US Airforce’s Blogger Rules of Engagement

Given the fact that I’ve always considered the Air Force and the other military organizations as being pretty conservative, the fact that the Air Force has a well organized policy for social media interaction is totally impressive.

Not only do they have a Twitter account, a YouTube channel and Wigets and Podcasts as well as having Airmen proactively “counter-blog”, which is what they refer to replying to bloggers. They’ve got a complete, strategic flow chart for response, and of course have to be careful about what they reveal online.

I first found this through friends, but David Merman Scott also wrote about it – and had an interview with Capt. David Faggard, Chief of Emerging Technology at the Air Force Public Affairs Agency in the Pentagon.

Capt. Faggard told David that the Airforce has 330,000 communicators, because their goal is to have every airman act as a communicator. Their mission is to use current and developing Web 2.0 applications as a way to actively engage conversations between Airmen and the general public. It’s amazing to me, and to David, considering that so many private companies are so very gun-shy about all this new fangled technology stuff.

I’m thinking that the private companies should take a page from Capt. Faggard’s playbook and engage a little. It’s easy guys, I promise.

Check out David’s interview with Capt. Faggard and check out the blogger chart here.