There's definitely engagement happening on here. 2 percent of 2 million people is still 40,000 regularly engaged people. And on top of that, the algorithms probably had an effect on their engagement—they regularly had posts that gained 5,000+ likes as of last year, though the number has slowed down significantly. The question is, was it worth the cost as far as exposure and marketing goes? Did it reach the audience it was looking to reach?
It may have, at least for a while. Based on this 2011 press release that trumpets its 80% user base under the age of 24, they were clearly trying to reach young adults, no matter what the IG says in his report:
It may not have been worth it in the end, but I get wary when I see standard-issue "government waste" stories like this, because what often happens is that the truth is somewhere in-between.
Great comment. As someone who works for the U.S. government (all opinions here are my own!), one of the most frustrating things about working there is the extreme sense of risk aversion in trying new things. If you stick to the status quo and don't rock the boat, even if what you are doing isn't effective you won't run into any difficulties. However, the second you try something new and it fails (or just doesn't live up to expectations), allegations of waste and incompetence follow.
In the private sector, how many companies have spent millions trying to figure out how to make social media work for their businesses before finding an approach that delivers results? If government doesn't have the same flexibility to experiment, it will never figure out how to harness some of these new tools and will end up being relegated even more than it already is to using obsolete approaches and technologies.
Ideally government would have the ability to rapidly try new, small dollar projects with the expectation that many efforts would fail but a few would succeed and end up contributing to a new way of doing business. Unfortunately the institutional bias towards big, safe, and old-fashioned approaches is reinforced each time an innovative attempt at something new is perceived as falling short.
That's exactly it, Scott. In my day gig, I regularly see these kinds of bureaucratic waste stories surface about fairly innocuous things taken out of context, showing up on sites like the Examiner or the Daily Caller or Politico. They're meant to rile folks up and get them angry, because they draw traffic and such.
But when you dig a little deeper, the scooplets at times don't tend to stand up to scrutiny. (An example of this from a couple of years ago, involving a "$16 muffin": http://sfbne.ws/122aqOr )
In this case, the two-percent engagement number is a huge tell, because if you were to say 40,000 users or whatever it is, it wouldn't sound nearly as much like a waste of money.
And if you were to put this in context of what other marketing companies pay to get on Facebook, as well as the per-user costs they were paying, especially compared to other marketing venues, you might find that this is actually the most effective form of marketing for them. (How much did they spend on TV/magazine/other forms of outreach in the past? And what was their success rate?)
I'm not saying that this isn't a huge waste of money or time—it may still turn out to be, and a big one at that—but we aren't being given all of the variables here, and being asked to base this entire story on one side of the claims.
Remember—in D.C. political media, sometimes you won't hear the other side of the story, so being skeptical and not taking things at face value is probably for the best.
An honest question: is there a rational reason to get upset about this but not about other State Dept. marketing/PR efforts? This number is a small fraction of the State Department's overall budget and it increased their engagement from 100,000 likes to 2 million.
I feel like the title invites a kneejerk reaction, but its entirely possible this was the best way the State Department had to increase their accessibility.
Maybe because it smacks of "buying" love? It doesn't help that the thing here is called "Likes" and they are literally paying money to get people to "Like" them...so yes, your suspicion is right that some of this is connotation. On the other hand, I think most people here don't like the idea of PR/propaganda period and the fact that it's Facebook-powered propaganda makes it even more unpopular.
But part of it just seems like a fool's plan. There's a sneaking suspicion (OK, from me, at least) that they've paid money for a lot of magic beans without any real way to measure ROI.
They do a lot more stuff to improve America's "image" that costs a lot more. At my graduate school there were students from a central Asian country (a moderately wealthy and advanced one, too). They got full tuition to get a post-graduate law degree, free housing, free healthcare, free books, everything.
What's the point of this? Spending $100,000+ per person? For what, so they can go back to their country and hopefully speak well of the US? And then our reputation improves there... so what?
Maybe these programs are just bargaining chips as part of a larger trade negotiation that brings in far more for the US. I'm not sure of that. But I really question the extent of our foreign involvement -- is it really for the best interests of the American people? Or just the best interests of American corporations?
Well, first of all, those are 5 to 6 people whose lives are immeasurably improved, regardless of what capacity they choose to serve the U.S. in....can we say that the 1 million "Likes" offered any improvement to the account holders?
You could argue the long game, I guess, that the State Department, in those 1 million likes, will inspire at least 100 Facebook users to the delights of the State Department who may not have paid attention through other channels...and that's the argument you can make with any PR campaign. In the defense of Facebook spending, you can at least argue that the eyeballs-reached/engaged is quantifiable, which you can't with most forms of glorified PR campaigns.
Sorry, I forgot to mention that those students weren't coming from poverty or lack of opportunity. They were middle to upper-middle class professionals in their home country with good corporate jobs. Not saddled with debt like their American counterparts. In fact they were mocking the plight of their US counterparts a bit.
"I feel like the title invites a kneejerk reaction, but its entirely possible this was the best way the State Department had to increase their accessibility."
