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from GSA Center for excellence and digital government. Today you have elected to join
us for Instagram for government, the next in our new media talks where we go over and
we look at the new applications and social media that are available to federal agencies
and how you can better use them to include services, raise awareness and make things
more cost effective. Now, thank you again today and we are joined by two of the best
that you'll find around, Adam Conner and Tim fullerton. Adam focuses on government and
political outreach and has directed many of the companies efforts since 2007. Now we should
note that Facebook recently purchased Instagram which is why Adam Conner is here to talk to
you today about it. Now second as many of you know, Tim Fullerton is Director of Digital
strategy at the U.S. Department of Interior and their account has been tearing it up.
He serves as the Secretary senior advise or for digital strategy and manages all digital
staff, consultant and web leadership council. If have you checked out the Department of
In teen your's popular Instagram account he has over 110 followers featured in O magazine
and other media outlets. Chances are if you've seen recently an article that says this is
the government site you need to check out, it was the Department of In teen your, so
today they're going to talk to you about Instagram, how you can use it, how you can set it up
and how once again you can improve your services and raise awareness for your missions with
it and now once we get going here you'll be able to ask questions through the webinar
panel and so we're going to answer them at the end. If we don't get to all of your questions
that's okay because we'll follow-up but once again, feel free to ask your questions throughout
and ask them early and also don't worry about taking notes right now because the recording
will be made available of this presentation with the slides on how to.gov, and we'll follow
you up with you on that and finally, the one last note is that when this is over we're
going to be sending out a feedback survey. Now it's what this is your first time on a
digital government University webinar you know how much we love the feedback and we
look at each response and we try to apply them to remove these webinars with each one
so please take a moment to fill out that customer satisfaction survey when you get it. With
that said though once again, thank you for joining us and Adam and Tim, take it away.
>> Great. Well thank you for that introduction, Justin. I'm Adam Connor, I serve on Facebook's
public policy team and I've been working with government folks here in Washington Deepak
Chopra for the last six years. I'm excited to you to talk about the newest addition of
the Facebook family, Instagram, it's a tremendously exciting time and we have 150 million active
users on Instagram, it's going like crazy and something I think really will be an exciting
arsenal in your agency's toolkit to better engage with citizens and provide information
and to your constituents and citizens so I'm excited to be here and thank you for having
us. >> One of the thins that I think is important
to understand on Instagram is that two parts. The first is our mission which is to capture
and shares the world's moments and unlike some of the other properties out there you
may be familiar with obviously Instagram is such a visual medium so it's important that
you take into account that language of Instagram just like you would at any other place whether
that's relies on Twitter or understanding how to speak the language of this so the language
here on Instagram is really that visual thing and I think Tim and the Department of Interior
has done it so well and you're lucky to have these great examples.
>> I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the basic unlike when we discuss Facebook
or other things we understand many of you might not have Instagram accounts for your
agencies or even in your personal capacity so this may be a little more basic than you
would have to explore about some of the established social media accounts and in particular because
it's a mobile registration it takes place solely on a mobile device, we provide Android
and IOS screen shot so if you see duplication it's because we want to provide you with the
full picture and understanding of that and then we'll throw it over to Tim so I'll go
ahead and get started but I'd encourage you to keep in mind as you're taking a look at
it and understanding it is Instagram is fairly young so many of the features you may see
on other sites like Facebook we haven't had a chance to build or reline yet. They may
be copping in the future but you are looking at a simpler service than other things so
you just keep in mind if there's not a particular feature that exist today it doesn't mean it's
not coming in the future but it's just as important that it's basic to understand when
you start on Instagram to communicate in that very visual way.
>> So just walking through getting started here and I think it's great to start with
this, like I said you register for accounts on Instagram using a mobile App, so it's an
and Roy or IOS device unfortuntely it's not available on others yet, on the Android device
you'll go to the Google play store and you'll install the Instagram App and accept permission
and then open the application. On iPhone you'll go to the App store and go to Instagram and
install that on an iPhone and then you'll be taking out, begin account registration.
Now if you have an existing account you'll be able to sign it through it through the
normal way biff if you are starting an account you'll be able to go through the registration
flow which will allow you to select the user name, password and provide all of the information
to register your account. So for example, here the user name will be test Instagram
account and they are able to fill in this information here and then some instances as
with Facebook, user names may be taken by others and some instances we may be able to
work with you to free those up but we can't guarantee that so always take a look to see
what's out there and contact justin or others within GSA for further instructions related
to that and we can't guarantee it but where we can work to help government agencies we
certainly will. >> You will then be prompted to find friends
and follow users once you logged in so if you're using your personal Instagram you can
find me and link your account and find your Facebook friends and follow them. In addition
you'll be presented with would you suggested user screen which will suggest to others that
you should follow like the Instagram account which we do recommend.
