One of my areas of interest continues to be how social media is being used by government, at all levels (Federal, State and local), military, and politics. We have seen plenty of examples of how government and politics (sometimes one of the same) are using social media.  We have even seen how some branches of the military, such as the Air Force, are using social media.  But, what we don’t usually get to learn about is how these groups organize their social media efforts.  Following the social accounts is helpful but gaining insight into why and how they’re engaging in social media begins to allow us to shape the way that we can measure their success (or failures) online.

Two main documents will usually provide you with the needed information to begin to form this basis: the organization’s social media policies/guidelines and their social media strategy.  The first step is finding out if they even have either of those 2 documents.  The next step is exploring the documents to find out what their constraints are, why they’re getting involved with social media and how they hope to benefit from it.

While there are an abundance of social media policies floating around online (check out Coca-Cola’s, for example), it becomes harder to find published social media strategies.  That’s why I was surprised and excited to find that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had published the Chairman’s 2010 social media strategy.  You can check out the full social media strategy below.

Don’t know who the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the Chairman is?  Wikipedia defines the Joint Chiefs of Staff as “a group of military leaders in the United States armed forces who advise the civilian government of the United States.”  The Joint Chiefs of Staff are the Chiefs of each of the four military branches and are overseen by the Chairman who is appointed by the President of the United States and is, by law, the highest ranking military officer and principal military advisor to the President.

Now that we’ve had our short history lesson, did you know that the Chairman, Admiral Mullen, is actually active on multiple social media accounts such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube?  Not only is Admiral Mullen and his staff active on a variety of social networks, but their involvement is being guided by, according to their strategy, four main goals:

1. ENGAGE – Begin engaging in interactive conversations with our followers and post more personalized content about the Chairman.
2. ALIGN – Align the content creation process for social media with Chairman’s Top 3 Priorities, assimilate social media content creation into existing Join Staff processes and products, and involve the entire public affairs shop, speech writers, editors, CAG, and Aides.
3. DRIVE – Use social media content to get in front of events, trips, and testimony to lead the discussion and focus questions.
4. EXPAND – Continue to grow the Chairman’s online audience and identify new social media platforms to engage from.

For each of these categories they have identified a list of objectives and, where appropriate, a list of goals to achieve.  One of the objectives that caught my eye was under their goal of providing “social media business cards at all events as a source of more information.”

I think it’s great to not only know that the Joint Chiefs of Staff have a social media strategy but that they have published it online for all of us to peruse, share and discuss.

What say you about their strategy?

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