Your First Thoughts on the Social Media Strategy

This post is written by Jeannie Chen, Mary King, and Hilary Parkinson and is part of our ongoing series about our social media strategy. We welcome comments from staff, other cultural institutions, and the public, and will continue to update the strategy as a living document.

When we introduced NARA’s new social media strategy in August, we called it a living document. But what does that mean? We wanted it to be the most relevant and up-to-date framework to guide our social media efforts, and to evolve as we worked. We asked you, the public and our staff, for feedback, and we’re excited to share the first round of edits we made based on your comments.

We put out a call for suggestions, and we heard lots of ideas! You shared your thoughts with us during in-person and virtual lightning sessions, on GitHub itself, by email, and of course through social media channels.

We read each comment and discussed them, and then we clarified and expanded these parts of the strategy. You can see the changes we made to the document, and if you’re feeling extra nerdy, you can take a look at the GitHub versions. We found that the feedback fell into four major themes:

Community of practice: You told us that you wanted us to continue our role in building a strong social media community internally and with peer organizations.

Diversity: You told us that you’d like us to share more stories from and about diverse groups, and focus on records related to communities that are often under-documented in archives.

Workflow: You asked us how we get different departments, staff, and offices to all work together.

Purpose: You asked us to clarify how social media supports the greater mission of the National Archives.

Thank you for all of your comments…but we’re not done yet! We’ll continue to update the strategy as it is implemented, from sharing successes to lessons learned. Want to know what we’re working on next? Keep an eye out for our digital plan worksheet!This post was originally published on Narations, the blog of the U.S. National Archives.