U.S. Navy Media Blog

By Miranda Kaufman-Waldron
Digital Media Engagement
U.S. Navy Office of Information

In part one of the “Social Media Review How-To,” I discussed how to develop a profile of your Facebook fans using the wealth of (free) information housed in Facebook Insights. Unfortunately, the other platforms lag behind Facebook when it comes to readily available insights. If you remember, one advantage of Facebook Insights is that it allows you to compare Your Fans to People Engaged, a feature especially helpful when evaluating your goals and strategy. Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest do not have this feature. But, there are audience data points you should identify on each platform before revisiting your strategy, so in part two I’ll detail what to look for on each platforms.

Twitter

It’s a far cry from Facebook Insights, but Twitter Analytics does provide some helpful Audience Insights. The statistics included in this section range from the traditional (gender, country, state and occupation) to the specific (buying styles and consumer behavior, wireless carrier, home value and political party). The amount of trust or importance you want to assign to the data will vary depending on how your organization uses Twitter and what your communications goals are. However, one helpful feature is the ability to compare your followers to any number of comparison audiences, such as female millennials who use Twitter on an iOS device.

Using Audience Insights, you can create a Twitter follower profile and then compare it to your Facebook fan profile. Once you determine the differences, tailor your strategies accordingly. At the Navy, we realized our Twitter followers skew more heavily male and are more interested in news and current events than our Facebook fans. As a result, we reserve any breaking news updates for Twitter.

Instagram

Though in their infancy, Instagram Insights are already proving useful for social media professionals. The Insights provide four follower statistics: gender, location, age and the hours/days that your followers are online. The follower locations and the hours your followers are online can help determine when to post to maximize views. Insights are only available within the app.

You can also find more information through services that detail the best time to post based on your engagement rates and your account’s biggest fan, top hashtag, average likes per post, and most liked post. Our Instagram audience looks fairly similar to our Facebook fan profile, but we learned that the Navy should post around 8 p.m. ET and on weekends to maximize engagement. 

Pinterest

I haven’t found the analytics provided by Pinterest particularly helpful in shaping strategy or evaluating performance. However, you should take any (free) statistics you can get. Within the Analytics section, if you go to People You Reach you can see demographic and interest breakdowns for people who see and/or act on your pins. The Demographic statistics include country, metro area, language, and gender. The Interests statistics are audience interests, the names of boards with “lots of your pins” and brands, which are “businesses your audience engages.”

The Navy’s main takeaway was the gender breakdown, which showed that 51% of the people we reached are male and 43% are female (6% were unspecified). People differ on the exact number, but consensus shows that roughly 30% of Pinterest users are male, so our follower make-up is a true outlier. Additionally, after looking at our gender breakdown on all platforms, Pinterest has the smallest gap between male and female.

Now that you have a better sense of your followers, you need to ask yourself “Are these the people my organization wants to be reaching?” Stay tuned for part three of this How-To Social Media Review series, where we’ll look at bridging the gap between current followers and desired followers.  

If you have any questions, let us know at 703-614-9154 or navysocialmedia@navy.mil.

By Miranda Kaufman-Waldron
Digital Media Engagement
U.S. Navy Office of Information

If you’re in charge of social media for your organization, you know that as soon as you put pen to paper to draft best practices and strategy, some aspect is immediately outdated. “Instagram’s feed is chronological.” “Videos and photos take up valuable characters on Twitter.” “The Facebook algorithm finally stopped changing.” “Everything on Snapchat disappears in 24 hours.”

However, that doesn’t mean you should throw strategy out the window. It’s hard to efficiently use resources or maximize promotion and engagement, especially with a multi-person team, unless your strategy is defined. Due to social media’s constantly changing nature, you should develop an agile strategy, then re-asses it quarterly. But, before you create the strategy, you need to know the profile of your current fans and followers.

How, you ask, do you do that? At CHINFO, we took our own advice and conducted a review of the Navy’s flagship social media accounts. You can’t build an effective communications plan without knowing who’s on the receiving end. So, in part one of this series, I’ll examine how to determine your Facebook audience.

Who are your fans? Facebook Insights provide a wealth of knowledge for the affordable price of… free! The People section displays a breakdown of the gender, age, location and primary language of two important groups: Your Fans and People Engaged. We’ll start with Your Fans. These are the people you’ve already convinced to click your ‘like’ button. Female or male? Age? Location? Language?

You likely already know the main languages and write your content accordingly. But, if you notice you have a strong following in a few different countries, consider recognizing these fans in posts or hosting a Facebook Live event that specifically involves them. You should use the top cities section to inform posting times. If a majority of fans are on the West Coast, it’s probably best not to frequently post before 10 a.m. ET.

