{
    "version" : "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1",
    "content" : "news",
    "type" : "single",
    "title" : "Engage the Community with Visual Greatness |Digital.gov",
    "description": "Engage the Community with Visual Greatness",
    "home_page_url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/","feed_url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/2015/11/13/engage-the-community-with-visual-greatness/index.json","item" : [
    {"title" :"Engage the Community with Visual Greatness","summary" : "The power of using social media to find and create images can be overwhelming. What image do I post? How can I get more followers when I don’t have animals or pretty pictures to share? All good questions. The fact is, no matter what your agency does you can find a visual way to tell","date" : "2015-11-13T10:00:28-04:00","date_modified" : "2025-01-27T19:42:55-05:00","authors" : {"danielle-brigida" : "Danielle Brigida"},"topics" : {
        
            "social-media" : "Social media"
            },"branch" : "bc-archive-content-3",
      "filename" :"2015-11-13-engage-the-community-with-visual-greatness.md",
      
      "filepath" :"news/2015/11/2015-11-13-engage-the-community-with-visual-greatness.md",
      "filepathURL" :"https://github.com/GSA/digitalgov.gov/blob/bc-archive-content-3/content/news/2015/11/2015-11-13-engage-the-community-with-visual-greatness.md",
      "editpathURL" :"https://github.com/GSA/digitalgov.gov/edit/bc-archive-content-3/content/news/2015/11/2015-11-13-engage-the-community-with-visual-greatness.md","slug" : "engage-the-community-with-visual-greatness","url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/bc-archive-content-3/2015/11/13/engage-the-community-with-visual-greatness/","content" :"\u003cp\u003eThe power of using social media to find and create images can be overwhelming. What image do I post? How can I get more followers when I don’t have animals or pretty pictures to share? All good questions. The fact is, no matter what your agency does you can find a visual way to tell your story and connect with people who care about what you do. It’s just helpful to think through the best way to tell your story, first. Whether it’s by video, still photos, GIFs, Infographics, etc or some combination multiple visuals, it helps to remember your goals. Here at \u003ca href=\"http://www.fws.gov/\"\u003eU.S. Fish and Wildlife Service\u003c/a\u003e, we’ve found a few key ways to use visuals and learn from our passionate communities.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"use-images-to-empower-others\"\u003eUse images to empower others\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we hosted a large event called the \u003ca href=\"http://www.fws.gov/le/elephant-ivory-crush.html\"\u003eIvory Crush\u003c/a\u003e to raise awareness around the impact the illegal ivory trade has had on African elephant populations, we knew we wanted to create images around promoting the event. But we didn’t stop there. We also worked to create an image that included people who couldn’t be at the actual event. By thinking about what messages people may want to share in an effort to support our work, it allowed us to create something that was shared widely by people beyond the event.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"image\"\u003e\n  \u003cimg\n    src=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/digitalgov/_legacy-img/2015/10/573-x-333-Visual-Greatness-FWS-Ivory-Crush.jpg\"\n    alt=\"Ivory Crush campaign\"/\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\n\n\u003ch2 id=\"provide-visual-resources\"\u003eProvide visual resources\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe process visual information 60,000x quicker than written text. So when it comes to a way to quickly convey an educational message or discuss differences and dispel myths, visuals can be incredibly helpful. Just remember 508 compliance, it’s important to have great text to accompany visual elements in your communication, but when possible, use images to explain things clearly and succinctly. The following photos quickly showed the difference between black and turkey vultures from below.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"image\"\u003e\n  \u003cimg\n    src=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/digitalgov/_legacy-img/2015/10/600-x-348-Visual-Greatness-FWS-Vultures.jpg\"\n    alt=\"Vultures\"/\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\n\n\u003ch2 id=\"make-the-most-out-of-images-you-do-have\"\u003eMake the most out of images you do have\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen your photos perform exceptionally well and gain attention, don’t stop there. Last year, one of our tweets from the Super Bowl featuring burrowing owls performed really well and started getting shared widely because it was clever and relevant. Instead of just accepting the tweet as success, we wrote up a blog post discussing burrowing owls and giving more context to the popular photo. This in-turn gave people more background on the wildlife, media a chance to share the image and discuss it more and us a chance to offer a resource that gave people more context.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"image\"\u003e\n  \u003cimg\n    src=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/digitalgov/_legacy-img/2015/10/596-x-380-Visual-Greatness-FWS-Open-Spaces-Owls.jpg\"\n    alt=\"Burrowing Owls\"/\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\n\n\u003cp\u003eWhenever I’m creating content to share on social media, I think about how I can acheive my goal through various forms of communication. Visual elements often are vital for grabbing attention, but can also be a great way to distribute quality information and inspire powerful reactions. By using infographics to display visual data, \u003ca href=\"http://giphy.com/\"\u003esearching through GIFS\u003c/a\u003e, investigating tools that may make editing and sharing images easier, \u003ca href=\"https://www.awesomescreenshot.com/\"\u003ecapturing lessons learned\u003c/a\u003e and continuing to notice how people consume content, we can all continue to communicate information more effectively and provide great resources and context for people.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eDanielle Brigida is the National Social Media Manager for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS).\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n"}
  ]
}