>> Then again, just basic account registration, you'll upload a profile photo either import
it from an existing social media account or report it from your phone or take a photo
and you're able to do that on both Android and IOS.
>> Now generally once you're through that and logged in you'll be presented with this
screen here and that's essentially the home screen and the Instagram home screen really
has kind of five major buttons on it and the first is that home button on the left corner
and it shows you new pictures and videos from people within your network so those are accounts
that you are following. The second is the explore which allows you to look at popular
pictures and videos from across Instagram and also look for users and hash tags if you
click that search up in the top right. The third will be recent activity from your account
and people who you follow, so you can see here people that have been interacting with
your accounts so of you posted a photo whose liked it or you can see all of the aggregate
activity from various people that you fall and then the fourth is your profile which
can display in a variety of ways the photos you've taken to allow you to customize your
settings like your profile photo. >> In order to create content you have two
options. One is to take a photo with the mobile device in realtime so if you hit that picture
button you're presented with the ability to take a picture in realtime as you would with
any sort of camera phone or App. The other is you're able to upload a photo if you look
at the bottom left you can upload a photo or video from your phones library so something
you've already taken previously or something that you e-mailed Orem ported to your phone.
Once you've done that you can select filters. We provide a variety of filters to help make
your photos look wonderful. We also have several tools available including the ability to straighten
a photo blur, provide a frame, rotate a photo so plenty of tools there and then on the final
screen you'll see before you post you can choose where to share and here your presented
with options to link to post this photo to link to social media accounts like Facebook
or Twitter. Others you're able to add it to a photo map of the location, you'll tag others
and then provide a caption which may include hash tag SOs really that's full flow there.
>> Just a couple of quick notes with profile settings and sharing content on the Android
if you had it profile that bottom right button and click edit your profile, you can change
information there, and under options you can find something called sharing settings and
then sharing settings, it will allow you to by clicking it authorize various things including
Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr to post this to other social media from your Instagram
account if you choose, so you can also connect your Instagram and Facebook accounts to things
like Facebook you'll choose whether to link to a page, you can then choose which of those
two you want. So when you select post to Facebook, you know it will be to a profile or a page
you selected. Please note you have to be the administrator to your Facebook account and
you can hit that and then give Instagram permission to post the gauge and then you are able to
post there. >> Similar with the iPhone, you'd hit profile
and then edit your profile and go to the options menu there and again there's another share
settings here, once you click that you can again go through the various social networks
and choose her to account your Instagram account so if you tap Facebook you're able to share
photos you can choose where to share them to whether it's a page or your profile and
then you can share once that's connected so you've gone through the share flow once it's
time to post a photo you can share with just Instagram or by simply tapping Facebook or
any of the other social media accounts that you've activated it will automatically select
it to there and the logo will turn blue once you've selected it.
>> So that's the basic Instagram run threw there in terms of how to set up an account
for and Roy or IOS. I want to highlight some of the wonderful work being done by government
agencies and I'll throw this over to Tim and in fact the first one we have highlighted
is the U.S. interior, doing a wonderful job, I think again to take a step back and Tim
will talk more about this you're communicating the language of visuals here to capture and
share this moment so I'm looking for photos that capture the essence of a park or the
experience is really important. Try not to be static. Try and be interesting here and
I think you'll know it when you see it. Other great folks if you follow any of our elected
officials the house majority fantastic on Instagram an have been very good about posting
whether it's throwback Thursdays which are picture from peoples pastor other things.
>> The Marine Corps is always excelled particularly in the visual category and their account on
Instagram has been very very successful and I think a great highlighting of the great
work can be done on Instagram. The White House is on Instagram posting videos and photos
and these sometimes are photos that differ from the photos that make it on to the official
Flickr account or other things so sometimes you're a little more behind the scenes, a
little more personal nuance and it's a really compelling way to say that it doesn't have
to be the official photography kind of the stage craft that you need to see here.
>> NOAA has also done a fantastic job, really highlighting the diversity of the work they
do and I think in a visual way that it has been very spectacular.