Who is engaging with your content? Once you know Your Fans, move to People Engaged. These are the people who actually engage with the content they see. Every time someone scrolls past your post, they’ll count as one person reached, but they may be moving their mouse or swiping their finger so quickly that they don’t even read your post. That’s why the engagement number is so important; it shows how many people actually shared, liked, or commented on your content. If they took the time to engage, the chance that your message influenced them is much higher.

Who are your People Engaged? Do you see any major gaps between this group and Your Fans? If your social media goals include building an active stakeholder community or increasing the understanding of your messaging, you’ll want to determine how to get all of Your Fans to become People Engaged.

When are your fans online? The order in which Facebook posts appear is dictated by an algorithm that Facebook constantly tweaks. However, if content performs well when first published, it’s more likely to be bumped up and reappear in news feeds hours later. Therefore, it is important to post content when the highest number of your fans are online. In the Posts section, you can determine when that is. The frequency with which you post will dictate your own schedule, but if you want to reach as many people as possible, you should focus on this chart.

The Navy’s takeaways. On the Navy’s flagship accounts, we want to reach new population segments while still engaging current stakeholders. One targeted segment for the Navy is Millennial America.

Fifty percent of our Facebook fans are ages 18-34 (Millennial America), but they only account for 20% of our People Engaged. As we refresh our strategy, we’re exploring ways to bridge that gap and engage millennials, a highly targeted group that many brands want to reach. One solution we may incorporate is to create new, varied forms of content that we hope will appeal to millennials, such as memes, short videos and Facebook Live events.

If you have any questions, let us know at 703-614-9154 or navysocialmedia@navy.mil.

Editor’s note: The second half of this blog will discuss how to evaluate your audience on Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

By MC1 (SW/AW) April Adams
Digital Media Engagement 
U.S. Navy Office of Information 

Since coming to CHINFO in 2014, I have learned so many valuable things that it’s hard to track them all. Now that I’m heading out for a few months of TAD, it’s my time to reflect and share those valuable things with others.

Coming from USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) and a 9-month deployment, I was right in the thick of things. I was the one taking the photos, writing the stories, shooting the videos and submitting them to the mysterious PAO cloud somewhere in the world. I had no idea who it was going to and what it was being used for. All I hoped for was for a little recognition on Navy.mil. But the work of an MC goes far beyond Navy.mil.

Once I got to CHINFO, I realized that I was now on the receiving end of our community. I was now in that mysterious PAO cloud that we all wondered about. Being here opened my eyes to so much more about our community and how important our work is. I learned why we do certain things we do and why they are important to not only the Navy, but the entire country.

Being on the receiving end, I got a different perspective. I saw what content is requested from outside sources, what is requested from top Navy leadership, and what the general American public and taxpayers want to see from the Navy they support.

In the midst of everything I do at CHINFO and being a part of the “bigger picture,” I realized a lot of the routine things we did on deployment that we didn’t think were important are actually extremely important.

We all know that most exercises and command events going on and off the ship are headline worthy for Navy.mil. But what about the everyday or every week happenings going on? Going out and covering the underway replenishment every week was something that MCs thought was just busy work for us to do because there wasn’t much else going on. Flight operations also are a daily operation that we always could film and photograph when there wasn’t much else going on because it was always around and guaranteed to put a smile on our PAO’s face. What we didn’t realize was that capturing the Super Hornet soaring off the flight deck was actually a big part of American history and is something that will forever be remembered. Take pride in those routine shoots; they may be that famous photo used in the future.

What I have learned from working on the asset management and production team within Navy Media Content Operations (OI-2) is that certain people and agencies are interested in all kinds of different things and we keep a server with pretty much anything that you can think about the fleet. Everything sent to us from the fleet is put on this server and archived for documentation. 

But one thing that I’ve learned that makes a video unusable is poor quality. There isn’t much we or anyone can do with a video or photo that has great content if the resolution is low or grainy. No matter how interesting, poor quality will automatically make that piece of content a lot less valuable.

News and documentation aren’t the only important content captured in the fleet. It’s important to connect with the public on a personal level also. Features are a great way to do that. Not only does it give Sailors a way to tell a piece of our Navy’s story, but also it allows the public to see a side of the Navy that isn’t often shown. Features allow the public to see that our warfighting fleet is if full of real people – just like them.

Just like writing a story, I’ve learned that in social media you have to consider your audience when constructing a post. Facebook, twitter, Instagram, etc., all have a different audience and each post or tweet should cater to that specific audience. 

