Blogs & Public Policy: Stimulating Conversation Where It’s Needed Most

People often accuse those of us who live “inside the Beltway” of being an insulated group of policy wonks. While it’s true that you could spend a lifetime going to policy briefings in Washington, there are in fact more than a few things being done which benefit society, both in the US and elsewhere. Today, representatives from a variety of public policy organizations came together to discuss ways to use blogs, wiki’s and workspaces to further their missions.

The session was hosted by Forum One Communications, a consultancy which assists not-for-profit, foundation, government and commercial organizations in making a positive impact on social issues by providing Internet business strategy, technology implementation and user experience & design.

One of the most interesting discussions was on the use of blogs. As usual, the NGO community is a bit behind the private sector in implementation, but in this case they may benefit from the lessons learned by early adopters. Clearly the social sector is well-suited to the kinds of transparency and constituent engagement offered by blogs. And if the Bivings Group recent report is at all accurate, the Internet and CGM will have an enormous impact on this year’s elections. 

Both the World Bank and the Center for Global Development presented case studies on the success of their blogs. The World Bank blog was launched a year ago, and today is ranked 1,569 with links from 221 sites according to Technorati. Both organizations have seen a substantial jump in traffic, as well as search engine rankings as a result of their blogs.

These organizations approached their blogs strategically. They understand that their work is part of a larger set of conversations on important issues. They see blogging as an opportunity to engage in these conversations and a way to improve the transparency of their respective organizations. They cautioned against using blogs as a pure PR mechanism. Their experience was that readers responded to genuine dialog about issues of interest. Their point: don’t try to dominate the conversation, use your blog to be a voice in the conversation.

That’s sage advice, even for those of us who aren’t trying to save the world.

 
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Blogs, CGM, Marketing, NPTech, Public Policy, Social Sector, Web 2.0