Social media and new media offices continue to crop up across the federal government. They face two significant challenges: Agencies want them to experiment with new methods of citizen engagement and to defend and justify their worth in an increasingly budget-constrained and security-concerned environment.

FierceGovernmentIT recently spoke with Miguel Gomez director of AIDS.gov, part of the Health and Human Services Department's office of HIV/AIDS policy. He offers advice to government web managers and new media directors on how to effectively align messaging and mission. He also explains how piloting and a "POST" strategy can assist decision making on what social media tools to adopt and what projects to forgo. 

FierceGovernmentIT: How does AIDS.gov's new media strategy align with your mission?

Miguel Gomez: At AIDS.gov, we're really lucky, because our mission is threefold. A core part of our mission is modeling--we have to increase HIV testing and care among people most at risk for, or living with HIV/AIDS, by using emerging communication strategies, aka new media, social media. We also provide access to federal information, policies and programs.

We use new media to make sure it extends the reach of our federal HIV programs. We're really lucky, because there's not a lot of programs that do that. It's outreach. It's also making sure that people are informed about federal programs, policies and resources. New media is a tool to help that goal be accomplished.

FGIT: You have a YouTube channel, a Twitter account and a blog, and you may have more than that.

Gomez: What's really important is that we actually step back and we reflect on what the end users want, and that each of these channels have their own ways to move information out. What we do, is we use a really simple formula that is from Forrester, called POST.

It's really cool. It stands for People, Objectives, Strategy and Technology. What's so important--I know this seems like a statement of the obvious, but it's really, really important to us--is that it's who are you trying to reach? And then, what tools are they using? So you ground whatever you do in what your audience wants, and needs.

The objective is, new media is about the conversation. Your objective is you start listening to your clients or your stakeholders, and you ask them how to meet the objective, and that you also begin to energize your stakeholders, who can then reach other stakeholders. You're also building new collaborations.

FGIT: So, re-Tweets, basically.

Gomez: Um, actually--

FGIT: Not just in a Twitter sense, but in an information dissemination sense.

Gomez: Absolutely the latter. Because then you're moving toward the strategy which, is again that you don't want to be Tweeting yet or putting something on Facebook or YouTube, you want to step back and really figure out what strategy you need. If it's that you want to increase the number of people tested for HIV, or increase awareness. You really hone your objective. That's my strategy. I want an increase of 5 percent in my community to be tested. And you now pick the technology, because you know what the people want, you have your objective and your strategy, and you can figure based on what your clients or stakeholders are using, you can decide to use a social network site, a podcast, a blog or a photo sharing site.

You mentioned Twitter. Let's say that you tailor your message to that tool. A Tweet, as you know, is under 140 characters--actually, less than that because you want to put a hashtag, usually, or a link to a website. But you have at least 140 words in a blog post. You just really tailor to what your clients want and your stakeholders want, and you adapt to whatever the tool is.

To help folks stay informed, we always tell people to go to the Pew Internet & American Life project. If you want to know about who is using these tools and what they are doing with them.

FGIT: As far as all the social media platforms out there, how did you decide which ones to adopt? And which ones not to pursue?

Gomez: I'm really proud today that we always use the POST strategy. I can't tell you how much I want to have an iPhone app, but none of my stakeholders or the clients they're reaching are asking for AIDS.gov to have an app at this point.

Let me take you back in history. We started blogging in 2008. We wanted to be able to lead by example. People in the HIV community were asking ‘What is a blog?' Not only did we want to answer that question, we started blogging ourselves for a three-month period, and we told our blog audience that we would only do it for three-months, so that we could evaluate the effectiveness on those we're trying to reach.

But then the feedback kept coming back, we kept getting comments and ‘We want more information,' ‘we want more clarity on federal programs, policies and resources,' so we continued.

Are you familiar with Foursquare?

FGIT: I am.

Gomez: Now, Foursquare, which you know is a game, is morphing into much more than a game. We still again use the POST strategy, but because we work across the entire federal government, it's really important for us to stick our toe into the water. What we are doing, is we are looking at what some of our stakeholder groups could benefit from, and we found out that it could be beneficial to check in at conferences like at booths or workshops. What we did is we blogged about it, got some comments and feedback. We now in the process of setting up our Foursquare skin. Do you know what I mean when I say that?

FGIT: No, I don't.

Gomez: You know how on Twitter you can make the background look like whatever you want it to look like? So, it's representative of your program or your media outlet? That's the same thing, that look and feel. So, we're creating a look and feel so when people land, trying to check into AIDS.gov on Foursquare, what we're also doing is linking them to other new media tools. On Foursquare you can now link them to our Facebook page or Twitter account.

Again, what we've done is we've stuck our toe in the water, we continued the conversation with our stakeholders, and we're only doing it for a short period of time unless there's an outcome that meets our larger objectives.

FGIT: Are there any metrics, besides the fact that you've gotten feedback to taking a deep dive into a social media project?

