Census interactive marketing website

[Pat McCotter]

The census bureau is spending $326,000,000.00 to get people to PLEASE fill out your forms! Here is what part of that money bought.

http://2010.census.gov/

And a USAToday story on it.
Census sets up new interactive website
By Haya El Nasser, USA TODAY
The Census Bureau is well-known for asking questions. Now it will answer them, too.

The agency's new 2010census.gov website went up this week and, when it is officially launched Monday will give people a chance to do the questioning.

The heavily interactive site, part of the government's $326 million marketing push to promote the 2010 Census, is more whimsical than most government online portals. It's colorful. It has sound, videos, blogs and even a trivia quiz.

Sample question: "The entire population of the United States in 1790 — the year of the first Census — could fit into what modern city?" Choices: St. Louis; Akron, Ohio; New York; or Los Angeles.

Answer: Los Angeles (almost 4 million people).

"There's something on there for everybody," Census spokesman Stephen Buckner says. "It's the launch of a two-way conversation we hope to encourage."

A blog by Census Director Robert Groves welcomes comments. The site will feature three top questions of the day, gleaned from discussions on the site and chatter on the agency's Twitter and YouTube accounts and Facebook page.

The website, which links to the Census Bureau's main site, aims to tap the nation's diversity and segments of the population that traditionally are difficult to count accurately, including the young and single.

"The under-30 group is almost universally online," says Aaron Smith, research specialist at the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a non-profit that studies the social role of the Internet.

The world has changed since the last Census in 2000. Half the nation was online then, he says. Now it's eight in 10. Fewer than one in 10 had high-speed Internet connections then. Now: six in 10.

"Almost half of Internet users use social networking sites and a third of Internet users read blogs," Smith says. "The thing they're talking about around the dinner table, they're also talking about online. ... You're seeing a recognition within government that these tools have been very effective in other venues."

The website launches an all-out marketing campaign to get people to fill out their Census questionnaires next April. The population is counted every 10 years, and the numbers are used to reapportion seats in Congress and redraw state and local political districts. They also are used to determine where more than $400 billion in federal money should go every year.

The government is bracing for a lower response rate to the questionnaires than in 2000, partly because of a larger and more diverse population. The website is available in Spanish, and sample questionnaires can be viewed in 59 languages.

"We're bringing the voices of the people to the website rather than just having government-speak," says Joanne Dickinson, chief of the 2010 Census marketing and customer research effort.