The Pages now have statuses, much like profiles have for some time. For more on what’s new, click here.

These changes create new opportunities to interact with constituents. If a Facebook page is setup properly, constituents will be able to “become a part of the conversation.” It also has the potential to drive extra traffic to agency Web sites and blogs.

But the new pages are also more demanding. In order to make your page successful, it will need a lot of “babysitting.” This can create a problem for agencies that do not have the time, money and resources to monitor Facebook. Structural issues exist too: out of security and productivity concerns, many agencies block social networking sites like Facebook. This issue has been identified as a barrier by the Federal Web Managers Council.

Issues aside, let’s look at some best practices!

• Make your status updates human. Remember, people are reading these interspersed with the updates from family and friends. You don’t want to stand with robotic sounding or boring updates. Treat it like you would treat a tweet; the Facebook stream is very similar to the Twitter timeline. Take a look at our best practices for Twitter for more on that. Good example: WMATA, the folks who bring you Metrorail, Metrobus and MetroAccess in D.C., Maryland and Virginia.
• Give constituents a reason to visit your page. Post photos and videos that are exclusive to Facebook. Encourage conversation by soliciting questions. A successful Facebook page is much more than an extension of your Web site. For many, your Facebook page has the potential to be their portal to your agency. Treat it that way!
• Don’t overload it though! Being bombarded with information is bad. Clutter is bad. Not being able to keep up is bad. Therefore, limit your new content to a handful of items/status updates per day. Once again, remember that people do see this in their streams. If they’re annoyed by constantly seeing items from your page, they’ll un-fan you. Obviously, that’s not what you want to happen. Unfortunately, the City of Rockville, Md., went a little trigger-happy when they added events to their Facebook page. When you load the page, all you see is events in the stream. Keep your audience demographics in mind when adding content (which is readily available to all page admins) to avoid excess clutter. I don’t think many Facebook users would be interested in attending the Rockville Seniors Inc. meeting.
• Send your users to the wall first. Your wall is the hub of activity on the page. Facebook gives you the option to specifiy which “tab” users go to when they first click your page. Involving as many people in the discussions and exposing them to the freshest content at the earliest possible opportunity is definitely a plus.
• Easy on the Applications. Applications cause clutter, confusion and oftentimes have questionable origins (and security). However, one application to consider adding your page is the Static FBML application, developed by Facebook, which allows you to create static items within your page. It does come in handy.

With the new pages concept in its infancy, it was hard to find examples. This post will be updated as more and more agencies (hopefully) embrace the power of the new Facebook! Good luck, and keep us posted with anything cool you find!

Thanks to @Campariman for the idea. Also, Social Government’s Facebook page is a work in progress and will soon be updated using these best practices!

The possibilities for using Google Maps are endless. From showing where the nearest bus stop is to the devastation from Hurricane Katrina, the ever-popular mapping service has yet to see widespread adoption by the government, even though it should.

Google Maps makes data more digestible for average citizens. While expensive and precise geographic information systems (GIS) are the lifeblood of many agencies, Google Maps should be considered as a valuable Web 2.0 tool to better serve the masses.

Google Maps has been used for governmental purposes, like the effort to direct voters to polling places last fall. But mashups are created by third parties (or Google) and are subsequently not sponsored by the government.

So how could agencies use Google Maps in an official capacity?

• The U.S. Geological Survey could move their popular earthquake maps to Google Maps. The map would certainly see more use. Users could report their earthquakes directly to the map.
• The Federal Emergency Management Agency (which has a great Twitter feed, by the way) could use the maps to detail exactly where their relief funding goes – down to the block.
• The weather maps from NOAA’s National Weather Service need an overhaul. While this could present a challenge to developers, smart planning would enable NWS to serve their next generation of online weather maps using Google Maps.
• The FAA can show you how your flight will be rerouted using Google Maps.
• And, of course, how can we forget Recovery.gov, which should soon be adding lots of data. This should be a no-brainer to use Google Maps for this Web site.

These seemingly ambitious ideas would actually work – and constituents would be grateful. However, here are some best practices to follow in order to be certain!

