, you really didn’t need a web site, or so people believed. And if you wanted a web site, you could have your nephew build it. He could make something flashy and “cool” like MySpace.

I see the same attitude today toward social media. Why should an organization invest in Facebook or Twitter? Let the interns handle it…

But would you trust an intern to be the voice of your organization? That’s the point I made in a recent article in AOL Government. If you accept the fact that social media is important (and you should, because that’s where the audience is), then why would you hand over these communication efforts to those who know the least about your company? Do you trust college kids to spread your message, respond to questions and interact with potential customers? Do they know the hot-button issues within your company? The language that you use with customers? Your customer service standards and policies? The things that they’re *not* supposed to talk about?

And what happens when the interns leave? They take all that hard-won knowledge about your organization with them, as well as valuable expertise in social media. And they may take the Twitter account as well.

Social media is too important to be left to a transient workforce. Companies and organizations should take a deliberate approach to this dynamic new tool. The keys to the social media kingdom shouldn’t be in the hands of someone who just walked in the door.

Your voice online should be controlled by someone who both knows your company and is familiar with the culture of the web and social media. Look around – you probably have someone already with the requisite experience and interest. They’re probably doing something perceived as more important. But what’s more important than representing your brand in a medium that reaches millions?

So, late one afternoon, my building caught fire. My apartment was fine; other people weren’t so lucky. This is part one of lessons learned. Check out part two for my thoughts on the importance of communication after the fire.

I got the call around 6:30 PM.

“Oh, Joe, I think your building is on fire.”

It was a friend of mine, John Hanshaw, who lives nearby. He could see my apartment building and said that it was surrounded by fire engines.

I really didn’t believe him at first. DC sends out fire trucks for everything. They roll not just for fires, but for medical calls as well. This is because the ambulances are unreliable and sometimes can’t find the right address. The thinking is that the local fire company knows the neighborhood better.

But this makes the city a “land of sirens”, with fire trucks constantly racing down streets, sirens blaring. After a while, the commotion becomes so much background noise.

At the time, I was a few blocks away, having a drink. I was about to go to an election night party.

I tweeted flippantly:

Within just a couple of minutes I got a  second call, this time from Neil Torda in the mountains of North Carolina. We went to high school together and he knows my place in DC. Seeing my post, he did a Google search.

He tweeted an article about the fire and sent me this terrifying picture.

I walked back, visions of my building completely destroyed.

When I got there, the fire was out. There was a black hole on the 9th floor where an apartment used to be. I hoped that my place, on the 7th floor, on the backside of the building was okay.

My neighbors were sheltering in the lobby of a building around the corner. The building’s management provided pizza and drinks. Later on, the Red Cross distributed blankets.

Everyone wanted to know when they could get back inside. Management said it would be a couple hours. And that they would call us (which they never did).

To me, this seemed hopelessly optimistic. Looking at the burned-out apartment, the broken windows, the smoke and water damage, all the ladder trucks surrounding the building, getting the elevator running, the necessary investigations – there was no way we were getting in that night.

I left and walked over to the Helix, a boutique hotel a couple doors down from where I live. I knew that they were actively involved in the local community, having been a sponsor of the DC Shorts Film Festival, which I volunteer for. I love all the Kimpton properties and have recommended them to out of town visitors.

I told them that I lived next door. I was hoping they would give me a decent rate but instead the manager comped me. He showed me a picture on his Blackberry of my building in flames.

While all this was going on, I had updated my Twitter and Facebook feeds. An outpouring of concern filled my iPhone. Friends asked how I was, shared how they had seen the fire, if they could do anything, if I needed a place to stay. It was incredibly moving.

Unfortunately, my iPhone wasn’t fully charged and it soon died. There’s a perverse thrill you get with disaster. It seems like a crazy adventure – locked out of my apartment! I get to stay at the Helix! Fire trucks! Streets shut down!

But then my phone powered down and I couldn’t talk to anyone. Real worry set in.

I didn’t sleep and walked back early the next morning. Entering my apartment and seeing it exactly as I left it was a moment of incredible relief.

