U.S. Military using Social Media

Jan
6

It’s great to see the U.S Military using social media to communicate with people. Most of us know someone who is serving or has served in the Military and it’s really easy to ask them questions about their experiences, challenges, etc. But now it’s even easier for just about anyone to get some feedback or learn about a specific branch of service, without having to be pressured at the recruiter’s office to sign on the dotted line …

It looks like most of the branches use Twitter (Army, Air Force, Navy and the Coast Guard). The Marines do have a twitter account but don’t use it very often. It would be great to actually see these twitter accounts actually engage in dome dialogue; rather than blasting messages, but it’s a start.

Most branches have blogs as well.

My favorite of all the blogs I researched is the Navy Blog (authored by the Chief Information Officer). It’s clean and there is some really good content about technology and the Internet. I couldn’t find an official Marine Corps Blog but there are ton of blogs by various divisions, platoons, and units; this one being the 1st Marines, Regimental Combat team. Great content and well designed.

The Army blog is a little weak. I noticed some spelling and grammatical errors and many of their posts maintain no relevancy to the Army at all. Hats off to them for trying though — hooyah. I am sure they will work it out. Lastly, I found this diagram on how the Air Force responds to blog chatter on the internet. It’s a very comprehensive flowchart; and several elements could actually be mirrored internally for companies as well. They seem to be well ahead of many of the other branches of service. Their official blog is hosted on blogger though. Thanks to Jeremiah for his original post on this matter.

Most of you know that I am a Marine. I served 8 years in the corps and it was one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life. I am proud to have served my country.

Author: Michael Brito

Michael Brito is a Vice President of Social Media at Edelman Digital. All thoughts and opinions on this blog are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of his employer or clients; neither past or present. Feel free to follow him on Twitter or subscribe to this blog.

Kris Joseph

Would love to guest blog on your site, thanks for the kind offer! I'll drop you a line to discuss possible topics.

Michael Brito

@Kris - thanks for the feedback. Would love to have you guest blog here if you want, or have time.

Kris Joseph

Nice post, got me thinking. I work in U.S. Army public affairs and I am really diving into social media to communicate with people. I think though that the military has jumped in too fast because for the most part all they are doing with the social media sites is just posting their traditional news releases and strategic messages. They are still just using one-way communication instead of developing relationships with real people. I commend the effort the Army and the military is making by leveraging social media, but I can only hope that they don't use it to just push public affairs products. That would be a 'no go' at this station.

James

The "Army blog" is not the official United States Army blog. Read the disclaimer at the bottom of the website: "This website is not affiliated, endorsed, authorized, or associated in any way with any government, military or country."

Follow me on Twitter: @imjamesdavis

Jack Zufelt

I wanted to say thank you for serving our country. These organizations are doing themselves a great service by utilizing social media.

SEO

It is interesting to see the different direction social media is being used for.......and military is one way to realize social media is effective with younger consumers, so we need to be paying more attention to it.

Nick Stamoulis

It is def. a good sign to see these organization starting to use these programs. It a step in the right direction at the very least.

Guillaume

Well the army is an actor of society and it makes sense that they sue these tools. And with so many people in all the corners of the world it is almost necessary to use it.