A feature post is something that I know would definitely do well on Facebook and produce a lot of engagement. A lot of our Facebook fans consist of Navy moms, spouses and veterans - while a large portion of our twitter audience is the media. Reporters are more interested in hard news and headlining stories; I keep that in mind when planning tweets.

People love visuals. Sharing a story by itself will capture the attention of a few people, but sharing a story with a photo or video attached will increase engagement exponentially. One rule to live by in social media is that visuals draw attention.

Likes matter. I’ve heard over and over that the goal is not to get the most likes, but to inform and grow followers, friends or what have you. What most people don’t understand is that the more likes, comments and shares that you receive, the more reach you will obtain and therefore the more growth potential you will have.

As MCs, we should never underestimate the power of our work. The things that we capture matter to the world and are a part of our everlasting history.

If you have any questions, let us know at 703-614-9154 or navysocialmedia@navy.mil.

By Jason Kelly
Digital Media Engagement
U.S. Navy Office of Information 

It is only appropriate that social media would have a day on social media about itself! As such, I want to share some recent news from the social media world.

Facebook News Feed

On June 29, Facebook announced a change to News Feed, which is where most people receive their content on Facebook. Tweaking News Feed isn’t news by itself. However, Facebook announced that the things that are posted by friends that you care about will appear higher in your News Feed over the coming weeks.

The change is causing some publishers to ask how will the change impact them. In a blog post, Facebook said reach and referral traffic may decline for some Pages - depending on the composition of the Page’s audience. Pages, which receive a lot of their referral traffic from content that has been shared, are expected to see less of an impact, according to Facebook. It recommends posting content that people will share. 

In a separate blog post, Facebook said people expect two things in their News Feed - information and entertainment. That’s what we’ll continue to do on the Navy’s flagship Facebook Page. - sharing varied content that is relevant and professional - yet reflective of Navy’s command’s unique “personality.”  

Moving forward, CHINFO will continue to monitor our content’s performance - as we always do throughout the day and in a weekly content wrap-up to track trends over time. So, more to follow about how this latest News Feed update may require a slight course change… or not.

Twitter Video, Periscope and New Tools

It’s no secret that video is big on social media right now. According to Twitter, video Tweets have increased 50% since the beginning of this year. Now, you can share more of it. All users can now tweet videos up to 140 seconds in length. If you want to go live on Periscope, you can now start a new stream from within the Twitter app.

Twitter has also released two new companion apps - Engage and Dashboard. Engage is similar to Facebook’s Mentions. However, unlike Mentions which is limited to verified public figures on Facebook, Engage is available to everyone - with creators, influencers and public figures in mind - to understand, engage and grow their audiences.

Also, Twitter has released Dashboard that provides similar functions to higher-end social media analytics and monitoring tools. Twitter says Dashboard helps users easily engage their audiences, tweet when the time is right, and get ideas and inspirations. While the tool is designed for businesses to connect with their customers and community, it could have applications for commands who are wanting to stay plugged into Twitter conversations about them.

Microsoft to Acquire LinkedIn

Finally, a brief note about the business portion of the social media world. On June 13, Microsoft announced that it will acquire the professional social media site LinkedIn. Microsoft added LinkedIn will remain “its distinct brand, culture and independence.”

If you have any questions, let us know at 703-614-9154 or navysocialmedia@navy.mil.

By Jason Kelly
Digital Media Engagement
U.S. Navy Office of Information

Over the past several weeks, CHINFO OI-2 has been working with DMA Navy to create a better experience for our social media users and to better understand how they’re consuming content via Navy.mil.

Facebook Instant Articles

Since Facebook announced that it would make Instant Articles available to any publisher, we’ve been working to implement them for Navy.mil. (Previously, they were available to a limited number of publishers.) Today, we went live on Navy.mil.

Instant Articles give mobile Facebook users a fast and responsive experience in Navy.mil articles. Readers know they’ll be entering an Instant Article because they’re marked with a lightning bolt in Facebook’s app. Instant Articles, which use the same technology to display photos and videos quickly in the Facebook app, load up to 10X faster than standard mobile web articles. According to Facebook, 70% of people are less likely to abandon an Instant Article than a regular article.

What do Navy commands need to do to take advantage of Instant Articles via Navy.mil? Nothing different! Keep submitting your stories via the Navy.mil CMS and imagery via navymedia@navy.mil. Once the story is approved and published to Navy.mil, a dedicated RSS feed sends the article to Facebook. Instant Articles are ready for readers of your Navy.mil articles when they see them in the Facebook app.

