Social Media – • Social Media and a Government Agency or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love facebook. • You must be wondering how a government agency in one of the least internet friendly states in the country got involved in social media. What the….!?! • Just who’s space is this? • Radio ad on a fake myspace site about just what could be done in an Arkansas State Park. Not exactly kid and family friendly. • It took over a month to get rid of that site and then we built our own. We did almost nothing with it. MyKid • In early fall of 2008, my 12 years old daughter wanted to join facebook. • I told her only if I could be her friend. • Soon, Friends from my distant past found me and I was hooked. MyTime • November of last year I was at home recovering from a minor injury and had plenty of time to play with facebook. • I soon realized that the parks could benefit from a facebook presence and started a friends page. MyPermission • This was a case of it being better to ask forgiveness than permission. Otherwise this could have taken years to get going. • I had to get special permission to open YouTube on a state computer. Beforehand it was managed from home. MySurprise • Wow, we grew fast. By February I added a twitter presence and by the spring we had 5,000 friends on facebook. I had to start a fan page. • The fan page took off even faster and by the end of summer we were at 15,000 fans. MyBurden • I had to get special permission last spring to start the YouTube page. • My staffing for the social marketing still consists of just myself MyFriends • Out of all the state parks with social media presence the leaders seem to be Virginia State Parks (tops on twitter) and Arkansas State Parks (tops on facebook) • South Carolina State Parks are coming on strong with a good program worth stealing from. MyOrganizing • I went from Blackberry to iPhone. For on the road posting • I use HootSuite to load up tweets in the morning so they run throughout the day. Utilizing our online Calendar of Events heavily. MyNumbers • We still have 5,000 friends and 16,000 fans on facebook. • 3900 followers on twitter and we are currently included on over 80 lists. • Our links on twitter are clicked an average of 2500 to 3000 times per month. MySuccess • We have used social media to sell lodge rooms and campsites thus improving state park revenues • We have also used social media as a teaching tool to differentiate the state park system from other forms of outdoor recreation in the natural state. MyFails • Initially I thought of the social media, particularly facebook,as a way of driving traffic to our Web sites. • I learned that our facebook page is a site on its own. Although we still provide links to more information I really have to work at putting the info on facebook. MyFuture • Interactive Blog, • Social Media links on main Web site • Utilizing Flicker • Improving our e-newsletter distribution MySites • Facebook • Twitter • YouTube • Myspace