Friendly Advice of the Day

I try to give an opinion every time I add a blog post, but this time I'm going to give an opinion while also taking the wallet out of my pocket, turning it upside down, and shaking all the money out of it.

On Twitter, whoever is behind @southcomwatch asked a question yesterday afternoon. The question was:

Any good ideas on new ways to conduct blog from the hospital ship USNS Comfort during humanitarian deployment to LatAM & Caribbean this year

I gave them advice to check out Chris Albon, because I'd bet that is what they are looking for. However, I assure you their strategy for blogging is already flawed unless somewhere, someplace they also asked the following question.

Buenas ideas sobre nuevas formas de llevar a cabo blog desde el buque hospital USNS Confort humanitaria durante el despliegue en América Latina y el Caribe este año?

My Spanish really sucks so I cheated with babblefish, but since my English grammar sucks too, good enough. If SOUTHCOM doesn't understand why this advice has my wallet upside down empty of money, they shouldn't even bother with new media because they don't know what the hell they are doing with it anyway.

It is painful to watch the military services struggling to "get it" with social media, because it just isn't that complicated when you know what you can do, and understand how to get there. SOUTHCOM has everything every successful and profitable corporate social media program has and needs to be successful, and not only do they not know it, but they don't even have the same obligation to make a profit from it.

If Admiral Stavridis is interested in developing a real social media strategy, I'll take a GS-14, help you folks hire 2 GS-13s, and leverage the skills of one webmaster who can code and is very good with artwork, and together we will build the model and strategy the entire DoD wants to mimic as a social media experience. I'll also take on the challenge of convincing every single skeptic and teach them how to make social media work for them instead of against them when applicable.

The DoD spent $4.7 billion on media operations last year, while China spent $6.58 billion. A lot of people overreacted when they saw the $4.7 billion figure, because they don't see results and didn't have context for the figure. New media can fix that type of perception problem.

I'll show the DoD how new media gets more out of the content put out than reporters do. Several reporters know what I'm talking about. I bet 99 out of 100 times I get more email feedback regarding a Defense News, InsideDefense, or Defense Daily article that I discuss on the blog than email the actual reporter who writes the story does, and to prove it, just ask the reporters because I bet they would all agree! Considering they actually work for information, and I do this as a hobby, I'd also bet that fact pisses them off a bit.

1 GS-14 and 2 GS-13s can return on investment much further than however many folks are doing their work with $4.7 billion today. This isn't an insult to the information offices of the DoD, rather I am noting how social media is a many way, every direction network model, rather than the current node model where everything moves one way, usually in only two directions.

If I fail, just have Admirals draw straws regarding who gets to fire me, and given that I do give strong opinions on this blog, you may need a lot of straws.

One last thing. While this blog might be popular in maritime circles and several milblogs are popular among the miliary services, existing milblogs are not the model the services need to develop. If the services try to adopt this model, or any existing milblog model, I think they will find they are not getting what they want out of social media.