Dave Fleet is a communications professional with a passion for social media, based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is also a self-described “fanatical runner” who has chronicled his training and fundraising efforts leading up to the Boston Marathon at TorontoRunner.com.

Though Dave has worked in marketing and communications for major corporations like Hitachi Europe and Lloyds TSB, he now works in the public sector for Ontario’s provincial government. Since social media and government sounded incompatible in my mind, I asked Dave what made him move from the private to the public sector, and additionally, what are the major differences in new media communications in the private vs. public sectors.

“Funnily enough, I never set out with the intention of moving into the public sector. It happened almost by accident. When I first moved to Canada about five years ago I was looking for work and a short-term contract came up in the Ontario government, working on the online roll-out of the government’s pre-budget consultations. That project led to a position within communications in the Cabinet Office, and things snowballed from there.

From my perspective, the biggest difference I’ve noticed between the private and public sectors has been in the level of risk taking. Working on the corporate side I noticed people were much more likely to respond to a new idea with, “sure, let’s try that” than those in the public service. In government, people are much less likely to take a risk, and that’s completely understandable.

Here are a couple of examples of why: Our job is, in a completely non-partisan way, to support our elected officials. Those officials are accountable for everything that happens under their watch. That’s not so different to the private sector. The difference is that, unlike in the private sector, there are people whose job it is to oppose what the government does - the opposition. The mainstream media also pays close attention to what we do. As such there’s a very high level of scrutiny and people are aware of that. What’s more, everything we do is funded by the public. That brings with it an enormous responsibility to be disciplined in how we spend that money.

That doesn’t mean that innovation doesn’t happen in government. I’ve been privileged to work with some wonderfully creative people who are doing some leading-edge work. The difference is that they have to be much more sure of what they’re doing than perhaps they might have to be in the private sector.”

In addition to accountability, the logistics of getting buy-in and organizing any new media communications program in the context of a governmental agency just sounds like herding cats to me. Angry, confused, territorial, bureaucratic cats. With knives. Dave sees it a little differently.

There are some unique challenges that come with implementing “new media” in the public sector, but at the same time many of the challenges aren’t too different to those in any large organization. Approvals processes, silos and organizational intertia aren’t unique to government. I think the key is to take small steps - to not expect to make giant leaps forward. I heard a speaker say that government needs to get to web 1.0 before we think about web 2.0 and I think that’s important.

I’ll give you three examples of particular challenges that communications in the public sector does face, though. Firstly, we have a responsibility to communicate with all of the citizens in our jurisdiction. We have to remember that, while many people are fortunate enough to have broadband Internet access, there are many more that don’t. Regardless of the reason, we can’t exclude those people in the name of progress. As long as that divide exists, online tools will co-exist with other means of communication.

Secondly, we have an obligation to communicate in both official languages - English and French. That poses some unique challenges when it comes to social media. It doesn’t mean we can’t use these tactics - the Privacy Commissioner of Canada’s blog, for example, is doing just fine (http://blog.privcom.gc.ca/) - but it does create challenges.

Lastly, the Ontarians With Disabilities Act requires that “The Government of Ontario shall provide its internet sites in a format that is accessible to persons with disabilities, unless it is not technically feasible to do so.” I think we should be proud to have that legislation. At the same time, it does pose challenges in the age of instant information. It is difficult to post a video immediately following an event, for example, when you must first transcribe the video and then have that transcription translated.

As someone that has to deal with the realities and implications of using any social media tools, Dave has a grounded perspective when it comes to the new and shiny. He’s the kind of guy that sees social media tools as means to and end rather than services with implicit value.  I asked him what he thinks of the constant influx of new social media tools, and what he sees as useful vs. overhyped services that don’t add anything.

I see social media as a means to an end rather than an end in itself. As a communicator, I see social media as an extra set of tools to add to my toolkit. They don’t change the fact that for each initiative I have to think critically to decide what the most appropriate tools are. Sometimes they don’t fit; other times they do. We’re still in the early days of using these tools in government though.

I think many of the tools out there have very little use for organizations. That’s fine - many are directed at consumers anyway. Then again, I think the usefulness of a tool depends on the situation and the context. I’ve given presentations at conferences where I suggested that Twitter, for example, could be a wonderful emergency information tool during disasters. With all of the reliability problems Twitter has had recently, though, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who needs guaranteed availability. That said, Twitter is still the tool I use more than any other personally, and I gain tremendous business value in terms of knowledge and access to expertise from it.

I’m reluctant to single out any tools as not adding anything - like I said, I think it depends on the context. I do find knee-jerk rushes to new tools irritating, though.

In preparation for this year’s Boston Marathon, Dave set a goal to raise $3000 for the world-class Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation, based in Toronto. He decided to use social media tools such as Twitter, Utterz, email, and his two blogs to promote his effort. He meticulously tracked the success of each here. I asked him what he learned through the process.

My fundraising effort for this year’s Boston Marathon was one of the more rewarding things I’ve done in a while. It helped me to turn an inherently selfish act - running the marathon - into something that benefited other people and I learned a lot from it.

I think the tactics I used - my blogs, Twitter, Utterz and so on - worked because I was already on them and had built up my connections before I began my fundraising. What’s more, I did it genuinely and not with an end goal of using them to raise money. That’s a key lesson for people and brands in social media - get involved openly and build those relationships early on, with no hidden agenda. Don’t expect people to trust you if you just jump in with both feet. 

The old saying is, “Look before you leap.” With social media it should be, “Listen before you leap.”

I’m not sure if I would do something similar in the future - I’ve noticed more and more of this kind of thing happening online, and I think it could get a little off-putting for people to be bombarded by requests like this all the time. I’m glad I did it this time, though.

Finally, I asked Dave to name his top five social media tools.

Google Reader is right up there. It’s my hub for so much of what I do. I read a couple of hundred blogs, but I only go to one site to catch up on all of them. It saves me hours every day.

I mentioned Twitter earlier. Twitter (when it works, anyway) is the centre of my social media community. I use it as a resource, as a meeting place, as a networking hub, as a library and more. I find that Twhirl, a free desktop client for Twitter, and Google Talk help me to get the most out of Twitter.

A while back I heard, at 4:30pm on a Friday, that we needed a graphic designer for some last-minute work. There was no way we could handle the request in-house so I asked my Twitter friends if they knew anyone who might be able to help. A few minutes later I had three names, and a local PR agency contacted me by phone and email that evening to offer their services.

Del.icio.us is another tool I use every day. I use it to save articles for future reference, but I also use it for a bunch of other things like using other peoples’ bookmarks to add to my own reading list and tracking media coverage of announcements I’ve worked on.

I think blog monitoring is a great starting point for any organization looking to get involved in social media. You can pay for professional services like Radian6, Buzzlogic and the like but I think free blog search tools like Blogpulse, Google Blog Search and Technorati are great too. You can set up your searches, subscribe to the RSS feeds for those searches and sit back and watch the results come in. Couple that with a tool like AideRSS to filter the results and monitoring what people are saying about your company becomes cheap and simple.

WordPress would have to be my final choice. I don’t really think of it as a social media tool any more, but I suppose it is. I love the range of customization you can do, both with direct coding and with the thousands of plugins that people have created. I used to use Blogger for all my sites, but I switched my main site to WordPress and I’ve never looked back.

Dave Fleet’s blog about the intersection of communications, marketing and social media can be found at DaveFleet.com. His running blog is TorontoRunner.com. He also runs a wiki on social media training, available at http://socialtraining.wetpaint.com. You can follow him on twitter @davefleet.