Military Community Rocks Twitter

Today is #militarymon on Twitter. If you are not familiar with Twitter or this particular hash tag, let me give you a quick explanation. Various military organization, agencies, supporters and military members all come together on Twitter every Monday and share stories, appreciation and thanks. This was started by some amazing military bloggers and is also backed by Carson Daly and a few other celebrities on Twitter.

Aside from getting the whole community together to raise awareness, the military and government sectors are really winning on Twitter, corporate world should watch and take down some lessons.

5 Reasons Why Military and Government Twitter Accounts=Successful Social Media Practices

1) Inclusiveness-As someone that has no direct affiliation with the military community, I must say they have made me feel very welcome into their online community. From various military branches, agencies, to individual armed forces members and bloggers, it has been all around inclusiveness. That made me want to stick around and feel free to contribute.

2) Frequent Updates– You won’t see many government or military accounts sitting around with no updates, every day there is plenty of new information, conversations and collaborations being shared.

3) Compelling Content– Some of the articles andviewpoints that are posted is not content you will get from the news or anywhere else. It is very exciting to see a different face to the various military branches and government agencies. It feels very human, probably because there are actual people interacting.

4) Authenticity– From what I have seen, the various twitter accounts don’t only speak to supporters, but instead have been very open in their conversations and have tried to address questions, comments and concerns in the best way possible.

5) More Than Just Social Media-I think this one may be the most important. With these accounts, it is very real. Real people sharing a very important message. Aside from all the cool and interesting things one can do with social media, the most important aspect is being able to empower people and showing realness.

I realize the motivations between corporate and government/military sectors are different, but I do believe this time around, the public sectors are ahead of the private and there are take-aways that can be learned.

For a directory of some of these great accounts, check below. Pretty cool that @mailourmilitary keeps updating this list!
http://emailourmilitary.blogspot.com/2009/04/military-community-on-twitter.html

Although right now, the military community is only using social media as a means of support and sharing information, I do believe social media will become a valuable tool for recruiting, as most plaforms are built around starting conversations, which is what the military needs.

Even The Joint Chief of Staff is on Twitter, (@thejointstaff)