Top 3 Things I Learned at the IDGA Social Media for Defense Summit

This morning I attended the IDGA Social Media for Defense Summit in Alexandria. In case you missed it, these were the biggest points I took away from the speakers:

1. Social Media should be run like a spiderweb

For social media, integration is the name of the game. You want to be able to integrate everything that your agency wants to communicate to a worldwide audience, and drive traffic to all of your web properties. 

It is difficult to integrate social media if there is not a clear vision in mind. In his presentation, Robert Piper of the Marine Corps listed some of his main objectives for their social media campaign, as a source of inspiration.

• increase public knowledge
• increase transparency
• protect reputation in social media space
• improve issue identification and response capability
• improve decision making
• recruit qualified individuals

2. The best time to post on social media for your agency is 9:00am.

Why is this? Assuming most people get to work around 9:00am, and that they are lucky enough to have access to social media websites at their workplace, your information will be at the top of their feed. 

What should you be posting to social media? It was generally agreed that people love looking at pictures, polls, and questionnaires where they can express their opinion. The bigger topic of debate was how often you should be posting on social media websites. Which is better, quantity or quality? In the end, it comes down to what works best for you and goals of your agency.

3. Assessment and analytics should be used at all times

Steve Shaker emphasized that you should set up your social media team like a war room.

- Social media should be run by a team, not just one person.

- Once the team is defined it needs to sit down and talk about strategy OFFLINE before doing any work online.

- After you see some analytics your team needs to sit down, re-evaluate strategy, then make tweaks to make it better. Because social media is constantly changing, your strategy for success should also be constantly changing to adapt.

Do you have any social media tips to add to the list?

If you attended this conference, what was your biggest take-away?