My Day as Johnson's Social Media Manager
Social media has become one of the most important ways to communicate in the information age that we are living in. With a responsibility to share NASA's groundbreaking discoveries and inform the world about the agency's next giant leap to the Moon with the Artemis Program, NASA has become a global leader in social media.
Leah Cheshier has one of the most important public facing roles at Johnson as she is the social media manager for the center, responsible for communicating to millions of people across the globe on a daily basis. A few weeks ago we tagged along with Leah to learn more about her role and went behind the scenes to learn more about NASA’s social media.
Roundup invites you to join us as we jump into a day in the life of the Artemis generation. The timeline below reflects Leah's day on October 10, 2019.
6:45 a.m.: Wake up and check email to make sure nothing serious happened overnight and that I have time to eat breakfast before heading to the office!
8:30 a.m.: Share our #WorldMentalHealthDay post based on a collaboration with the band Shinedown on social media. We recorded a podcast with them in May, and today was the perfect opportunity to repurpose that content. During the interview, we discussed the differences and similarities in mental health between touring bands and orbiting astronauts!
9:00 a.m.: Clip part of a recent spacewalk into a video to share on social media and connect with the Philadelphia Eagles. We’re always trying to reach new audiences and bring them into our mission. Mission Control was relaying the Eagles score to Christina Koch during a recent spacewalk, which was pretty cool!
9:30 a.m.: Attend a meeting to discuss the visit to Johnson from the Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force and how we’ll amplify the visit on social media. We decided to share video of the panel presentation on Space Center Houston’s Facebook Live and follow up with photos on Johnson's social media after the event.
10:00 a.m.: Run (walk fast) to Building 9 to film Latina singer Karol G talk about her excitement to visit NASA and for the Artemis program to land the first woman on the lunar surface (#GirlBoss)!
11:30 a.m.: Eat lunch at my desk (yes, I meal prep) while writing Snapchat/Facebook/Instagram stories for the next day’s spacewalk and send it to HQ. They’ll log me into Snapchat in the morning (NASA only has one Snapchat) and I’ll post as the spacewalk takes place, then transfer the story to the space station Instagram and Facebook account.
12:30 p.m.: Lead the weekly JSC Social Media Meeting. We talked about upcoming content for the next week, how we’ll share the all-woman spacewalk with the world, our goals for engaging with the public on that day and our dreams to work with Ellen DeGeneres (although we love working with Ellen Ochoa too).
1:00 p.m.: Dial into the weekly NASA Digital Meeting. We talked through the social media calendar of events for the next week across all centers.
3:00 p.m.: Attend a Public Affairs Office Mission Coverage meeting. We determined who will be in Mission Control doing commentary for the upcoming events. I’m scheduled to cover the launch of Northrup Grumman’s Cygnus resupply spacecraft on Nov. 2 and its arrival on Nov. 4!
8:00 p.m.: Check email one more time, just to make sure nothing has happened in the last few hours that we need to cover immediately.
Leah Cheshier is the social media manager for NASA's Johnson Space Center. This story is part two in the series A Day in the Life: The Artemis Generation, highlighting team members at Johnson who are leading NASA to the Moon and exemplifying the center vision of Dare. Unite. Explore. If you know someone making giant leaps on site, feel free to recommend them for the series by emailing rounduptoday@mail.nasa.gov