On our backend, we’ll be able see reader-engagement in Instant Articles using Facebook’s own content analytics tools: information on article reach and engagement, time spent in each article, scroll-depth and engagement with rich media assets like photos and videos.

Digital Analytics Program

Speaking of analytics, Navy.mil joined GSA’s Digital Analytics Program, which is powered by Google Analytics. This gives us access to a common set of web metrics used by more than 3,800 government websites such as page views, unique users, mobile vs. desktop visits, average time on page, bounce rate, etc. – in real time.

What have we learned since we began adding the code to Navy.mil earlier this month?

- 96% of social media traffic is from Facebook. Twitter, LinkedIn, reddit and Blogger round out the top five sources of social traffic.
- Top three Navy.mil content accessed via Facebook:

1. Navy SEAL Posthumously Promoted
   
2. F/A-18F Mishap Off Coast of North Carolina
   
3. September 2016 E4-E6 Advancement Cycle Announced
   

Top three Navy.mil content accessed via Twitter:

1.       F/A-18F Mishap Off Coast of North Carolina
2.       Navy SEAL Posthumously Promoted
3.       Navy Accepts Delivery of Future USS John P. Murtha (LPD 26)

Top three Navy.mil content accessed via LinkedIn:

1.       Cruisers’ role in the fleet video
2.       US Navy Accepts Delivery of Future USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000)
3.       USNA Graduates First Cyber Operations Midshipmen

Top three Navy.mil content accessed via reddit:

1.       Malagasy Navy Participates in Cutlass Express 2016
2.       Smoking To Be Extinguished On Submarines
3.       Scale Model WWII Craft Takes Flight with Fuel From the Sea Concept

Top three Navy.mil content accessed via Blogger:
1.       US Navy Accepts Delivery of Future USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000)
2.       US 4th Fleet Hosts Bilateral Staff Talks with Chilean Navy
3.       Navy.mil homepage

- People are accessing Navy.mil on the go. 31% of visits were from mobile devices and 5% from tablets.  

Like I said, we started by adding the code to Navy.mil articles first. The web team continues to add the code to other pages.

Facebook Domain Insights

With a significant amount of content shared on Facebook, it’s important to understand what content is being consumed. Facebook Domain Insights allows us to see what content is shared – even if we didn’t share it on the Navy flagship Facebook Page. We’re also using Facebook Domain Insights on the Navy Live blog, and it’s providing valuable insight. The blog World’s Greatest Navy Takes Ownership of the World’s Greatest Ship, DDG-1000 was most shared on Facebook by people right where the ship was built – Bath, Maine…. and people are excited about it, according to Facebook’s Domain Insights.

Facebook Open Graph Tags

If you’ve submitted a story using the Navy.mil CMS recently, you’ve used another one of the enhancements – providing a brief description of your story for when the article is shared on Facebook.

Before adding the description field to CMS, Facebook grabbed the beginning of the article – often resulting in the description being truncated. Now, CMS users are required to provide the article’s description. Keep in mind that you aren’t writing a Facebook post or tweet; so, no hashtags. You’re simply providing a description of your article. In many cases, you can reuse the story’s lead if it is shorter than 155 characters. If it is longer than 155 characters, simply shorten the lead to fit the 155-character limit for the description field, which gives Facebook users a better understanding of the story.

Behind the scenes, the Navy.mil CMS now also tells Facebook to use the large version of the first image associated with your story as the image preview when the article is shared on Facebook. Just like before adding the Facebook description field, Facebook “guessed” what image should be used – resulting in a small image pulled from the Navy.mil article. Sometimes, that meant that the image preview wasn’t even associated with the story.

Social media continues to disrupt the traditional media environment. According to a newly released Pew Research Center survey, “a majority of U.S. adults – 62% – get news on social media, and 18% do so often… In 2012, based on a slightly different question, 49% of U.S. adults reported seeing news on social media.”

These enhancements to Navy.mil will help Navy communicators reach an increasingly social and mobile audience, and to understand how it is consuming our content.

If you have any questions, let us know at 703-614-9154 or navysocialmedia@navy.mil.

By Jason Kelly
Digital Media Engagement
U.S. Navy Office of Information

Last week, CHINFO used Facebook Live to stream two events, a Recruit Training Command boot camp graduation and the keel-laying ceremony of the Navy’s future USS Delaware (SSN 791). If they looked different from what you’ve been seeing on social media of live video, that’s a good thing – mission accomplished! Since then, we’ve received some questions about how we did it.