>> And Nasa, which was able to launch last Friday with the moon launch I think has been
an exciting addition as well, so if you look around theres already plenty of great examples
of people who were doing well on Facebook and government agencies and we hope you'll
all take some inspiration with them and use them as resources with your questions and
hopefully gain wisdom from their experiences and with that I'm happy to turn it over to
Tim to talk about the experiences that he's had.
>> Thank you, Adam. The I appreciate that introduction. Was going to turn the screen
on here real quick. I think everyone should see now. So as add am said that I'm the Director
of Digital strategy here at the department of the interior so I'm in charge of all of
the social Platte forms, the website video all those types of things and one of the thins
that we have been working on over the last year and a half is the President's addition
of travel and tourism, the interior and commerce are the two main entities that are charged
with it and so last year, when we were trying to figure out ways to help amplify, we thought
what better way to show all of the amazing imagery that we've got across the country
than to use Instagram. It seemed taylor made for what we were doing. Interior manages most
of the public lands across the country which include all of the national parks, hold on
just a second. We're the national park service, fish and wildlife service, Bureau of Land
Management out West all those types of places, so we thought what better way to show the
thousands and thousands of images that we don't have really a great platform to show
than to use Instagram. >> Another great thing from the very beginning
that we found was that it took very little staff time needed to update the account. It's
really posting photos in a little bit of text at the bottom, most of these photos have some
text somewhere that we've been able to pull from, so it's not really creating anything
new so it's really really easy way to add to your digital platform and then the last
piece obviously, it's an incredibly fast growing platform, more and more people are joining
it every day and I always use this example, my parents both were not very technologically
savvy, have Instagram accounts and even post photos. It kind of just shows how this platform
is really taking off. >> So how did we get started? This is one
of those things for the Federal Government that's a little bit different than anybody
else. We were one of the first out of the gates, GSA worked really hard to get their
terms of service. We actually went a little ahead of them, worked with our lawyers but
also went through our privacy folks to do a privacy impact assessment and got all of
that cleared, and then we really were looking at data from our other social Platte forms.
A lot of you who don't have Instagram probably have Facebook or Twitter accounts and we were
really just looking at those and seeing what are the types of images that are successful
there and how can we take that and put it over to Instagram and we found a lot that
landscape photos were really our big winner. Animals you'd think would be a big winner
but wasn't as big so we really focused more on the landscapes. We decided we're going
to post two photos a day one in the morning and one in the evening and then also posting
a photo one photo on the weekend both on Saturday and Sunday just to make sure that we were
constantly showing up in peoples feeds so that they knew to expect our photos, and then
we also used these photos to promote across platforms. We post these photos on Facebook
and Twitter and also on our Tumblr account and also a button linking back to our Instagram
account and then early on, we followed those who were following us. You may find a little
bit challenging at first to grow your audience but we found this was really successful up
to the 7500 cap. This just allowed us to show up in different places and it helped to grow
our account at the very beginning. >> Then just to show you a couple of the photos
that we use the this is the wave in Arizona. These are the types of photos that we're using,
Grand Tetons, sunsets are very popular photos and then also Acadia National Park in Maine,
my home State just shows we've got such a breadth of amazing photography across the
country and we're able to show a diverse set of images on a day-to-day basis to keep people
engaged. >> What are the things that are the most popular?
This is our most popular photo to date. It's a photo from Lower Qualities in Yellowstone
National Pack and tied to the 97th birthday of the national park service and you can see
some of the nice comments below. People really love these photos and what we've been finding
is that people are also reliving their experiences at these places in the comments they're sending
it to their friends who might not necessarily follow us so it's another way for people to
find us but also people are getting travel ideas from us which is why having this is
part of the travel and tourism initiative which is supposed to encourage travel both
domestically and for International visitors to come to the U.S. why is it so important
because it's an easy and cost effective way to reach larger audiences.
>> We've also used video and I'll just play this real quick. We've been using it since
Instagram launched video a couple months ago. The great thing about Instagram and not to
knock Vine but you're able to pull up video that wasn't shot directly from the phone,
so a lot of these videos we will pull 15 second clips from a larger video and as you'll see
these are the types of things people really find interesting, actually watching a endangered
baby Lager head sea turtle hatching and coming out of the sand for the first time. This video
actually is not the most liked photo that we've ever done but it's the most commented
photo or video that we've done, over 500 comments so just this 14 second video engaged a large
community talking about these sea turtles and also we're able to tell a little story
underneath the video that talks about the endangered, how endangered they are and the
work the fish and wildlife service is doing to bring them back.
>> So this account for us has been the most successful social media platform that the
department has launched in the four years that we've all been here in this administration.
