5 Comments

This briefs well and is a great start. I’m not saying that it wouldn’t work, but appears to have a overreliance on unit PAO personnel. If you’re talking about reaching all corners of an organization, what is the real outreach of a unit PAO?

Are they focused up and out? Are they focused only in? Are they focused on only what the BDE CDR give them guidance on?

It totally makes sense to use social media given the data that supports how many of our personnel consume its materials. Like with any pilot program, go with this for 60 to 90 days and see if the site has any increased traffic.

This really seems like it depends on the individual buy in of a PAO and whether or not their rating chain, supports supporting Line of Departure.

How do we make it so that every PAO has the same guidance and follows the same guidelines?

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@David Vowell - agree with everything you said. A Unit PAO's job is not to promote an Army-wide initiative. However - they wield an incredible tool to do so. Some unit pages have close to 100,000 followers on some platforms.

If this is a CSA initiative, then I would think unit Commanders should be supportive and "buy in" for their PAO would be a non-issue.

It would be a coordinated effort. OCPA and the Harding Fellows should do most of the work and coordinate a marketing campaign. This gives unit PAOs a win-win. Free content to post that supports the Commander and minimal added work in collecting it.

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You’re right, it shouldn’t be an issue. Maybe I have a bit of angst because as the CSA wants more content developed, there is a lot of fear about who or how it is done. Without giving too many details, in more than one location there is a lot of gatekeeping going on and it is very obviously becoming an “Officers” topic. Increasing the divide in professionalism between officers and enlisted.

Those 100,000 followers are not inside those organizations. Maybe they used to be, but not currently. Also, that’s a guess or even conjecture on my part, I’m just speculating. Just because there’s a lot of followers does not mean that that is the correct audience.

My unit puts stuff out on social media all the time and I ask my Soldiers about it and most of them have no clue.

If we are going to revitalize anything, your plan is the best laid out by far, as it puts a person directly at the helm of that ship at organizational levels. Even more pointedly, it gives leadership a person to go to to help share articles that that feel are important to the organization.

I could go on and on, but it’s probably just personal experience.

Thank you for putting your piece together and submitting it, I enjoyed reading it and it is a great idea.

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You bring up some good points.

Units, their Commanders, and senior NCOs use social media in different ways. Some use it to talk directly to their Soldiers and tell them relevant and important information, recognize excellence, and highlight developmental opportunities like the Harding Project - other units and leaders not so much. Their audience, reach, and effectiveness differ because of this.

I think leveraging social media for an initiative like this would be a great way to talk directly to Soldiers and potentially get more enlisted and non-commissioned officers energized about reading and writing in the profession. By meeting young Soldiers where they are - on these platforms - you democratize the way information is consumed.

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One challenge I see is a recent executive order ending diversity, equity, and inclusion programs resulted in our Adjutant General temporarily deactivating all outward facing social media until the PAO gets a clear definition of what content falls into this category and can screen/edit/remove all related content before reactivating each respective site. I see it as a slow build and CSA will be retired before his vision is achieved. I hope I’m wrong.

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