An EPA social media success: ongoing participatory photo project

I get asked regularly for successful examples of using social media, so here’s one.

Forty years ago, EPA hired photographers to capture our world, with a special focus on environmental issues. That was the Documerica project.

For the past two years, EPA has invited everyone around the world to repeat that effort, sharing photos with us at no cost, with a special focus on capturing the same scenes originally seen in Documerica. That’s the State of the Environment project. So far, 850 people have submitted 2800 photos!

(We’d love to have your pics, too! Here’s how to participate.)

We use a Flickr group to collect photos and a photo blog to promote it. We also post pics to Facebook (example) that grab us and promote the project on Twitter. For example:

Beyond #EarthDay what will you do? Today’s Photo, a moment in the #StateoftheEnvironment flic.kr/p/eduhhQ blog.epa.gov/epplocations/#…

— U.S. EPA (@EPAgov) April 23, 2013

Up a Lucky #Creek | #StateoftheEnvironment Photo Project ~ share your story blog.epa.gov/epplocations/2… flickr.com/photos/3993512…

— U.S. EPA (@EPAgov) April 25, 2013

We also use their photos around our website, including in home page banners and in our special Earth Day weekend home page.

Here’s a recent blog post we published about the effort and here’s a nice article in Smithsonian magazine (that itself was the result of some successful media relations efforts).

For more info, or implementation details, please contact Jeanethe Falvey on my team: [email protected]