Like I said before it's really taylor made for the work that we do and it allows us to
just highlight the stunning photos of our public lands and it lets the public know that
there are amazing amazing public lands all across the country. It doesn't matter where
you live. We posted a photo last night or yesterday from a South Dakota wildlife refuge.
It's not just the glaciers and yellowstones and Grand Canyons, it's places like that or
it's Cape Romain national refuge in South Carolina and you don't have to travel thousands
and thousands miles away. A lot of these places are in your backyard. We just a few minute
ago passed 133,000 followers. This is the largest account at the department level and
maybe one of the questions will come up later is how do you measure success, well from us
we have received such fantastic press around this. We have reached millions and millions
of people just from the press alone and we were featured in O Magazine in the August
addition. We've been featured in Slate, a Buzzfeed list they put together of the 45
most beautiful photos from the interior Instagram account. I never thought interior would be
featured in Buzzfeed. We were featured in Mashable, Huffington Postal over the place
which again branded the department as the public lands Management agency and you really
can't buy this sort of press, especially coming from one social platform. The other thing
I never thought I'd hear people say is that people reference interior as a "cool" agency.
You just see these photos every day it's amazing how much feedback we get and how impressed
people are and how much people love this account and look forward to the photos every day.
And as I mentioned before it just helps brand interior. Everybody knows the national park
service but not everybody knows that interior is the cabinet level agency that is overseeing
all these public lands and so it just lets people know more of what we're doing at the
interior level and it also provides us a platform to promote the lesser known public lands like
I mentioned. We try to mix in the really amazing iconic places that people come to know the
park service and the fish and wildlife service for but we also want to highlight the lesser
known places to let people know that they can go these places and in many cases they
can go free so these are low cost trips people can make with their family.
>> As I mentioned here are just a couple of the articles that were written about us with
both buzzfeed and these help to drive thousands and thousands of new people to our account.
It helps to grow it on a day-to-day basis. >> And then just a couple of recommendations.
I mean obviously, for interior, it's very easy for us to figure out what content we
wanted to use since we are a public lands Management agency but I think the exciting
thing about Instagram and the exciting thing about the government using Instagram is that
we each have a very unique role to play and we all have content that is not available
anywhere else, so your images might not be yellowstone or Grand Canyon but you have things
the public are interested seeing and this is a really good way to get these out to people.
I would really study looking at hash tags, using popular ones to help drive people do
look at hash tags. They do click on hash tags and it does drive traffic and use your other
social platforms to help promote the account, it's a great way to build your audiences and
it also engages with your audience. People Rxing you questions or commenting in the comment
section, write back to them. Give them answers, help drive them to the different parts, whether
it's to your website or to more information, people really appreciate it. They come back
more and engage with you more, they are more likely to share your photos.
>> That's all I've got right now and I'm very much looking forward to answering any questions
that you all might have. Thanks. >> Thank you very much, Adam and Tim. I'm
kind of laughing right now because I believe these are the most questions I've ever seen
for a social media training, so which obviously people are very interested this and once again,
thank you again. In the meantime everyone is participating and if there's some insight
that you gathered from this presentation feel free to go on to Twitter or Facebook and post
it up there with the social hash tag so other people can also learn from this. With that
said we'll go into the questions, and get to as many of you as we possibly can. If for
some reason we aren't able to get to you don't worry because we'll be following up. We just
want to get through them all here. >> First we'll start with Mark and he sounds
like he's from the Department of Interior and he asked: Is there a plan to use Instagram
as an outreach group for various other programs such as the wild horse and Burrough program,
is Instagram a platform for these other types of programs or do you think it's just a beautiful
visual thing as in the case do you think there's going to be efforts to tie even greater ways
to the mission or just to do awareness of the beauty and he does stipulate in here that
the wild horse program is very hot out West right now.
