SOCIAL MEDIA SNAPSHOT

SOCIAL MEDIA SNAPSHOTICEX 2011

SOCIAL MEDIA SNAPSHOT

Overview of ICEX social experiment• ICEX exercise coordinators have been sending virtual postcards

documenting the exercise for the past few years• This year, they turned those postcards into blog posts on the NavyLive

blog• ICEX leveraged the Navy social media network and CHINFO reach back to

coordinate and share messaging online• As a result, awareness about and interest in ICEX, Arctic Submarine

Laboratory and the Navy’s capabilities in the Arctic• Additionally, we were able to increase family readiness by keeping crew

family members informed, engaging children and answering their questions

SOCIAL MEDIA SNAPSHOT

29 posts over ~3 weeks on NavyLive blog detailed the exercise from start to finish

• 29 posts in total• 31,424 visits to posts about ICEX on the

NavyLive blog!• 39 total comments• 1 media inquiry directly from the blog by

Canadian reporter Ben Green of the Lookout newspaper at CFB Esquimalt

• Most popular posts with over 1,000 views each– ICEX is Coming!– ICEX 2011 Step 1: Build the Ice Camp– The Submarines Are Here!

• Most popular blog posts were in the beginning of the series

SOCIAL MEDIA SNAPSHOT

CHINFO posted to the Arctic Submarine Lab page on behalf of ICEX team

• Also posted to U.S. Navy and Navy Climate Change Facebook pages (sometimes through direct posts and other times through tagging those pages)

• Number of active fans skyrocketed once the blog posts began

• The page received worldwide participation

• 563 new fans from 1 Mar-1Apr, 2011

SOCIAL MEDIA SNAPSHOT

The NavyLive blog was the top referring site to the

Arctic Submarine Laboratory Facebook page

The most popular posts on Facebook were ones that involved details about the ships as many crew family members were following

along via Facebook

SOCIAL MEDIA SNAPSHOT

SOCIAL MEDIA SNAPSHOT

CHINFO sent tweets out to @USNavy, while @ArcticSubLab auto tweeted all Facebook posts

• 14 tweets from @USNavy• 1078 clicks on links from @USNavy• Most popular tweets

– Showers- 264 clicks– Subs are coming 260 clicks

• @NavyNews at least 4 tweets & some retweets of @USNavy and @RepHankJohnson who visited ICEX

• Min of 100 clicks on @NavyNews links• @ArcticSubLab auto tweet based on Facebook

posts– Need stats from Jeff

SOCIAL MEDIA SNAPSHOT

Cross promoted with DoD’s Armed with Science sites• Armed with Science blog and social media

site administrators combined 2-3 ICEX blog posts together to create their own blog posts

• Posts were also promoted to their communities on Facebook (2,732 fans) and Twitter (8,274 followers)

SOCIAL MEDIA SNAPSHOT

Captured and shared videos of SECNAV’s visit

• 4 short videos of SECNAV talking on his visit to the Arctic received 714 views on YouTube

• Post on Navy Facebook page received 245 likes and 12 comments

SOCIAL MEDIA SNAPSHOT

Lessons Learned• Moving post cards to social environment increases the “sharability” of content

making it easier to cross promote• Putting content on open platform such as Facebook and Twitter increases chances

that you will reach audiences that may not have been the direct target, e.g. the crew members’ families who were highly engaged on Facebook

• Interest in blog was high in the beginning, but began to fall around the 15th post—consider doing consolidated posts on blog and multiple posts per day on Facebook & Twitter

• Friend and family members are the most passionate and they want to see photos of the crew—consider having someone on the sub also documenting experiences

• Collaboration & close coordination with CHINFO creates opportunity for exponential reach