The PAO ‘FAIL’ list
In keeping with the Epic Fail blog (if you need a laugh, check out http://failblog.org for more humorous photos), here is my PAO professional ‘FAIL’ list.
You are a FAIL if…
- You have only one person that knows how to update your website
- You are still clinging to a base/unit paper as your primary communication method
- You are not actively engaged in the social media environment
- You feel your work is done when X number of pages are full
- You are putting something online that happened yesterday
- You let your S/G/J6 shop’s ‘white screen of denial’ prevent your office from working on sites like Youtube
- You don’t know what SEO is
- You don’t know as much about OPSEC as your unit OPSEC officer does
- You don’t run any analytics
- You think ‘timely’ is sometime tomorrow
- You use terms like ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ news coverage instead of ‘accurate’ and ‘inaccurate’ news coverage (we’re not marketing a toaster)
- You keep your TV on one news channel
- You dont have any google alerts set up
- You only talk with media representatives whom you like
- You are content with your communication knowledge base and have stopped learning
Have any more? Would love to hear some of them.
5 Comments to “The PAO ‘FAIL’ list”
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I could add a few Mike:
- You give soldier information via exclusives to commercial news outlets before your own command information venues. (thus you make your soldiers pay for public info)
- You don’t use social media cause thats “just the ‘me’ generation talking about themselves”
- One of your primary communications goals is to get in the Early Bird
- You build a Facebook and Twitter page then do nothing but put out your press releases and command information stories on them in blocks of four or five posts at a time
I love the “Early Bird’ one!
- You stop at the first “no” you receive from someone in authority about a PAO function/mission
- You believe your Chief of Staff or the IO officer knows more about Army themes and messages.
- You trust another staff officer to be forthcoming with information about something they, or their people did to really, really, really mess something up. Example – When the Engineer insists the hazardous material cleanup in a “wasserschutzgebeit” was “perfect” until the media found out and told you, the PAO by means of a query; you fail. (You win when the CoS nukes the Engineer for being a secretive little SOB…)
LOVE this:
- You trust another staff officer to be forthcoming with information about something they, or their people did to really, really, really mess something up. Example – When the Engineer insists the hazardous material cleanup in a “wasserschutzgebeit” was “perfect” until the media found out and told you, the PAO by means of a query; you fail. (You win when the CoS nukes the Engineer for being a secretive little SOB…)
Sir, I love the list, very poignant. Great website, too. Makes mine look amateurish.