Public Affairs department shifts from traditional outreach to Facebook, Twitter

Thursday: Meet with boss about quadrupling size of social media team

Friday: Start Facebook page for Air Force Public Affairs

Monday: Learn how to use Twitter

That’s how the past few weeks looked for Lt. Col. Mike Paoli, the chief of media and opinion leader engagement for the Air Force Office of Public Affairs. Paoli is a 19-year veteran who spent 12 years doing crisis communications with host nations during five overseas tours.

He’s the guy to have talking to the press when a plane goes down or an airman commits a crime, but until recently he was unschooled in social media.

At the beginning of February, Paoli’s boss, Maj. Gen. Darren McDew, announced plans to reorganize Air Force Public Affairs (AFPA) to make social media a priority.

“The Air Force is simply getting with the program, so we don’t get left behind,” says Paoli.

In the coming months, 12 public affairs officers will shift from traditional media to join the Air Force’s Emerging Technologies branch. That’s in addition to the four already assigned to social media, who started last year. Overall the Air Force has about 100 public affairs staffers at the Pentagon.

Paoli says the social-media shift began “well before” tech-savvy President Barack Obama’s election in November. Though Paoli had little previous social-media experience, “I came on board a year ago to lead our engagement branch with a specific social media focus,” he recalls.

But plans were delayed because Air Force public affairs had more pressing issues to deal with. With lower recruiting numbers since the Iraq War and a 20 percent decline in staff, Paoli and his team found themselves helping out on the crisis desk. Only in November did they move off the traditional press desk and into their own office.

“We’re still in the Pentagon, but I’m about an eight-minute walk away from that Air Force press desk,” he says.

Paoli says his goal is to have every public affairs officer proficient in the realm of new and social media. “But first we have some internal education and training to do to achieve that goal” — training that is in progress now.

While Paoli contributes the old-school PR expertise, Capt. David Faggard, who joined the Pentagon PR team last August, provides the social media know-how.

“Part of my mission is to institute the social media/new media thought process into traditional Air Force public affairs,” Faggard says.

That mission involves posting press releases, videos and relevant articles on a Facebook group specifically geared to reporters, as well as keeping track of the reporters’ blogs “to see what they’re interested in,” Faggard says. The Facebook page, called "Air Force Public Affairs: Media and Opinion Leader Engagement," launched on Jan. 28.

As social media becomes more important, so does responding and getting information out directly to the public.

“We needed to re-evaluate how we’re structured, organized and manned to do public affairs in this new world,” says Paoli. Currently, a single airman in the Pentagon answers phone calls and e-mails from the public. But with Twitter’s influence growing, “I’m not sure one person sitting at a computer is going to be enough to keep up with the level of public inquiries,” he adds.

Paoli expects social media to be especially helpful getting the Air Force’s message out in grassroots fashion to communities that don’t have a base nearby.

Coffee, anyone?

Picking up the phone or having coffee with the “old media” remains a priority, however.

“We’re still dedicated to traditional media outreach,” Paoli says. A recent story about doctors pioneering acupuncture methods for use on the battlefield got its start with a military PR staffer talking to an AP reporter.

Once a story is out in the traditional media, social media can help it build momentum.

“We can now put this acupuncture story on a Facebook page,” says Paoli, “We can now do a Twitter that gets it out there with a link. We’ve generated a level of interest that’s far beyond the national media.”

For example, on AFPA’s new Facebook page, one of Paoli’s staffers posted a print story about how the Air Force in Iraq is using unmanned Predator aircraft to do surveillance of Iraqi polling stations. The posting led to some online press coverage and TV stations picked up the story.

“Print will rarely if ever follow a broadcast story,” says Paoli, “but if I’ve got this good print story and I’m looking to put that out on Twitter, maybe some broadcast outlets will give us a call.”

The Air Force’s Twitter account also recently went live. A story in early February about U.S. airmen’s involvement in Iraqi elections “started as an e-mail pitch to all our press contacts, then Dave [Faggard] gave it a life on Twitter,” says Paoli.

The Air Force has an official blog. And last week, Faggard helped launch a site for its deputy director of public affairs.

“I anticipate you’ll start seeing more of our leaders blogging,” says Paoli. He’d also like to develop a site for senior Air Force leaders and scholars from universities and think-tanks to blog. “We currently have good relationships among these groups, but contact is mostly limited to scheduled meetings.”