6 ways Johnson’s New Media team is changing online content
2016-09-28
Johnson Space Center’s Communications and Public Affairs Office assembled a team of social media, writing and video experts to create content more efficiently and better connect to our online audiences. The mission of this New Media team is to create engaging and shareable online content—with audience and platform in mind—in the most efficient way possible.
“New media may be an inaccurate description, because this type of media is now the way many of us get our news today,” said James Hartsfield, manager of the Communications and Public Affairs Office. “Though what interests people today really hasn’t changed much since the days of pictographs, what has changed is how people prefer to get their information, the tools we use to create that content and the outlets we use to distribute that content. Social media and the rise of handheld devices have pushed this field, creating a constant demand for the latest information. This is the world in which NASA competes to be heard.”
In looking for a way to remove obstacles that add bureaucracy and reduce productivity as part of the JSC 2.016 initiative, the team began creating content in a few new formats. Here are a few tools New Media team keeps in mind when creating content:
1. Writing easily digestible web features
To keep up with the ever-changing attention span of online readers, they create easily digestible web features such as 7 Sports Astronauts Love Without Gravity (Including Football) or 5 Signs You Might Be Ready to Apply to be an Astronaut.
2. Designing a suite of products
The team also focuses on not designing products in isolation, but instead creating a suite of products. This allows the same content to be consumed as a feature story, video or infographic on social media. One example of tailoring the same content to multiple different audiences is the #BeAnAstronaut campaign. Basic requirements for astronaut selection were communicated in a checklist graphic, feature stories, videos and even a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) to help people figure out if they are eligible to apply. This helped bring in a record number of more than 18,000 applicants for the next class of NASA astronauts.
3. Producing efficient social media video
More and more, video content is a huge audience driver on social media. As a complement to Johnson’s award-winning NASA TV and longer-form productions, the group is pursuing ways to quickly turn around social media video products. In addition to training more employees on basic video editing with tools they can use on the computers they already have, the Office of Communications and Public is exploring new tools and methods for live video broadcasting on social media. The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) Facebook Live was all done on an iPhone, but a stabilizer and careful choreography gave it a professional finish.
4. Anticipating and quickly responding to trends
A big component of the team’s social media strategy is anticipating and quickly responding to topics trending on social media. Tying NASA content to topics that are trending any given day, such as #BackToTheFutureDay or #StarTrek50, can exponentially increase the exposure of the content to new audiences if you can put the content out quickly enough to ride the wave.
5. Repurposing existing content
Another source of content creation for the new media team is giving new life to existing content. Johnson has decades of amazing archives that have never seen the light of day on social media. One example of how the team repurposes existing multimedia content is the 15 Years of Station Told in 15 GIFs article they created for the 15th anniversary of continuous human presence aboard the International Space Station. The GIFs were created solely out of video clips archived throughout the space station’s history.
6. Building new relationships
From engaging social media influencers to create their own content about NASA to forming relationships with pitch contacts in the online news media space, the new media team is rethinking how to work with media and social media influencers to make sure they have everything they need to create awesome space content. Do they even know what’s going on at NASA? Are they subscribed to press releases like traditional media are? Do they know where to find high-quality NASA photos and videos? These are just a few of the questions they’re exploring as they stimulate actions by others to advance human space exploration, the strategic goal of JSC’s External Relations Office. One recent partnership involved working with The Weather Channel to stream a portion of the Aug. 19 spacewalk to their audience via Facebook Live, bringing more than 236,000 new viewers they couldn’t have reached through NASA’s accounts alone.
The New Media team is always exploring ways to remove obstacles in their everyday workflow, whether it’s cutting out unnecessary steps in the review process to get content out to audiences in a timely manner or streamlining the cost, time and amount of equipment required to produce a multimedia product.
Emphasizing a change culture at JSC to continue to respond to the evolving environment is also an integral to the New Media team’s work. Constantly evaluating products and processes based on real-time media and social media analytics ensures they are creating content the audience really connects with and responds to—even if the content format is something they’ve never tried before.
Do you have an idea for a story the New Media team could cover? Chime in on their #jsc-new-media Slack channel. You can request a NASA Slack account through the NASA Account Management System. Just search for “Slack” and request access. Once approved, you’ll get an email from Slack with an invite and further instructions.
