Chirping Up With Mark Bradford

In preparation for an article I'm writing for Public CIO magazine on eGovernment on a Shoestring, I had the chance to sit down with Mark Bradford, the co-founder of ChirpUp, a startup focused on helping businesses and municipalities engage and care for customers using new-era media and technologies. Mark brings up some great points of how to use social media to promote your company, an organization your involved with, or even yourself. Highlights from my interview are below.

JS - Everyone is feeling the pressure to do more with less. How can municipalities leverage Web 2.0 technologies on a shoestring budget to further their objectives?

MB - I think municipalities have an opportunity to apply many of the same open source technologies and methods being used by new entrepreneurs to connect with customers. In an era when communities need help, governmental transparency expectations are high and budgets are scarce, municipalities have a chance to get creative and find new efficient ways to humanize interactions with constituents. Mayors, councilmen, aldermen have tools for authoring, publishing and promoting their message using free or low-cost tools. Public officials can also use social media and free monitoring tools to track, by a targeted municipal geography, conversations, reactions and concerns. Take instance http://monittor.com, which is just one of many Twitter monitoring tools. You can track topics by keyword using their UI or feed the results into a blog or RSS reader. Conversations about municipal issues are already happening. These tools help you join the conversation, inform the record, reach out, and help constituents.

JS - Do you have some examples of low hanging fruit in the public sector?

MB - Obviously blogging methods have evolved to a point where it's pretty easy and affordable to establish a two-way communication channel for public relations, outreach, advocacy, and intervention - all kinds of grass roots community activities. Municipalities actually have an advantage relative to the private sector because the "community" already exists. Municipalities who establish blogs just need to leverage their existing websites and traditional constituent touch points to establish awareness. Businesses blogs on the other hand usually have to spend money, time and energy developing the community.

Look at Chicago Mayor, Richard Daley's new YouTube Channel. He's taking his message directly to Chicago citizens and perhaps national leaders. There is no mediation or dilution by mainstream media journalists - no color commentary, no editorial by the broadcasters. He's speaking directly to us. That said, I'm a little curious why Mayor Daley didn't embed the YouTube feeds in his own existing site http://egov.cityofchicago.org? Maybe too much bureaucracy involved in changing his own site? Regardless, we know that speaking directly to the citizens advances public interest because it's cheap, fast and effective.

JS - What are some specific tools and costs that might apply to a municipal scenario?

MB - Almost every tool we use at ChirpUp is free. WordPress is the de-facto standard backbone for a rich SEO friendly blog because it is open source, powerful, flexible and relatively easy to use. With some expertise, WordPress functionality and user interface can be customized and configured to satisfy all kinds of requirements. Plus there is a big community of folks developing free or low-cost themes and plugs into social media sites like FaceBook, LinkedIn and Twitter. So municipalities can "plug into" existing citizen networks.

JS – Doesn’t blogging take a lot of time?

MB - Yes and no. Communication takes time. But blogging and social media communication is more efficient. You get what you put into it. The public sector is interesting because citizens generally have similar questions. A blog is not a novel. Frequency and consistency are the keys. Constituents just crave a reliable place where they can pose questions and get feedback from officials. Blogging and social media isn't a replacement for the old-fashioned handshake and face-to-face meeting. But, it does accelerate or amplify the message.

JS - What about security and infrastructure dependencies?

MB - Infrastructure and maintenance costs are low for Web 2.0 products like WordPress. However, we recommend getting help from a trusted advisor for initial configuration, integration, hosting and launch.
As for security, you must think about what it is that you want to secure. WordPress is widely adopted and hardened for security. That said, all public website have some small level of security risk. Consider hosting your blog / website at a separate facility from the municipality host where sensitive information may exist.