Social Media, 175+ Tweets, 100+ followers and 1 Commandant

Less than a year ago Flotilla 4 embarked into the world of Social Media feet first following the lead of Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen. Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Google Calendar and Blogger, just to name a few, have been our applications of choice.

After trial and error we have been pleased to have grown quite a following through these outlets. So what have we done?

With Facebook we were able to begin social networking and communications between flotilla members with various members of the public. We have been socializing to build fellowship in our flotilla on Facebook and it has been a very important part to our growth. We generated a Flotilla 4 page that ties in to our news blog, Twitter feed, Flickr account and Google Calendar. This page allows other Facebook users to find us and get a source of information on the flotilla.

Blogger was somewhat familiar to us before we implemented it. We decided to use it as a virtual news area to keep our members and the public up to date between publishings of our traditional newsletter "Above Board." Our news blog also links in to various RSS feeds from Coast Guard sources, our Flickr photostream and our Twitter feed. It automatically publishes new posts to our Facebook page and Twitter feed.

Flickr has allowed us to create our own visual imagery location on the web to let Auxilarists and the public see what the Land-Locked Auxies of Flotilla 4 are up to. By tagging our photos, it has enabled search engines to help people find us quicker. The Flickr photostream feeds the front of our static website at http://www.flotilla4.org/ with pictures and also feeds our Facebook page.

Google Calendar was implemented to let us display our calendar in an organized fashion. We have a layered calendar that displays our public education and general flotilla activities with information including mapping. It is publicly searchable and we have used it to advertise our Public Education Courses. It feeds into our Facebook page as well.

Twitter was a big mystery when we started. Initially we couldn't find any Auxiliary presence to speak of on Twitter but we jumped in. Now we have over 100 followers, including Admiral Thad Allen (we are just one of a little over 50 people that he follows), and we have posted over 170 updates. We are able to update our Facebook page status via Twitter and "Tweet" from the field in real time regarding the happenings of the flotilla.

Finally, we did a complete overhaul on our static page at http://www.flotilla4.org/. A new design, a new feel, and integration with our social media applications have helped us to increase our presence. We utilize Google Analytics to track our viewers and see what it is about our site that they are interested in and how they found us.

It has been an exciting first year into Social Media for our flotilla. Thanks to Auxilarists John Halbrook, Trevor Henderson and Doug Jansen for spearheading this project and helping to put Flotilla 4 on the Social Media map.