We used Facebook’s newly released API (application program interface) for verified Facebook Pages. APIs basically allow applications, devices and services to talk to each other.

For both events, we worked with DVIDS to use their web encoders to send the feeds, which were being professionally produced at the source, to the Navy’s Facebook Page. What was the benefit? Professionally produced, multi-camera events!

What did we learn?

People are watching. Live video isn’t anything new. However, both Facebook Live and Twitter’s Periscope are giving people and organizations the free tools to reach people in an environment that they are already using – social media.

We’ve been hosting Recruit Training Command graduations on Navy Live for some time now. Each week, approximately 5,000 to 7,000 people watch the graduation on the blog. Without promoting the graduation on Facebook, 288K people watched some part of the Facebook Live. The live Facebook views peaked at 5,411. Does this mean that we won’t host RTC graduations on the blog anymore? Not at all! The graduations are consistently the most popular blog each week on Navy Live. There are several benefits to hosting the graduations on the blog:

• A single destination for the live video – http://navylive.dodlive.mil. Just look under the webcast section on the homepage. There’s no need to refresh the screen waiting for the feed to start.
• Context. Each blog that hosts the graduations links to a blog by Rear Adm. Stephen Evans that explains how RTC transforms 38,000 civilians into Sailors each year, and a link to a Navy.mil story about the Recruit Honor Graduate Ribbon.
• Other content. Feel free to check out constantly updated links to Navy.mil top stories and headlines, and other blogs after watching the graduation.

What are the limitations?

Facebook Live videos are limited to 90 minutes. Both the RTC graduation and keel laying lasted longer than 90 minutes. As a workaround, we included a link in the Facebook post to the blog hosting the webcast for people to continue watching there.

Due to the physical separation between us and DVIDS in Atlanta, Facebook Live videos using the API require coordination in real time. For security reasons, the credentials are random and change each time you get ready for the webcast. In addition to scheduling the webcast with DVIDS, we had to also provide a server key (password) to DVIDS immediately before each webcast. DVIDS did a great job supporting us!

What’s next for us?

CHINFO is always evaluating the latest social and digital media trends to make sure we are on the right platforms, for the right reasons.

We’re reserving Facebook Lives on the Navy’s flagship account for non-recurring and high-profile events – like Delaware’s keel-laying ceremony. We don’t want our audience to become immune to them. Like the RTC Facebook Live, we didn’t promote the keel laying on Facebook, but 90K people watched some part of the keel laying. The live views on Facebook peaked at 2,615.

We do have some live video events planned in the near future that will use both the widely available smart phone and API options.

What does this mean for Navy commands?

You can use the API option if Facebook has verified your command’s page. You’ll know that your page has been verified if it has the blue checkmark badge next to the page’s name. Facebook doesn’t verify every page. CHINFO can facilitate requests to Facebook for verification for high-profile pages. However, the decision is ultimately up to Facebook.

If your command has an idea for a live video event that may appeal to the wider Navy audience, contact us at 703-614-9154 or navysocialmedia@navy.mil in advance.

There’s no doubt that live video on Facebook and Twitter is popular now. But that doesn’t mean that you should abandon other means of telling your command’s story. Create a family of content by including social media in your communication plan and making sure you’re still submitting your articles to Navy.mil, high-resolution photos with metadata to navymedia@navy.mil, and video.

If you have any questions, let us know at 703-614-9154 or navysocialmedia@navy.mil

By Chief Mass Communication Specialist Xander Gamble
Production Leading Chief Petty Officer
USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76)

“And we’re live from USS Ronald Reagan!” Those words I posted on my personal Facebook timeline as I sat down to watch the live broadcast of Captain Michael Donnelly relieving Captain Chris Bolt as the commanding officer.

I sat there, fascinated with the rising number of viewers of our first legitimate broadcast of a shipboard event on our Facebook page. We had two test runs in the days leading up to the ceremony. At the pre-deployment fair on Friday, we broadcast a nearly four-minute clip of our commanding officer talking to a crowd—a visually non-compelling piece, unadvertised, that taught us a few things:

• People are watching. Everything we do, we better be ready to do it right. We had up to 177 live viewers without any mention that we would be broadcasting. Bolt had the presence of mind to mention the fact that we were streaming on Facebook, including the digital audience with the physical one. He did this again during the change of command ceremony, including the whole audience.
  

• Be interactive. I do love 16:9 aspect ratio; Facebook takes half the visual real estate and turns the bottom of the screen into a comments section. These comments will come in live as we watch. There is also an option to respond to the comments. This helps with responding on-screen to questions that come in via text. During the ceremony, I responded to comments in real time, from questions about where Bolt would go next to comments about how cool the live Facebook technology was. I did this from a separate mobile device so the recording mobile device wouldn’t shake with each typing.
  
