US Department of Interior: Social Media Strategy

Hi everybody!

This Wednesday in Social Media class we are going to discuss Social Media Implantation Plan of US Department of Interior. We will interact with Mr. Tim Fullerton, Director Digital Strategy. You will be little bit surprised to know that the US Department of Interior is entrusted with the responsibility of management of natural and cultural resources as opposed to the other countries where Interior Department is entrusted with the responsibility police functions and maintenance of law & order. The department looks after all the National Parks and Monuments of the country. The Department of Interior is a huge department with 70,000 employees. It has 280,000 volunteers to carry out the mission of the Department from 2400 locations. The department is divided into nine technical bureaus namely; Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, National Park Service, Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation Enforcement, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey. Volunteers are assisting the department in community based programs by ensuring citizen participation. Current Secretary of the Department is Ms. Sally Jewell who is very active on social media.

The goal of the DOI is to reach audience at national level. DOI uses social media platform widely particularly Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook to reach out national audiences and to promote its activities. The Department is using social media so nicely to educate and raise the awareness of the people, which is rarely seen in government organisations. It is not just simply posting of the pictures. It is posted along with all the authentic details and they are very informative. DOI is using various social media platform to focus on different aspects of the Department. For example, Instagram is being used to promote awareness about public land; twitter is a kind of mixture of photographs & policy and YouTube for promoting policy of the DOI. DOI posts weekly video of top happening/events of the Department. The DOI is also using few metrics to measure the success of the social media. For example, level of visitor interaction with DOI content. The DOI looks how much its content is being shared. Metrics are also being utilised fruitfully for course corrective measures. For example, when DOI started posting their videos on their YouTube website and shared a link on the Facebook, the weekly followers were only 3000 – 5000. The DOI changed its strategy and started posting is videos using Facebook video player directly on Facebook; the weekly follower increased significantly up to 8000.  At present DOI have 467k followers on Instagram and 273k followers on twitter. You may have many quarries apart from this basic information.  Keep your questions ready to ask Mr. Fullerton tomorrow.

Neeraj Srivastava