>> [LAUGHTER] yes it is and I'm very aware of it. I answer is that I think we're seeing
tip of the iceberg and seeing how we can utilize Instagram. I think the iconic photos will
be the most popular things but as far as the wild horse program or any other program each
of these, you know they may not get to 130,000 followers like we have but there is an audience
out there that wants to engage in that way and my answer on that is very specific one
is that would be up to the Bureau of Land Management which does use Instagram. Their
account is "my public lands" and I know they are very interested expanding and very interested
using Instagram in different ways so the answer is yes we will be using that in different
ways moving forward. >> Okay, excellent. We went on to stipulate
and we're learning a lot right now about wild horses and Burroughs, because of drout, grazing,
the horses and also burning land out there so it actually sounds like quite an interesting
program that's ready to benefit from Instagram. Now, we have a number of questions on this
related topic so I'm going to try to condense them together, but Allen leads it off and
asks: There's two aspects to the question. One, who owns the images going into the system
as in do you only post stuff that was taken by Department of Interior employees or do
you also take things from the public and 2) perhaps this is more for Adam is that once
it's posted on Instagram, who owns those images in that sense? Which is my understanding anyways
that if it's a government image, I mean that's public use to begin with, but perhaps both
of you could clarify that for our listeners. >> Sure, I'll just answer that real quick
from the interior perspective. Most of the photos that we post are interior staff photos
and we also are part of a photo contest every year called "share the experience." You go
to the sharetheexperience.org, you'll see there's a full site of people who take photos
and it's a contest, it's a public/private partnership but when they enter it they give
the rights of their photos over to the department so we're able to use those as well and the
only other instance are when people actually specifically send us photos and say that we
give the department of the interior permission to use the photos on Instagram so we never
take photos that we do not have permission from somebody in writing or we already have
the rights to the photos in the first place and like you said Justin, photos that are
take in by interior staff are already public domain so those can be used anywhere.
>> Yeah, you know I would just say I'd direct you to the Instagram terms Instagrams first
term underwrites says Instagram does not claim ownership that you post on or through the
service so our position is very clear that the photos you post on Instagram are yours.
I think certainly, Instagram users own the content and we recommend that if you're going
to use other peoples content you get consent for them to display their photos and as Tim
elaborated there a great example of how to do that but we're pretty Crystal clear on
that in our terms. >> Excellent. And here is another one. I'm
going to try to consolidate because a lot of people have this similar question so we're
going to break them down a little bit. Jessica Curtis though asks about basically photo credits
and are they appropriate in the caption for Instagram or can that caption section also
be used perhaps for increase the accessibility of it by describing the photos or basically
how do you see that space best filled in order to add context to images?
>> Well, from interiors perspective, we always try to put some information about what people
are looking at. We don't want people to just look at pretty photos and then go about their
day. We want people to learn a little bit about these places as well, which is why sea
turtle example is a good one in that it's a cute photos and people really get a kick
out of seeing that but we want people to know the fish and wildlife service is working to
bring these back from the endangered list. I also think that it's very important to credit
people when they take their photos. People take their photo taking very seriously and
I think it's important to give credit where credit is due, even if maybe legally you don't
need to, you'll see on 90% of our photos we also put a photo credit as well and I highly
recommend that people do that. >> Okay, and now we're once again questions
are still pouring in and Ladies and Gentlemen listening keep them coming because they are
all great and we're going to we've got the time so let's go through them. GSA is probably
somewhere in the building right now has a great question. She actually recently set
up an Instagram account and wants to know what's interior's policy on liking and commenting
on other accounts photos. Have you done it? Do you see any issues around it? Would it
just be government or would it be people perhaps who have engaged with Department of Interior
account already? >> That's a great question. Basically, right
now, the only photos that we liked we've done some promotions. Some of our bureaus launched
accounts so we've done work to promote those and the only other photos that we really liked
are ones where we have been tagged in them. Perfect example is theres one today where
someone took a photo of their something called the America the beautiful pass which is a
pass that you can buy it's a yearly pass and it gives you access to all public lands that
the interior manages and someone took a photo of there's and said I love my America the
beautiful pass and we liked it. Reason being is that it's somebody helping to promote the
pass, we want to amplify that and let people know that that is available but we only do
photos that are taken in public lands. We have no problem with but we don't do anything
outside of the interior or public land space. >> Okay that makes perfect sense. Now Sheila
Campbell, the Director for the Center for excellence in digital government just had
a comment to add into clarify for the audience and she just said in regards to like ownership
issues and things like that, Instagram like any of the social media Apps, people just
need to be aware of the standard copyright issues that would be associated with any content.
