I don’t know about you, but I’m still taking in all the information from Social Media Week. Each of us at CPG attended different events to gather as much new information as possible that could help us learn and grow our business. We all took some time and wrote up summaries of our experiences at each event, and for those that couldn’t make it, here are some lessons the CPG staff learned.

• There is no better place to host an event talking about the future of social media in government than in an auditorium built 50 years ago #SocialGov event at GSA. How can you know where you’re going until you know where you came from?
• #AskFAFSA is a great resource for young adults to help them deal with Federal Student Aid. Social media customer service is responsive. Rapid response and small mistakes still equals trust. It may not pack all the information a pamphlet or letter might hold, but it can engage the demographic and point them in the right direction if they need more than a 140 characters of help (also, follow Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Twitter because he often does Arne Duncan Twitter Town Halls when he has spare time before meetings)
• “3 things never to follow- children, big animals and a NASA presentation.” Scott Prince from the National Institute of Health (if he didn’t have this joke he would have been booed off the stage). But seriously a Google Hangout from Space! And using hash tags like #pewpewpew.
• Mind your own damn business- It is vital to understand your business objectives before doing anything. It’s not just about generating “likes” or followers. If you have a candidate that is unknown to voters, you want to track how many people visit the bio page. Google analytics helps you dig deeper on how effective you are online- Google Analytics
•  Women use Facebook more than men. Blacks use Twitter more than Whites. Liberals “defriend” more than Conservatives. 1/2 of voting population has a smart phone. 1/2 of 18-39 year olds say there encouraged to vote on some SNS (social networking site). #mobilegonnagoboomin2016   #Pew Research
• While social media is usually just labeled hip and fun, it is helping with serious issues in our great city. Uber has helped remedy a long-time DC problem of Black men not being able to get a cab. (If you click one article from the blog make it that one. Great read.)

We learned much more, but for the sake of your time I’ll stop there. Hope you are able to take a little bit away from what we learned and apply it to your business. See you in March!