Government Adopts Facebook - a Step Too Far?

I had an interesting meeting with a group of policy makers and a press officer from Northern Ireland’s Department for Employment and Learning (DELNI) last month. I have been talking to the team there for a couple of months about their pilot to become the first Government Department to have a Facebook presence.

With the creation of the new brand pages on Facebook, this creates a great opportunity for larger organisations to appeal to a key demographic group in their own backyard. The challenge, as discussed in my previous blog here, is to do this without driving away the very people you want to attract, or sit with few ‘fans’, like the friendless geek at a party.

The guys at DELNI want to attract back to Northern Ireland people who may have left in their teens to study in Scottish and English universities and who have never returned. They are also keen to encourage other people to look to Northern Ireland as a land of opportunity. They want to paint a rosy picture of the country as a place of opportunity and a lively social scene.

But is it a step too far for a Government department to expect to become popular on Facebook? There are already concerns that the way businesses, and older people, have embraced Facebook will lead to younger people finding new places to play. If we start to see The Inland Revenue, The Ministry of Defence and The Home Office in the playground, what effect will that have?

Interestingly, the age group that DELNI want to attract are older than Facebook’s original demographic, having already left university and settled into permanent employment. They are far more likely to be in their mid-20s and older.

The first challenge I put to them was how to make the page viral. If they are going to spread the word and attract fans, people need to feel proud of the association and happy to shout their involvement from the rooftops. I am delighted to see that, since we met, they have changed the name of the page from ‘Department for Employment and Learning’ to a much more simple, ‘Northern Ireland’. After all, who wants to tell their friends that they are a 'fan' of the Department for Employment and Learning?!

The next area to focus on is the content and it will be interesting to track their success in this area. The page will not thrive if the content is posted by the civil servants behind the campaign; it needs to be user driven. Facebook becomes viral when people’s friends see that they have posted content elsewhere on the site. If all of the comments and threads are posted by DELNI and not by their fans, it is merely an information portal and not a social network.

So, is this a step too far? Or an encouraging sign of Government responding to changes in communication and being creative in their approach to reaching their target market?