It's not so unique for Instagram that it wouldn't veer too far from what you're already familiar
with with your agency policy so thank you for clarifying that, Sheila. And here is a
number of questions too. Once again, condensed into one, which is could you please and this
is for Adam, as you know, in government we need more mobile sharing because you can see
the popularity of Instagram, I mean snapchat even is quickly growing in that sense. Could
you please describe the difference for a lot of these agencies and what is the Instagram
difference? Like what makes it unique and do you know what I mean? What is the branch
of the table in that sense? >> Sure. I think what it brings to the table
is just a community that's going very fast for people that are very focused on the visual
method of stories of interaction engagement and storytelling and community based on discovery
and so as you're looking at it there's certainly the content out there in the world that you
put on to a website for Facebook or Twitter that's maybe more text based. This is a medium
where I think what you have to tell is going to be a visual one is certainly starting with
that premise of what do we have Resource wise and story wise to tell with this but I think
what is so powerful about it is the audience is super engaged and growing very fast and
I think the ability too to pretty seamlessly as Tim mentioned not only have this go out
to the people but also cross platform share them and kind of take some of that visual
burden with it so I would say generally, we are in a as my friends call it disinter mediated
media environment where people are spending a lot of times in the fractured media environment
so the more places you engage them with interest and the information they need to engage serve
beingly or as a citizen I think is the better and so certainly we think this is a win-win
for everyone particularly with some of the things Tim outlined. It's not going to take
forever, all of the time in the world. It's great to reach these growing audience and
really have folks who are passionate. >> Adam, you were just talking about fractured
social media communities and we have a question that speaks right to that. I think you can
answer it here and that's are the photos that you put on Instagram, can they be cross-posted
on Facebook and Twitter as well and do you see the photos that got shared on Instagram,
can it increase the community engagement if they're shared into other programs like Twitter
and Facebook? >> Sure. So to answer the first question is
as we outlined in the beginning of the slides, yes you can share the photos to places like
Facebook and Twitter. Does it increase the engagement on there? We think generally yes,
the engagement on Facebook for instance will take place on Facebook and Instagram with
Twitter, it will link back to Instagram, I'm not exactly sure how it works in Tumblr, but
we think generally often types when you start out an Instagram account your Facebook or
other presence will be larger so it can help grow that Instagram account. Tim I think mentioned
[INAUDIBLE] post I'd be interested to see what they see in terms of engagement on their
other platforms related to that. >> Yeah, the only thing I'll just briefly,
we haven't seen the way we've been doing it really is more of a way to drive people over
back over to Instagram. Instagram is the account that we have which has the most engagement
by far of any platform so we really have been focused not so much having the conversations
on the different platforms but really driving them over there for the majority of the conversations
are taking place. >> Okay, excellent. Gabby White has a question
and I think this would probably be best for Tim. How do you manage the Instagram account
and like is it just you that have access to it or is there multiple administrators and
is it just you who checks it daily or are you able to split it up among a team whose
monitoring during certain times and certain days?
>> Uh-huh, this is probably not going to be a very popular answer but I'm the only one
at interior who runs the interior account but I did have a lot of help on the background
getting it started so basically what we do is last Summer we had an intern using the
interior Facebook account go in and like every national park, wildlife refuge, Bureau of
Land Management, etc., account so we've literally got thousands of accounts connected to that
and I basically go in every day and see what the latest content is and see what some of
the newest stuff is and see what people are engaging with, what people are liking, what
is already being proven to be popular on Facebook and then the other avenues that we have the
share the experience photo contest I mentioned we have access to 20,000 photos that are in
their database there which are algae O tagged and keyword searchable so when there isn't
stuff on the Facebook account I can go in there and find stuff as well. Look I said
we do two photos a day and I would say now that it's up and running, it takes literally
less than 30 minutes a day to get these up and going.
>> Tim, it's Adam. Do you pick all of the photos for the week ahead of time or something
you just have fun with each day? >> It's something I just do every day. Every
once in awhile we'll build up a few or we'll know liked to for example, where the Secretary
Jewe look was up in Shanksville for the Flight 93 memorial ceremonies and so we knew that
we were going to use photos from there so we had that prepared so on days where there
aren't any particular events going on, we just kind of pull then as they go.
>> Well Tim on behalf of America, I would say that you have a wonderful eye for color.
>> [LAUGHTER] >> Of doing that every day. Actually, Shannon
has a question and I think that this is a number of agencies are going to be in this
position and so I think this might resonate with certain communities is she says that
she works for a Public Health Department but they only have appropriate photo content to
post once or twice a month or less. Do you think Instagram is still valuable with such
infrequent posting or perhaps should they reconsider what they consider appropriate
photo content? >> I don't know if that's one more directed
towards me or to Adam. I would say that I think it would be really hard to build an
audience with one or two photos a month and you may want to reevaluate what you're trying
to get out of that and what type of message you're trying to get with it. I think there's
probably some offices where this maybe wouldn't work but maybe Adam has got some better ideas
but I would say that once or twice a month might be a little too limiting, it would be
really hard to build an audience. >> Yeah, you know, I would say I think generally
we have this advice as well for Facebook and Twitter, others but you know you shouldn't
have accounts unless you can support them with content. I think it would be hard to
discover people to engage with so I would say that if you are something that deals with
less visual this might not be the first step in social media that you'd want to take but
I would be creative as well. I think people tend to think about photos as something that
only has to happen with new photos and things that happen in the moment. Are there archives,
historical photos, are there backup, things that our users submitted and things like that
to keep in mind so that would be one thing I would throw out there as well.
