K Street Cafe

By Elizabeth Sicuso

Last week I had the opportunity to hear Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, Price Floyd.  Floyd has the unique responsibility of combining internal communications for one of the country’s largest federal agencies, as well as public communications and outreach.  With a two-front war front that has less than a stellar record with voters, I can imagine this is not an easy task.  However, Floyd made it sound like a cakewalk.  (Floyd’s presentation was just prior to the tragedy that occurred at Ft. Hood in Texas, which, I can only imagine had a significant- and saddening – impact on his day.)

While Floyd had many fantastic points, there were a few in particular that I think can be helpful to everyone in working in the public affairs, public relations, or government relations arena.

Your Audience is bigger than you think. While you may not be in charge of messaging for such a diverse (and large) group as the Department of Defense, the group listening to your message is significantly bigger than you would imagine.  Take, for example, the situation with Twitter.  Any one of your tweets might not just get the attention (and retweet) of one of your followers, but also some of their followers.  And their followers. And their followers. Before you know it, that message has been seen by hundreds, maybe thousands.  Did you and your team consider that potential for unlimited indirect communications – outside your knowledge – during your messaging brainstorms or development? Probably not.

This extra size and diversity of the group you are communicating with makes having a creditable message more important than ever.  Floyd could not stress enough that reality doesn’t always fit perfectly in the media relations methods of yester year – people are talking with or without you – best to just get in the game.  Floyd said that to be in media relations today, you have to be “more comfortable with non-approved people saying non-approved things.”  Take that to heart.

Trying to avoid social media? Think again. Did you know that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has a Facebook Fan Page? Actually, he has six. Even more, did you know none of them are controlled by the Department of Defense or Secretary Gates?  Chances are that your boss and clients don’t have the same kind of high profile as the head of our country’s military community, but as much as they would like to pretend like social media doesn’t exist, chances are people are talking about them regardless, or even worse, pretending to be them!

Floyd recommended this simple trick for helping you bosses and clients realize that they need to be available on, follow, and monitor social media: Do a simple online search of their name.  Chances are, the information that comes up will surprise them.

I walked out of the presentation with this one simple thought: If the DoD (and all of its many players and moving parts) can balance security, information sharing and transparency, then why can’t every company?  The DoD has some of the most sensitive and top-secret information in the world, but they can still manage to not only have social media presences, but also list them prominently on their home page and to integrate social media into their overall communications strategy.  (Check it out the new Defense.gov – I think you’ll be impressed – I definitely was.  By the way, Price Floyd and his team got DoD’s newly updated website up and running in less than three months – unheard of in the context of federal bureaucracies)

A colleague of mine, Chris Battle recently wrote on Security Debrief, that the Department of Homeland Security, another extraordinary agency, in scope and size, was failing in keeping up with technology. How about your company or your clients – are they keeping up?