• Give your speaker presence. Captain Bolt looked like he was talking to an empty room because we framed him with an empty backdrop and no people in the foreground. We corrected this by shooting the ceremony from the audience, putting a few people in the foreground. This helped make the scene more authentically live.
  
• Know your bandwidth. Our test broadcast was done using 4G service. The result was a picture that would bounce between pixelated mess and sharp imagery. It’s that way forever. That’s how it recorded to Facebook, and that’s how it will stay. When we set up the ceremony, we set up a wireless router with a password only our team had access to. This meant we had prime internet bandwidth to broadcast a nearly 47-minute production with no lagging or image quality loss.
  

I went home after the first test and used my personal Facebook “brand” page to do some more tests. Turning the phone horizontal got me a sideways image. It didn’t rotate the image during recording, even if I started the recording from a horizontal view. You can check out my live tests here, here and here. The most interesting parts of the videos are the guest star; there are a few lessons learned in these few broadcasts.

The best part of the live broadcast was the return on investment. We went from an average nearly 600 page views and 300 page visitors a day to 2.4K views and more than 900 visitors on our page.

The majority of these were on the “Home” and “Timeline” sections of our command Facebook page. The other result was a jump in the number of “likes” on our Facebook page. We also had increased reach and visibility across Facebook. The biggest jump was in our comments, where we had more than 240 comments on the video, up from our average 40 or less comments per post. This interaction generates more visibility on Facebook based on greater post engagement.

From here, I would use this format for more audience interactions. The ability to see comments stream in live and respond in real time makes this a great tool for answering questions about current events from whomever is genuinely interested, and have those answers broadcast to a larger audience interested in our niche. Facebook has a list of tips for those that want to use the Facebook Live capability, some of which we applied to our own broadcast.

There is so much potential for this tool, and we have just seen the tip of the iceberg. I’m looking forward to seeing what the next command with creative MCs does with it. End broadcast.

By Jason Kelly
Digital Media Engagement
U.S. Navy Office of Information

As we say goodbye to 2015 and welcome 2016, we’re compiling our end of the year analytics for CHINFO’s digital media platforms.

I want to share what has stood out to me.

First on on the Navy’s flagship Facebook page, 4 of our top 5 most seen posts were graphics optimized for mobile sharing with a simple message. All of them likely elicited an emotional connection. Take a look below:

Fifth Most Seen U.S. Navy Facebook Post

Fourth Most Seen U.S. Navy Facebook Post

Second Most Seen U.S. Navy Facebook Post

Most Seen U.S. Navy Facebook Post

What about our third most seen U.S. Navy Facebook post in 2015? It was b-roll of future USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000)’s first at-sea tests and trials.

The post reached 8 million people. The 52-second unedited video was watched 1.96 million times, making it our most watched video on Facebook in 2015. (On YouTube, it was our fourth most watched video posted in 2015.) Visit the Navy Live blog for our other top four Facebook videos in 2015.

Why do I believe these posts were successful? 

First, like I said above, there was a clear message - both written and visually, with an emotional connection. Second, they were tied to something that people were discussing or interacting with: Independence Day, Sept. 11, Veterans Day, Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, and the future USS Zumwalt underway. You can’t be sure of what will resonate with your audiences. However, you can use lessons learned and integrated planning across teams to position yourself to be ready and relevant. 

I feel that’s important to remember: Be ready and relevant. Launching a social or digital media presence is only the beginning. You should aim to build an online community that reflects your organization’s values. Be ready to provide it relevant information by knowing your community. What type of content resonates with it? Are you reaching your audience on the platforms that it uses? Recognize that different audiences consume content differently. A short unedited video might be more suitable for one platform. While, a longer produced video might be more appropriate for another. 

When it comes to your organization’s social and digital media in 2016, make your New Year’s Resolution to be ready and relevant. 

If you have any questions, let us know at 703-614-9154 or socialmedia@navy.mil.

By Doug Bair
Digital Media Engagement
U.S. Navy Office of Information

Your media roundtable had a great turnout and those reporters have plenty of follow-up questions as they finalize their stories. All of your hard work preparing fact files, briefings, and press releases has allowed you to successfully communicate your principal’s topic. But once you receive that email from the reporter with his or her published story, your public affairs engagement is not over.