>> Okay, excellent, and this is a quick one you'll be able to knock away quickly I'm sure
Adam, from Bethany McDaniel asks is there a way to schedule posts?
>> Not through the Instagram application as it is today.
>> Excellent, and also probably real quick one from Steve Greber. You said should they
develop new videos from the mobile App, or can they reconstitute content like they already
have archived through YouTube or stop video or can they bring in some other sources?
>> You know, so you certainly can import video into Instagram, existing video, just be aware
of the time constraints related to it. You won't be able to post 20 minutes worth of
video. I would say a mix of content there is what makes sense. Obviously as things happen
in the moment or they are a little more realtime or behind the scenes, people place premium
and value on that but certainly archived content if it's good, should definitely be used.
>> And we've got another quick one I bet from Lisa Saunders. Is there any sort of notification
when a photo is posted or does it just appear in the stream kind of like how other applications
might have like either through messaging or something that if you're following an account
shows up in e-mail or just earlier it's just a feature that hasn't been built out yet.
>> You can certainly on the iPhone for instance control push notification as well as content
that's been engaged, so that is one option. It's more on the Mobile Devices and less on
e-mail at this time. I'm not sure how Tim follows that on a day-to-day basis.
>> I'm sorry, I missed that last part. Following which piece?
>> Oh, they were just asking do you get notifications when people interact with your content.
>> Oh, no, no, yeah I just sort of look at it now and we have the comments come in at
a rate that it's not too hard to manage and notifications will just blow away any in box
that we have with the size of the account it's at now.
>> Sounds fair enough but I hope you're doing well out there, Melissa, she's a normal contributor
for digitalGov University. She wants to know for pulling existing video content that you
already have, can you selectively pull 15 seconds from within the content or is it just
the first 15 seconds chronologically that get uploaded into it?
>> Well I can just say what we've done. Basically what we do is I have a video on my team and
I just say give me this 15 seconds of video, good example is there was a time lapse that
Yosemite national parks folks took of the RIM fire going on right now and we took 15
seconds of that and put that up and then just put the URL to the full YouTube link that
was up, so we just hack it down ourselves. >> I can tell you that I don't know the Max
style of video size import but on my iPhone this weekend I videotaped the premier of NFL
red zone which was more than the allowable time and it will allow you to view the whole
thing and just select the chunks of which you want so I don't know what the maximum
file size is but of that 30 second video I was able to view it all and select which parts
I wanted so you can play around it should help but obviously with the limitations of
video that can be 15 seconds long you want to make sure you're optimizing for that to
not be too much work for yourself. >> Okay, sounds great. Now Jessica Curtis
has a question. Which I think we could all chime into some reports is that some agencies
have more than one profile per social media channel. Do you recommend for instance having
more than one Instagram account per agency or definitely agencies or regions oral filled
into one centralized like you do at the Department of Interior, Tim.
>> I'd say it's sort of like what Adam said before. If you have content to support the
sub accounts, I would say that's great. At interior we pull up the best content from
all of our bureaus but the bureaus are starting to launch their own accounts as well so the
bureaus of Land Management which is my public lands they have an account. The fish and wildlife
service which is U.S. FWS has an account. The group canyon has their own account, so
people are launching their own accounts and we're hoping to promote those so if you have
the content for other accounts I would say go for it.
>> Okay, excellent and I know this question actually comes out a lot and it's not just
for Instagram but many of the different social Apps out there and just a lot of baseline
guidance that we give agencies is to do something and do something well and of course if your
engagement levels and things demand that you split it off then you have a compelling case
using performance metrics to say this is why we need to do centralizing in such a way but
don't overspread too quickly because then you're basically just fracturing your audience
again, maybe a market that's already terribly fractured another, we'll condense a number
of questions. Once again, perhaps Adam, speaking to the terms of service a little bit, people
were asking about how do you deal with your devises, is this something that agencies are
a able to use if they don't have a government issued Smartphone or tablet?