Gomez: Yes. Let's use Twitter as an example. We can send maybe 20 to 25 Tweets a week. But what's really important is that you monitor how many people re-Tweet, and we have over 70,000 followers on Twitter. But, again, that's just a number because new media is about a conversation. So we look at who is re-Tweeting out messages, and every two weeks, we look to see if there's a trend that certain Tweets about federal programs, policies and resources get re-Tweeted more often than others. So, we modify how we write our Tweets, because the new media world is an evolving world. That's a really important evaluation tool. I could just tell you, oh, ‘I get 67 re-Tweets on this HIV policy.' But we also look at who were the organizations or entities re-Tweeting, and who was their audience?

The other metrics we do--a key federal policy is the White House National HIV/AIDS Strategy. We blogged about it most weeks, and every Friday we look back to see what blog comments we get, and we provide our senior staff a summary of those comments. That helps us guide our future blog posts, because usually how it falls is we're describing something, either a scientific advancement that impacts the plan or just how we're moving a plan forward. And if we get a few questions that let us know that they simply don't understand the language we're using, we modify. We look back and try to make sure it's a little more plain language. In a following blog post, we'll often respond to comments, so that we're engaged in the conversation.

I know that I'm repeating myself, but new media, social media is about the conversation, and making sure your stakeholders and those you're working with know you're listening.

The other metric is when we repurpose--and it's all about repurposing your product-for example we often post our blog posts on our AIDS.gov Facebook page, so if you're following us on Facebook you'll get that update and can join in a conversation there.

FGIT: Any other advice for agency social media folks, besides keeping up with comments?

Gomez: We have some wonderful colleagues at the General Services Administration, in citizen engagement. Also at HHS, we have the Center for New Media. It's about learning. We have a responsibility to make sure our colleagues understand what is new media, and how Americans are accessing health care information online, and the impact of that information on health decision making.

FGIT: How big of a staff do you have?

Gomez: What's really important when you think of staffing is to step back and think about time management. I know I'm sounding sort of like a public health planner, but it really means public health planning, because what you have to do is once you know which tool you're going to use for your audience, you also have to look at your resources and manage your time.

Our team member who works on Twitter, if she spends more than two-and-a-half hours/week on Twitter itself, she has to justify her time. You can also pre-program your Tweets, allowing you to plan ahead for things to anticipate Tweeting you know is happening, but it's also good to leave room for real-time and organic Tweets as well. You have to look at labor hours. You have to look at how much time you're spending on each of these activities.

If you can't use the tool in two-and-a-half hours a week to reach you audience then that allows you as managers to step back and reflect. I know that has some nuance in it, but what happens is we see in our grantee community across the United Sates is that they'll hire someone to do their Facebook or their Twitter or whatever, and they'll spend hours just reading other people's tweets.

The other thing that's really important about building a team is those within your system who can provide you with free advice and counsel. We have a Federal HIV/AIDS Web Council, all our stakeholder programs meet once a month to review what we're doing, to make sure we're on track to meet our goals and objectives. What's incredibly valuable is the advice and counsel you can get from others within your field of expertise.

FGIT: Are there any unexpected uses for social media, rather than just informing, and conveying--more around information gathering to affect policy making?

Gomez: Remember when I told you that when we first started our blog, we said we would do it for three months? Well, then we did it for six months. And what we were doing was putting an evaluation plan in place, so if we didn't meet our objectives, we just didn't keep on blogging for the sake of blogging. What that allows for is participation from our HIV community, engaging in a conversation so we hear their comments and their feedback.

FGIT: From a privacy and security perspective, are there any concerns that web managers should have? Has there ever been an issue with comments in which there are security and privacy concerns?

Gomez: There are so many different concerns, everything from Section 508 compliance to HIPAA. If you already use the established rules and regulations, and you turned to your colleagues who have expertise you're protecting yourself and your stakeholders. What's important in today's world, is when you start a process, at the very beginning of the planning, you have to bring your technical person, communications person, and your subject matter experts to the table. And the subject matter experts, not just on public health policy, but security, privacy, access and that's the only way to do things.

FGIT: Can you point to any evidence that the use of any of these social media tools has helped prevent the spread of AIDS?

Gomez: A question a lot we get a lot from folks is ‘If you're using X tool, do you have Y outcome?' We'll often get, ‘Have you saved X number of people from getting HIV?' What we always do is we step back and we look at what public health messaging is all about, and especially with new media, because it's part of a process.

We're not going to change lives with just one message. If it were possible, everyone would be eating a healthy diet and exercising more than 20 minutes every day. The return on investment is what I think you're talking about, and it's to get people engaged and responding to HIV in various ways. We have to meet people where they are. It's giving people information when they want it and whenever they want it.

I told you a lot about us blogging, but some people don't want to read. They want to hear audio, so we often will read our blog posts so we make an audio blog post. Some people just want those short Tweets. So, we take a factoid form our blog and turn that into a Tweet or two. You have to go back to that POST example, and what people want, and who your target audience is. To prove that we're effective in today's new media world, are you engaging in a conversation? Are people asking you questions, are they repurposing and syndicating your content? We're very lucky at AIDS.gov and many of our other HHS programs that we're seeing that phenomenon take place.

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