In today’s social media dominated news cycle, those reporters covering your topics and interviewing your principals have established stakeholder audiences via their own personal social media accounts as well as social media accounts for their respective publications. Here on social media conversations are driven by hashtags and 140-character messages, and you can take your public affairs skills to the next level through this digital engagement.

Once stories have been published, go beyond sending just a thank you email or call to that reporter but continue the relationship online by sharing that news article on your command’s social media platform while tagging the appropriate reporter’s and publication’s social media handle. Opening this dialogue creates an engaging conversation not only between your command and the media, but also the American public who utilize social media and follow reporters and publications that align with their interests.

Here are a few tips that can boost your social media engagement with reporters and the media:

If you have any questions, let us know at 703-614-9154 or socialmedia@navy.mil.

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By Doug Bair
Digital Media Engagement
U.S. Navy Office of Information

Social media is an intimate communication platform that allows public affairs officers to engage in direct dialogue with stakeholders on a range of topics and in real-time; therefore, a smart and strategic social media team is essential to successfully managing and disseminating your U.S. Navy public affair officer duties via digital communications.

Although there is a plethora of social media platforms and new ones continue to emerge daily, public affairs resources can sometimes be limited to smaller teams or account for only a fraction of a Sailor’s overall duties. When tasked with the duty of executing social media communications for an office or department, smaller teams should not shy away / be intimidated by the boundless opportunities of social media nor the extensiveness of online communications. Rather, these teams should thoroughly research and strategize how best to execute their social media duties even if it means managing only one social media platform.

Based on demographic intelligence about the age, gender, location, and other key indicators, evaluate your stakeholder audience and determine which social media platforms they utilize to communicate about the U.S. Navy topics that matter most to them. A good resource to identify these platforms is through Pew Research data or reputable digital communications publications that report on industry trends. Once you know which platforms your audience utilizes, evaluate what your office or department’s mission and goals are that will drive the conversations you will have with your stakeholder audience. With a clear mission and goals, you can establish objectives you will reference in your social media communications with stakeholders and then track the metrics of each post to measure the success of your social media communication efforts to relay to your department or office’s leadership.

It is not a one-size fits all approach when adopting social media, so one public affairs officer might focus solely on Facebook for their duties while another strictly focuses on Instagram. For social media to be an authentic and genuine experience between you and your stakeholder audience, the specific platform plays a significant role. Consider social media apps on a mobile device like a newsstand where stakeholders decide where they are going to consume their news. Perhaps some audiences prefer to get their information on Twitter while another prefers to consume news via Pinterest. It comes down to going where your stakeholders are consuming information in order to provide your U.S. Navy news to them there. When you post to a platform where your intended audience consumes their information, it’s similar to landing a news story in a publication that your stakeholders read every morning to start their day.

Social media success is founded in which platforms make the most sense for your audience.

On the technical execution side of social media, there are a few tactics to employ that will also aid in a successful social media presence. For example, scheduling posts to optimize publishing for time and day allow you to budget an editorial calendar of content that aligns with your communication campaigns. So if you are stationed in a fleet on the other side of the globe than where your stakeholders live, you are still able to publish content in “real-time” of when your stakeholders will be online.

After you have identified which platform(s) align most with your stakeholders and have established a technical workflow of best times to publish, creating a communications engagement plan for your communications efforts will enable you to successfully perform your public affairs duties. To do this, there are five key qualities to remember when managing your social media presence.

1)      Collaboration—identify opportunities to amplify other public affairs officers’ communication projects via social media.

2)      Flexibility—due to the real-time nature of social media, allow yourself to engage with stakeholders in a timely manner when issues or concerns need addressed.

3)      Agile—when crisis communication situations occur, apply the same principles and tactics to maintain a fluid and authoritative stream of information as stakeholders will look to your social media platforms as the equivalent to an online press secretary.

4)      Attention to Detail—always ensure grammar and spelling are correct with a strong foundation in factual data to support your communications message.

5)      Creative—brainstorm new ways to engage with stakeholders whether it’s through multimedia projects or hashtag campaigns.

As you plan and deploy your own social media engagement strategy, feel free to reach out to the Navy Digital Media Engagement Team at 703-614-9154 or socialmedia@navy.mil.

By Doug Bair
Digital Media Engagement
U.S. Navy Office of Information

Don’t fall victim to an awkward photo crop ruining your latest cover photo or Instagram post—it could cost you likes, retweets and re-pins.

Photos are not a one size fits all when it comes to social media sharing, so before you post or upload that next picture, open Photoshop or photo editing software of your choice to create specific sized files for each social media platform you plan to utilize when sharing your photo.