>> Certainly our terms cover the accounts, we don't, any issues related to the device
itself would be for you to take up and understand with your lawyers and IT folks, that part
doesn't matter to the Facebook side. The. >> No, exactly, and just to follow-up on that
too any time you're starting to use a social media App for your agency just like Tim was
talking about earlier, meet with your attorneys, meet with your privacy and security experts
and everything like that because they are going to be able to help guide you on this
and make sure that everything is being used properly so thank you for clarifying that.
So somebody asked earlier, they go wanted to talk about best practices so you're just
registering a government account for the first time here. What do you see perhaps with like
the best way to do names like should it be a shortened name of an agency like US EPA
or should it be spelled out like environmental protection and Adam you'll enjoy this because
of course we deal with this, use all the time, what if somebody is already using the name
or it's a Spoof of the agency using the name pretending to be you which I said happens
quite a bit. Could you talk about that a little bit some of the best practices?
>> Sure, so a couple of points on that . the first is generally you should look into having
an understanding of what your other social media accounts are and is there continuity
among that that you want to keep would be my first suggestion so I wouldn't rock the
boat if everything you have is on Facebook and Twitter and everywhere else is one way,
my sense would be and others I'm sure would be you'd want to main tan a consistency on
that so if your users and your own sanity and it's one. Two, it will depend on the circumstance
related to it. Generally if somebody is sitting on it and it has been in an active account
or totally unrelated to it we may be able to help with that and certainly I think with
some of the folks out there having more unique names like government agencies, we have a
first come first serve policy on common names and things like that so you probably can't
have at Magg for instance because it's a very common name, so we take that on a case-by-case
basis and certainly as I mentioned just others are helping us triage that with government
requests. Again that being said I would have your primary focus first beyond the consistency
of the other social media platforms. >> Excellent. Now Shannon Shay has a question
and I know this is different for different agencies so we can caveat that at the end
of the question. She goes does the Department of Interior use any of the filters and other
effects or do they only post original unedited photos why or why not and now Shannon, I know
for instance Department of Defense has specific policies to their agency that prohibits the
publication of altered photos that are produced that includes things line filters so if you're
into the community or listening you're probably already well aware of that specific policy
but Tim, what about the Department of interior, like how do you approach that?
>> Yeah, we actually do not have a policy on that and I use filters, I wouldn't say
most of the time but a good amount of time, if you see the photos that we posted last
night from actually like what was it? Wabay national wildlife in South Dakota there's
a filter. We use filters fairly often. We try not to use them when the photos speak
for themselves but one of the ideas behind launching way back when we first started in
June of last year was we have a lot of imagery that is okay and the filters actually help
them pop a lot and so it actually helps to drive a lot more interest than when we use
them sometimes but a lot of instances with some really other big breath taking ones we
don't screw around with them so it's really a case-by-case basis.
>> Excellent and I thought you'd get a cub out of this . as we're talking and questions
are coming in and we have answers we're seeing Fed's out there starting to share on Instagram
and check it out to everyone's delight and so it's nice to know that people out in the
audience are already while they're sitting here tapping into it and trying things out,
we're going to have time for one more question and this is going to be a real quick one,
but like I said everyone, if you still have questions, please keep submitting them and
we're going to answer them offline and we follow-up and so please like I said, the questions
and the learning never stops with this but Jessica Curtis asks what are the side specs
for images and graphics being uploaded to Instagram or how does that sizing capability
work? >> You know, that's a good question.
>> I didn't mean to jump you with a small box.
>> Yeah, you know, I will find the exact answer and send that around. I don't remember off
the top of my head, so sorry. I will figure that out and give that to you.
>> Well no problem, and Jessica Curtis, you finally managed to stump this great panel
here, but once again-- >> You'd think I'd answer to what size picture
we could handle. >> See that's the thing about digitalFov University.
You come to teach and also learn along the way, but once again, guys, Adam, Tim, thank
you so much for joining us today and everyone out there in the audience, thank you for these
wonderful questions that are still coming in and being here today. Once again, just
to remind you the recordings will be available online and in a little bit you'll get a feedback
survey where you'll be able to tell us what you liked, tell us what you want better for
next time and luck I said we read every one of those responses and we sure would appreciate
if you took that time to fill that out and in the meantime, if you could go online and
once again sharer's on Twitter or Facebook one insight that you took from this training
so we can take a look and make sure this resonates and spreads throughout the communities and
from that once again, thank you and from all of us at digital Gov University and the Center
for excellence and digital government thank you again and have a great day.