Feds get tips on social media outreach from Defense Department

Federal employees and contractors got a two-word message Wednesday on getting their stories out to the public: Go viral.

"How do you get published when your story doesn't rise to the level of news?" asked Jack Holt, senior strategist for emerging media at the Defense Department, during a packed educational seminar in Washington. The answer, he said, was using word-of-mouth marketing in various forms of online social media to reach bloggers, news aggregators and other Web sites that have the eyes and ears of reporters.

Defense, with a budget surpassing $650 billion, is always trying to sustain the support of taxpayers by publicizing what it is accomplishing overseas. Now it is using nontraditional means to leverage mainstream coverage.

For example, in September 2007, the department landed a front page Washington Post article through a bloggers roundtable it has established. The roundtable initiative uses audio, video, transcripts and other primary source materials to connect online journalists with Defense leaders.

The department arranged for members of the roundtable to conduct an interview with Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone in order to get the word out about the influence troops were having on young Iraqis.

The Post story quoted Stone as saying the military had introduced programs on "religious enlightenment" for Iraqi detainees as young as 11 to teach "a moderate doctrine" and steer them away from the insurgency. The article cited as its source "the transcript of a conference call he held from Baghdad with a group of defense bloggers."

Holt said the paper's reporter generated three articles based on transcripts "from one interview that he wasn't even involved in."

At the seminar, some audience members raised concerns about troops informally blogging about lost comrades before military officials have had a chance to notify fallen soldiers' families.

Holt responded that such postings can hurt family members, but are a way for troops to deal with their own pain. He added that there are rules in publishing, involving such concepts as defamation, to which government employees must adhere, even in the blogosphere.

The event was hosted by Potomac Forum, an educational nonprofit organization that provides services to the federal sector, and GovCollab.org, which seeks to improve the flow of information between government and industry.

After the talk, an attendee told Nextgov that he came to listen to Holt because Defense has been on the forefront of using social media, a priority of the Obama administration.

"They learned that they needed to address the [hard] issues, even if they wanted to avoid them," said David Pierpoint, assistant director for the social media operational program at consulting firm TechOp Solutions International.