Others were not so fortunate. They have to deal with homes now wrecked by smoke and water. I really didn’t know how bad the fire was until I saw the video of people being rescued from the upper floors of my building. I can’t imagine their terror.

Lessons Learned

1.  Social Media is Great but Better to Have Neighbors

John Hanshaw, who lives two blocks away, told me about the fire. Later on, I commiserated and shared information with my neighbors, people who I had shared small-talk with in the elevator. Friends who lived in DC offered me a place to stay. People called to check in on me. The Helix Hotel put me up, recognizing that they were part of the community.

2. Location Doesn’t Matter

Who confirmed the fire for me? Neil Torda, who lives hundreds of miles away but was sitting in front of a computer.

3. Social Media is Indispensable

I tweeted so that friends and family instantly knew that I was okay. Having parents on Facebook can be occasionally awkward but at least my status updates alleviated their worry.

4. Social Media is News

A three-alarm fire in Washington is big news. How was this story covered? Social media informed the coverage each step of the way. As you can see from this TBD page, updates came in about the fire in real-time and included pictures, videos and tweets from participants. It wasn’t just media covering the story but also included involved parties and those who just happened to be walking by.

5. You Need an Emergency Plan

Leaving my apartment yesterday, I had no idea that I’d have to find another place to stay for the night. “Go to the Helix” is really not a good emergency plan… It would’ve been nice if I had a pre-arranged place to go, with at least a toothbrush and a change of clothes.

6. Charge Your Phone!

I didn’t think I’d be out long so my iPhone wasn’t fully charged. Yet, this was how I communicated with the world and found needed information. When it died, I was essentially lost.

Things could’ve been so much worse. I’m thankful they weren’t.

I’ve been reading Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. It’s a brilliant book on the information revolution that we’re going through. He believes that this revolution is as momentous as the development of the printing press, which triggered the Reformation and religious wars. The rise of amateurs and the expansion of consumer choice has meant the end of seemingly unassailable institutions like newspapers.

Seeing how the world is rushing to adapt to the web, I had a practical question. Why doesn’t the government use the web to more efficiently accomplish its work? For example:

1. Why is there no actual Facebook for feds? Govloop (a social network for government employees) is a brilliant idea, a way for federal employees, contractors and other interested parties to communicate and collaborate. Why didn’t the federal government provide this tool (just a Ning social network) to its employees years ago? Think what a tremendous aid this would be to organizing and working together.

Why isn’t there, at the very least, a government-wide directory showing photos, titles and contact information?

Some have argued that there are legitimate privacy reasons for not providing this information to the public though it is the public that pays the salary of these civil servants. There’s a great call for transparency in government. Yet, like with taxes, it’s always transparency for someone else’s program – not yours!

2. Why isn’t there an online project management tool? So much of government work is managing projects – people, inputs, resources, deadlines, deliverables and so on. I’ve seen people use spreadsheets, Word docs, MS Project, Sharepoint, wikis and even crossed-out to do lists. Why doesn’t government adopt a tool like Basecamp (my fav), a web-based project management tool?

The objection to this is that big government likes to put things behind firewalls. A service, like Basecamp, that exists outside of the secure government environment is almost impossible to get approved.

3. Why is so much of government work done on paper? Reimbursements, training requests and purchases so often require the walking around of paper forms and the collection of signatures. Think how much more efficient government would be if these forms were made electronic.

The argument against this is that government regulations require the keeping of records on paper. These rules need to be updated; we’re no longer using typewriters.

4. Why doesn’t government publish all of its photos on Flickr? Shirky lists Flickr as a great example of crowd-sourcing, where amateurs post and tag exponentially more photos than a newspaper or magazine would publish. What if you could visit a National Park Service page and see countless NPS and amateur photos of Yellowstone, all carefully geotagged?

This is an area where the federal government is experimenting. EPA has an Earth Day photo contest in Flickr and the Library of Congress has its own Flickr photostream.