• Cut the clutter. While there is undoubtedly a lot of data to serve on these maps, be mindful that cluttered maps are hardly as effective as clean maps. Use filters, or break your data into multiple maps to reduce the clutter.
• If needed, ask for help from the big G. If something is not possible with the current API, reach out to the Google Maps team and ask them for help. Certainly, you will get special treatment as a government entity – and they will help you. The company wants to help the government – look at how YouTube worked with the Senate and House to make their respective “portals” as a recent example.
• Be smart about what data you use for the map. Make the data public friendly. Don’t create a map with obscure data that no one can use – use data that the public would find [remotely] interesting. That said, challenge yourself to make monotonous data interesting with Google Maps.
  
• Promote, promote, promote! Once developers work hard to create these maps, don’t bury the map on the Web site! Promote it through the site’s homepage, Twitter, blogs (including Gov Gab) and all other means possible. A properly designed map will sell itself virally – but at first, you’ll need to make the public aware.

Thanks to @justinbangs for suggesting this topic!

Others simply have no clue what they’re doing. Accordingly, their follower count reflects that. But, you can’t blame them for trying.

With the help of the must-read GovTwit Directory, here are some Do’s and Don’ts when using Twitter in a government agency, with examples.

1. Use Twitter as a point of customer service. While most government Twitter accounts are happy to respond to user’s inquiries, they should do something that @washingtonpost does every Friday: ask “what do you want to know?” This is a great way for agencies to interact with their constituents. Perhaps at a designated time each week, senior managers should come onto their agency’s Twitter accounts and host a Q&A? It’s a simple idea with endless possibilities. Possible examples include the Transportation Security Administration answering questions about security restrictions, the Internal Revenue Service answering tax preparation questions and the National Park Service connecting people to information about various national parks.
   
2. Twitter is not only for automated feed dumping. I am a believer that twitterfeed hurts more than helps. After reading that a Nebraska newspaper dramatically increased followers on Twitter last year by turning off their twitterfeed, the same has got to be true about government. I have also turned off the @socialgovt twitterfeed. While Twitter should be used to promote blog content, do it yourself if you really care about your followers. People like to know that there’s an actual human on the other end! Twitter presents itself as an opportunity to write creative headlines that will draw users to your content. Perhaps the best of example this is @NASA, an agency that fully understands the meaning of Twitter and social media (more on that later). @NASA teases press releases and YouTube videos with tweets written by a human, among other things. The result: over 12,500 followers. Bad example: @Greenversations, which just feeds in content from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenversations blog. But the agency does have alternative Twitter feeds which are better.
3. Be conversational. Use @ replies and retweet as much as possible. This goes for everyone, not just the government. Twitter is a two-way conversation, and people will be more likely to follow you if you respond to their inquiries and retweet content as much as possible. If you look at @AFPAA, which is the “official Twitter site of the US Air Force,” you’ll see plenty of community interaction. The State Department’s @dipnote does a good job, too.
4. Have fun, be human. I’m referring to what NASA did with @MarsPhoenix, the rover that landed Mars over the summer. By writing in the first person and being cute, followers were treated to what seemed like a firsthand perspective of the what was going on with the successful rover. Tweets like “Iron Chef on Mars? Set the oven to 1003 degrees Celsius (1837 F) and baked a soil sample and find secret ingredients Minerals, that is” explained complex technology to the masses. Currently, over 42,000 people follow @MarsPhoenix, making it one of the more popular government Twitter feeds. NASA continues to make good use of Twitter with their many feeds.
5. Don’t do the exact opposite. @CBP_update, of U.S. Customs and Border Protection is not a good use of Twitter. It seems that someone copy and pastes headlines of new press releases into Twitter and tweets them out. No links or anything. Hands down, the worst government Twitter account I’ve seen. This is not something to be proud of.
6. Don’t share classified information. This may sound obvious, but that’s exactly what Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., did on a recent trip to Iraq. He tweeted that he was in Iraq when the trip was classified and his location was not to be known. Hoekstra got reprimanded by the mainstream media for his lapse in judgement. If such an incident were to happen again, congress might try to pass laws restrict this type of candid communication.
   

This is a list that I hope to build on. If you have any other suggestions, let me know.