First, save the raw file size as “original” and save each new cropped photo from that one renaming the files to reflect the social media platform and purpose they are intended for such as “Facebook_Cover_Photo” or “Instagram_Stream_Photo.”

Online images are measured in pixels, which is used to create image resolution online and restrictions vary from platform to platform; therefore, make sure your crop tool is set to measure in pixels (not inches) when sizing each file. Then, you can preselect the sizing ratio of the cropping tool in the toolbar, which will create a controlled crop ratio to edit your photo.

Below are the dimensions (in pixels) for each platform and includes the most common photo types you might utilize on your account.

Facebook:

• Page cover photo size: 851 x 315 pixels 
  
• Profile photo size: 180 x 180 pixels (32 x 32 thumbnail when previewed on the site, so test this size, too, when cropping for the 180 x 180)
  
• Wall post size: 504 x 504 pixels
  
• Group Cover photo size: 801 x 250 pixels
  

Instagram

• Profile photo: 110 x 110 pixels  
  
• Stream photo: 640 x 640 pixels
  

Twitter

• Cover photo: 1500 x 500 pixels
  
• Profile photo: 400 x 400 pixels
  
• Feed photo: 440 x 220 pixels

Google+

• Cover photo: 1,080 x 608 pixels
• Profile photo: 250 x 250 pixels
• Shared photo: 497 x 373 pixels

Pinterest

• Board display: 222 x 150 pixels
  

If you have any questions, contact the Navy Social Media Team at 703-614-9154 or socialmedia@navy.mil

By U.S. Navy Digital Media Engagement

We want you to be aware of your social media presence. It is your choice to have an online social media presence. It’s your duty to make sure you are responsible and you maintain good OPSEC practices.

Download the graphic here.

The Navy Office of Information released the Navy Public Affairs Guide for Ombudsmen (NAVSO P-5720.19). 

It discusses the public affairs-ombudsman relationship. Other parts are geared to help ombudsmen act as a liaison to family members. The guide presents best practices and a few rules of the road, and lets both the ombudsman and the command know what they should expect of the public affairs team as it works together to share the Navy’s story.

The guide can be viewed or downloaded from our SlideShare site.

By Lauren Benedict
Social and Emerging Media
U.S. Navy Office of Information

#USNavy, #SECNAV,#PresenceMatters, #BeReady, #ISS, #BeBrave

Don’t they all look familiar? It is probably because you have seen them everywhere on social media. The hashtag has been a popularsocial media tool in the last past few years. Have you ever wondered how it all started? I did – and it turned out to be a pretty cool story!

“It all started back on Aug. 23, 2007 with a tweet by San Francisco techie and former Google developer Chris Messina. He wrote on Twitter, ”How do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?”

“It was one of those things where I had so many haters in the beginning that I thought this thing would never pick up,” [Messina] said in a recent interview with [Minneapolis’] WCCO-TV. “But, secretly, I sort of felt like, ’Come on, guys, this is the simplest thing that could work.’” (Brown, 2013). I think it is pretty safe to say the rest is history.

Now, what is exactly a hashtag? Why should we use hashtags? How can we use hashtags effectively? The Whole Brain Blog (Jernigan, 2012) provides simple answers to these questions:

What is a hashtag?

They are keywords inserted in posts (such as Twitter) and they can be found at the end of the message or within. The symbol, #, should be followed by a keyword that you want to “hashtag”. There can be more than one hashtag in a post.

Why should we use hashtags?

•  Save Space
  
•  Provide Meaning
  
•  Easily Searched
•  Provide a Sense of Place
•  Bring the Funny

How to use hashtags effectively

•  Be Descrpitive
  
•  Be Strategic
  
•  Be consistent
  
•  Be accurate
  
•  Be concise
  

Hashtags have grown largely in our social media community in a short period of time. We gain followers by using hashtags. We spread awareness by using hashtags. We can even do analytics with our own hashtags by using a website: https://analytics.hashtags.org/. Chris Messina may have expected the hashtag movement to be somewhat successful, but most of us didn’t realize how powerful hashtags turned out to be.

#USNavy, #SECNAV, #PresenceMatters, #BeReady, #ISS, #BeBrave

References:

Brown, H. (2013, November 11). Good Question: How Did The Pound Sign Become A Hashtag? Retrieved January 15, 2015, from http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2013/11/07/good-question-how-did-the-pound-sign-become-a-hashtag/

Jernigan, J. (2012, October 18). Hashtags #howdotheywork? Retrieved January 15, 2015, from http://blog.thewholebraingroup.com/hashtags-howdotheywork