Greenversations

On January 7, 1994, as I was about to leave for another semester at Loyola University in New Orleans, there was an oil spill in San Juan Bay. An oil tanker leaked 750,000 gallons of fuel in the Atlantic coastal area. I read the news two days later in my first class on News Editing. That was the first time I used the Internet in a classroom. My professor, a seasoned journalist and a great mentor, asked me, “Aren’t you from San Juan?” We read the story on a California newspaper Web site. Countless pictures from the disaster spoke for themselves. EPA personnel from Caribbean Environmental Protection Division were on the scene responding to the disaster.

A few weeks ago, when the CAPECO oil tank farm in Bayamon burst into flames, less than a mile from home, I went straight to the Internet for information. While most local news sites only had a few sentences on the incident, some of my friends had already posted their amateur videos of the fire on Facebook. As a public affairs specialist, I can tell you that we’ve come a long way from just using traditional media tools. Nowadays messaging happens in realtime. The Internet and social media have added a new dimension to the field of communications.

The blog you are reading is part of this new dimension. When I was asked to write for Greenversations, I was a little hesitant. With training from EPA’s Office of Public Affairs, I got it nailed. Since blogs are statements from a personal perspective, they are a great tool to quickly strike a resonating chord with the reader.

Recently I read a speech on social media given by GSA’s Chief Information Officer. In it she emphasized how government is changing the way it interacts with citizens through blogging. I also read an article on crisis communications which discussed how blogging shapes our response to a crisis. It provides timely information from a human perspective. A human voice can help connect with the public’s emotional response during a crisis. I invite you to read Greenversations or Gov Gab at USA.gov and GobiernoUSA.gov It is one way to stay connected with the people we work for: the general public.

About the author: Brenda Reyes Tomassini joined EPA in 2002. She is a public affairs specialist in the SanJuan, Puerto Rico office and also handles community relations for the Caribbean Environmental Protection Division.

El 7 de enero de 1994 justo cuando regresaba a la Universidad de Loyola en New Orleans, ocurrió un derrame de petróleo en la Bahía de San Juan. El tanquero Morris Berman derramó 750,000 galones de combustible en las aguas de la costa del Atlántico norte. Me enteré de este suceso por la Internet dos días después en mi primera clase de edición de noticias. Esa fue la primera vez que usé la Internet en mi vida. Mi profesor, un experimentado periodista, tomó la noticia como muestra en la clase por que yo era de San Juan. La leímos en un periódico de California que tenía un sitio Web. Las fotos del desastre hablaban por sí solas.
Hace varias semanas la instalación de almacenamiento de combustible de CAPECO se incendió a menos de una milla de nuestra residencia. Mientras muchos periódicos tenían sólo titulares sobre el incidente ya mis amistades habían puesto sus fotos y videos caseros en Facebook a menos de una hora de la explosión inicial. Como especialista en asuntos públicos, conozco la importancia que estas herramientas de comunicación social tienen hoy día a la hora de mantenernos informados. Ciertamente la Internet, Tweeter y Facebook y otros medios sociales, han añadido una nueva dimensión a la manera en que nos comunicamos.

El blog que está leyendo forma parte de esa nueva esa dimensión. Cuando empecé a escribir para Greenversations hace mas de un año me encontraba un poco nerviosa. Poco a poco le tomé el gusto ya que los blogs son ensayos cortos que expresan una perspectiva personal. Le dan un toque humano a la escritura y permiten desarrollar empatía entre el autor y el lector.

Recientemente leí un blog de comunicación social de la Jefa de Información de GSA sobre social media . En dicho discurso ella enfatiza cómo el gobierno ha cambiado la forma en la que interactúa con sus constituyentes mediante los blogs y cómo estos constituyen un nuevo espacio para la discusión pública de asuntos importantes. Por otra parte hace varios meses leía en un boletín de comunicación en crisis al que estoy suscrita de cómo los blogs afectan la manera en la que los comunicadores respondemos a una crisis. El blog nos permite acercarnos al público, mantenernos accesibles, a la vez que informamos . Estos medios proveen las herramientas para lograr conexión con el público en un momento de crisis. Le invito a que lea nuestro Greenversation o Gov Gab en USA.gov o GobiernoUSA.gov Es nuestra manera de estar cerca de nuestro publico.

