Developing social media strategy to increase online communications for NOAA AOML

Social media has changed the way that people and companies communicate. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, these different social media platforms have enabled millions of people to communicate and share information with one another. Many companies are now adapting to the increased demand for social media by increasing their presence. It is vitally important as a company to show engagement with an audience; this can partly be done by bringing audiences back to your homepage which in turn shows that the product is reaching the public. The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is working to be at the forefront of these online communications strategies. The number of social media platforms is increasing, and it is important for NOAA to continue managing and growing their social media strategy. NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) has been developing their presence on social media. Through web features, photo galleries, and twitter, AOML works to engage the public in the different types of research, field projects, and collaborations that are occurring in the labs three divisions (Hurricane Research, Physical Oceanography, Ocean Chemistry and Ecosystems). With Twitter, AOML has seen an increased number of users going to the main website to read features and look at photos; by continuing to handle twitter and building on the previous work, we used online metric tools to measure and increase reception and engagement. Social media is always changing, and thus a new form of social media was implemented to improve the traffic to the NOAA AOML website, Reddit. The main goal of this project was to build upon the communications strategy designed by the previous AOML communications intern. By using online metric tools, such as google analytics, we tracked statistics and measured the impact of these new social media platforms. Increasing traffic to the website through different social media (i.e. Twitter and Reddit) helped elevate AOML’s presence as a leader in advancing marine and atmospheric science.