Developing a presence on social media, sure. Buying "likes"..? I'd need to see a convincing case that this helps in any way.
To me it sounds like a way of 'juking the stats', as they would say in The Wire. A way for the people who created the social media program to report to the higher-ups that "things are working really well, see, we have millions of people liking us and using our pages!"
That's not an accurate characterization. It's not that they were buying fake 'Likes' on, say, Facebook:
After the 2011 reorganization, the coordinator initiated a push to expand the bureau's presence on social media and other digital platforms. IIP started or expanded English-language Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, and blogs aimed directly at foreign audiences. The bureau also started or expanded online activities in six foreign languages.
The coordinator initiated two campaigns in 2011 and 2012, with the goal of building global outreach platforms for engagement with foreign audiences by increasing the number of fans on IIP's four thematic Facebook properties, primarily through advertising as well as through some page improvements. The bureau spent about $630,000 on the two campaigns and succeeded in increasing the fans of the English Facebook pages from about 100,000 to more than 2 million for each page. Advertising also helped increase interest in the foreign language pages; by March 2013, they ranged from 68,000 to more than 450,000 fans.
Many in the bureau criticize the advertising campaigns as "buying fans" who may have once clicked on an ad or "liked" a photo but have no real interest in the topic and have never engaged further. Defenders of advertising point to the difficulty of finding a page on Facebook with a general search and the need to use ads to increase visibility.
You can't actually buy "likes" on Facebook. You can advertise to people on Facebook, and some percentage of the people who see your ads will choose to "like" your page. Advertising is a tried and true way to increase the visibility of a product or service.
Given that the State Department is the authority that issues visas for travel to the US, operates embassies and so on, a lot of the end users are not taxpayers.
Who else is paying them to promote themselves? It isn't the immigrants. So yes, that makes the tax payer the benefactor of their operations. So how does the State Department benefit tax payers by having friends on FB?
Why does anyone care about fans/friends on facebook. Such a waste of our societies capitol.
I find it hard to fault any organization for trying social media in 2012. In fact, I think it's actually worse for the head of marketing at any organization to not spend any money on social marketing and stick to just traditional media. Or at least have a good reason to have avoided it.
Failed to get the right audience? Lack of clear goals? Wrong strategy? Unfortunately, par for the course in marketing ...
Why are politicians and the government seemingly so incompetent when it comes to the value of digital products and services? This puts me in mind of politicians who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a campaign website that has nothing unique or difficult to make it worth so much more than any other website.
Large businesses do similarly dumb things with digital products and services. There's nothing I see here that's specific to government, except that there's a publicly published report detailing expenditures and problems, which you generally wouldn't see in business.
And, frankly, without reading the actual report (which the OP doesn't link to) it's hard to know if you're getting the whole story here. The Washington Examiner is a right wing publication, so it's not hard to see where they might selectively present details to paint this in a negative light. Not saying that they are distorting things, but absent a review of the original document, it's something to keep in mind.
It looks like the document is included in the article in a PDF viewer. Sometimes those don't show up because of ad-blockers.
The Examiner does tend to cherry-pick, and it's definitely worth reviewing the document. I searched the doc for "facebook" and it looks to me like the broader goal was engagement, not "likes" as an end-all. They were working off the assumption that more likes meant more engagement, and during that campaign, people started to realize and point out that it wasn't happening. And to that end it appears to be a waste of $630k.
But it's not the case that they just blindly wanted more likes because it feels good. (The article doesn't say that, but a lot of people think about "likes" that way). Facebook and Twitter are legit ways to reach international audiences, for example, to disseminate propaganda / information (depending on how you lean).
> Why are politicians and the government seemingly so incompetent when it comes to the value of digital products and services?
It's not accidental: their PR departments are filled with slackers and their budget needs to be spent. They're going for the lowest-common-denominator with the cheapest cost and the least amount of effort, which is par the course for non-essential government spending.
It's not their money, they're not accountable. They don't have to check with each voter in their region "Is spending this money okay? Can I go ahead with it?" - sure, it might slow down things a bit - but that's a good thing, and people would be more involved and more aware.
that begs a question - how probable that FB has provided "inconspicuous" services to government recently such that the payment for the services would preferably be disassociated from the services and look like a stupid actions of a bunch of incompetent bureaucrats instead?
https://www.facebook.com/democracychallenge
There's definitely engagement happening on here. 2 percent of 2 million people is still 40,000 regularly engaged people. And on top of that, the algorithms probably had an effect on their engagement—they regularly had posts that gained 5,000+ likes as of last year, though the number has slowed down significantly. The question is, was it worth the cost as far as exposure and marketing goes? Did it reach the audience it was looking to reach?
It may have, at least for a while. Based on this 2011 press release that trumpets its 80% user base under the age of 24, they were clearly trying to reach young adults, no matter what the IG says in his report:
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2011/03/159381.htm
It may not have been worth it in the end, but I get wary when I see standard-issue "government waste" stories like this, because what often happens is that the truth is somewhere in-between.