5. Why can’t I just click once to apply for a government job, like I can do on Monster? USAJOBS, with its complicated password requirements, lengthy disclaimers, pages of explanations to wade through, laborious KSAs to complete and endless duplication, is a usability nightmare. And this is how potential employees are introduced to government.

It’s not just the technology. The job descriptions are the very antithesis of the plain language that government aims to promote. Here’s the first line from a recent job announcement for a Program Analyst: 

At the full performance GS-13 level, establishes and administers assigned administrative programs in accordance with Department requirements and other related directives.

Umm, this is a little vague.

For the most part, the ideas I listed above are not revolutionary. This is not Web 2.0. Online directories, web-based forms, improved usability, one-click applications – this is Web 1.0, from the 1990s. Investing in these common-sense processes would make government more efficient, effective and creative.

Last night, I attended “Pimp My Nonprofit,” an event by NetSquared DC designed to help a worthy nonprofit better use technology. More than thirty people with a wide range of online marketing skills and interests took part in this meetup at the Affinity Lab in Adams Morgan. Drinks and snacks, key to any brainstorming session, were provided by GeniusRocket.

The nonprofit to be pimped was Student Movement for Real Change (SMRC), an organization that was founded to connect American college students with schools in Africa that need assistance. Students apply for internships that, “provide college students on-the-ground development experience, cultural immersion, and the necessary leadership skills to develop sustainable projects that address local needs through a 6 or 8 week internship (depending on the community) in developing communities” to quote the SMRC web site.

Vanessa Carter of SMRC gave a brief overview of SMRC and the challenges they face. Like many nonprofits, they’re a very small organization with a limited budget. Their main marketing objectives are to obtain:

• Interns. They’ve had success getting applicants for their programs in Africa through the use of Google Ads. These search-based ads are how most potential interns find out about the program.
• Donations. They recently redesigned their web site and it includes a nice red donate button on the home page. They’ve also had limited success raising money through Facebook Causes.

The question Vanessa had for the group was, “Out of the sea of social media tools – Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, blogs – which is worth doing?” With a very small staff, limited time and a reluctance to learn anything complicated, which of these tools would be most effective for her organization?

The group weighed in with their advice. Many of the participants were active users of these tools and brought lessons learned from applying these tools to similar nonprofits. They provided both strategic insight and concrete tactical advice:

• Facebook: Given that SMRC wants to reach college students, Facebook would be the place to prioritize. While some of the group thought that Facebook was too broad of a social network, the consensus was that Facebook was the network that college students are on all the time. The advice was that SMRC should expand its presence on Facebook.
• Facebook Ads: Facebook knows an extraordinary amount about its users and can provide very targeted ads, which is pretty frightening, but would be effective for SMRC. The ads could be run when students are looking for internships.
• MySpace: While a comment was made that MySpace was “over”, this service is used by vast numbers of high school students, who might be future SMRC interns.
• Google Ads: SMRC has had success with Google Ads but the advice was to look at the metrics behind the campaigns, to analyze what search terms were working and adjust accordingly.
• Twitter: Nothing brings out controversy like Twitter! The group went back and forth about this, about the wonders of Twitter (I agree) but that it’s really an early-adopter tool and not yet mainstream (I agree again).
• Blogs: SMRC already has a few blogs on their site. Everyone agreed that blogs are necessary in this day and age but that more guidance is needed for bloggers and that they need to be done more consistently.
• Video: The wonders of the Flip camera were much extolled, for it allows video to be cheaply shot and uploaded to YouTube. This would be an ideal tool for SMRC.
• Email Listservs: It’s very Web 1.0 but is still an effective tool.
• The SMRC web site: While the site was just redesigned, the group thought it could be improved upon through the addition of the tag line, describing the organization, and by better using the home page real estate.
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Nonprofits need better tools to manage their relationships with donors. Nobody seemed too excited about their CRM system.

At the end of the meeting, the folks at Genius Rocket offered to help Vanessa produce a video ad for SMRC. So, she not only left with a long (and hopefully useful) list of to-dos, she also received some donated assistance. And all of us geniuses who offered our help got tasty snacks and the satisfaction of helping a good cause.