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.