Sobre la autor: Brenda Reyes Tomassini se unió a la EPA en el 2002. Labora como especialista de relaciones públicas en la oficina de EPA en San Juan, Puerto Rico donde también maneja asuntos comunitarios para la División de Protección Ambiental del Caribe.

Last fall, I wrote about this blog’s Twitter account, @greenversations. Since then, several folks across EPA have been trying out Twitter, with varying approaches.  Today, I got this question from Randa Williams, a researcher at the University of Washington who’s looking into best practices for businesses on Twitter:

I wonder when you will start having conversations rather than just broadcasting on twitter…Lots of EPA broadcast channels on Twitter, exceptionally few conversations. I know, engagement is more work, wondering if you had thought about expanding into this area.

It was such a good question, I thought I’d respond publicly as well as emailing her.

Randa is right: the gold standard is conversing on Twitter and other social media sites, not just broadcasting. But she’s also right that it takes resources.  Not just someone’s time, but also having the right person, who’s plugged into what’s going on around EPA and who knows how to speak to the world on EPA’s behalf.

There are also different ways to use Twitter, and we’re experimenting with most of them.  For example, we’ve done a little live tweeting, with plans to do more.  There are also different approaches to who to follow, how frequently we can commit to posting, etc.

We do have a couple of good examples of interaction for content on a smaller scale than “all of EPA:”

• @EPAregion9 – Wendy Chavez in our San Francisco office.  I think Wendy is our best tweeter at the moment.
• @EPAespanol – Lina Younes at headquarters.  Lina leads our multilingual communications task force (have you seen all the languages in the upper right corner of our home page?), and she tweets in Spanish.

While we figure out the gold standard (interaction), we’re doing what we can on what I call the tin standard (broadcasting). Given the number of followers, it seems a decent number of people appreciate even that.  Here are some of our other accounts:

• @EPAgov – our main account.  Primarily our automated news release headlines and blog posts, plus a few web updates and manual tweets.  This account combines content that’s also split into individual accounts, and is also available on normal Web pages:
  • @EPAnews – news releases (same info as shown in our newsroom)
  • @greenversations – blog (same as the blog itself)
  • @EPAweb – updates to epa.gov (same info as shown on our recent additions page)
• @EPAlive – we’re occasionally experimenting with using this for live tweeting
• @EPAowow – Office of Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds
• @EPAairmarkets – market-based regulatory programs to improve U.S. air quality
• @EPAregion2 – regional office in New York
• @EPAregion3 – regional office in Philadelphia

We’re also working up some conventions, like starting our account names with “usepa” and using the same seal as the avatar.

Not quite in the same category, some of us are also tweeting professionally. We’re not “representing” EPA per se, but we’re using it as a professional network and information source.  For example:

• @levyj413 – this is my Twitter account, and I use it to discuss social media in government (especially EPA)
• @suzack777 – this is Suzanne Ackerman on our web team.  Suzanne uses Twitter to research projects like blogger outreach, and uses Twitter to make contacts and discuss related issues.

So thanks, Randa, for reminding me that we need to communicate more about what we’re up to.  Stay tuned for updates about our other social media efforts, too (in the meantime, join us on Facebook!).

Jeffrey Levy is EPA’s Director of Web Communications.

About the author: Jeffrey Levy joined EPA in 1993 to help protect the ozone layer. He is now the National Web Content Manager.

Two weeks ago I wrote that we’d hit 300 people following us on Twitter. I invited them to mention us, to see whether our follower count would jump, and promised a follow-up.

Only one person did tweet us, as far as I could find on Twitter search. Thanks, wingy22!

Yet in the past two weeks, we’ve picked up another 100 followers. Six months from 0-300, two weeks from 300-400. Errr … 401 … 402 … umm … wait a sec … 403 … make that 408. Anyway, @wormlady was #400. I put her name in the title because that’s about all that actually shows up in Twitter’s 140-character posts, so I’m hoping she’ll notice her name the next time she logs in.

Anyway, the sudden jump amazes me. Was it as simple as noting we’re on Twitter in a post, as opposed to just having the link on the right?

Let’s try the same thing on Facebook and MySpace. We’re not doing much there yet, but we have big plans, and knowing there’s interest helps. If you want to know when we do get going, become our fan on Facebook and MySpace.

How to engage the most people isn’t an idle question. The first time, for example, that we take comments on a regulation via social media, we’ll want to get the biggest bang for the least effort (efficient use of your tax dollars, doncha know).

What do you suggest?