HIRE ME TO SPEAK
HIRE ME TO SPEAK

Armed with Social Media – The U.S. Department of Defense

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Social Media  |  Case Studies  |  Media Relations  |  Brand Journalism

Dod During my visit to The Pentagon on Friday, I had the pleasure of spending time with Roxie Merritt, Director of New Media Operations at the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs in the U.S. Department of Defense. While she is the top social media person at the U.S. Department of Defense, she also has an extensive background working with mainstream media to get the story out.

It was interesting to spend time discussing how new media is being used in conjunction with mainstream media within the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines.

Video is about 8 minutes.

Filmed with my Flip HD video camera and edited on iMovie.
Direct link to the video here.

My favorite (lightly edited) quote:

"I don’t have to do anything [to correct a blogger who gets something wrong]. Other bloggers who were in the same conversation with the subject matter experts will say 'hey you got it all wrong.'... It's not about controlling the message any more. It's about giving people as much information and resources and facts as they can."

:00 – 2:40 What the department of defense is doing to reach out to bloggers and how building relationships with bloggers is similar to media relations.

2:40 – 5:00 How the social media community is a self-correcting mechanism and how to lose control of the message.

5:00 – 5:30 On the decentralization of social media at the DoD.

5:30 - 6:00 How to reach the 65 percent of service members are digital natives.

6:00 – 7: 40 The immediacy of news and the importance of fact checking.

Watch this blog the rest of the week for a video interviews with Brian Natwick, General Manager of the Pentagon Channel and Colonel Kevin Arata, US Army, Director Online & Social Media.