Hayley Fick
NASA Johnson Space Center
“New media may be an inaccurate description, because this type of media is now the way many of us get our news today,” said James Hartsfield, manager of the Communications and Public Affairs Office. “Though what interests people today really hasn’t changed much since the days of pictographs, what has changed is how people prefer to get their information, the tools we use to create that content and the outlets we use to distribute that content. Social media and the rise of handheld devices have pushed this field, creating a constant demand for the latest information. This is the world in which NASA competes to be heard.”
In looking for a way to remove obstacles that add bureaucracy and reduce productivity as part of the JSC 2.016 initiative, the team began creating content in a few new formats. Here are a few tools New Media team keeps in mind when creating content:
1. Writing easily digestible web features
To keep up with the ever-changing attention span of online readers, they create easily digestible web features such as 7 Sports Astronauts Love Without Gravity (Including Football) or 5 Signs You Might Be Ready to Apply to be an Astronaut.
2. Designing a suite of products
The team also focuses on not designing products in isolation, but instead creating a suite of products. This allows the same content to be consumed as a feature story, video or infographic on social media. One example of tailoring the same content to multiple different audiences is the #BeAnAstronaut campaign. Basic requirements for astronaut selection were communicated in a checklist graphic, feature stories, videos and even a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) to help people figure out if they are eligible to apply. This helped bring in a record number of more than 18,000 applicants for the next class of NASA astronauts.
3. Producing efficient social media video
More and more, video content is a huge audience driver on social media. As a complement to Johnson’s award-winning NASA TV and longer-form productions, the group is pursuing ways to quickly turn around social media video products. In addition to training more employees on basic video editing with tools they can use on the computers they already have, the Office of Communications and Public is exploring new tools and methods for live video broadcasting on social media. The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) Facebook Live was all done on an iPhone, but a stabilizer and careful choreography gave it a professional finish.
4. Anticipating and quickly responding to trends
A big component of the team’s social media strategy is anticipating and quickly responding to topics trending on social media. Tying NASA content to topics that are trending any given day, such as #BackToTheFutureDay or #StarTrek50, can exponentially increase the exposure of the content to new audiences if you can put the content out quickly enough to ride the wave.
5. Repurposing existing content
Another source of content creation for the new media team is giving new life to existing content. Johnson has decades of amazing archives that have never seen the light of day on social media. One example of how the team repurposes existing multimedia content is the 15 Years of Station Told in 15 GIFs article they created for the 15th anniversary of continuous human presence aboard the International Space Station. The GIFs were created solely out of video clips archived throughout the space station’s history.
6. Building new relationships
From engaging social media influencers to create their own content about NASA to forming relationships with pitch contacts in the online news media space, the new media team is rethinking how to work with media and social media influencers to make sure they have everything they need to create awesome space content. Do they even know what’s going on at NASA? Are they subscribed to press releases like traditional media are? Do they know where to find high-quality NASA photos and videos? These are just a few of the questions they’re exploring as they stimulate actions by others to advance human space exploration, the strategic goal of JSC’s External Relations Office. One recent partnership involved working with The Weather Channel to stream a portion of the Aug. 19 spacewalk to their audience via Facebook Live, bringing more than 236,000 new viewers they couldn’t have reached through NASA’s accounts alone.
The New Media team is always exploring ways to remove obstacles in their everyday workflow, whether it’s cutting out unnecessary steps in the review process to get content out to audiences in a timely manner or streamlining the cost, time and amount of equipment required to produce a multimedia product.
Emphasizing a change culture at JSC to continue to respond to the evolving environment is also an integral to the New Media team’s work. Constantly evaluating products and processes based on real-time media and social media analytics ensures they are creating content the audience really connects with and responds to—even if the content format is something they’ve never tried before.
Do you have an idea for a story the New Media team could cover? Chime in on their #jsc-new-media Slack channel. You can request a NASA Slack account through the NASA Account Management System. Just search for “Slack” and request access. Once approved, you’ll get an email from Slack with an invite and further instructions.
Hayley Fick
NASA Johnson Space Center
Astronaut Kate Rubins answers questions from NASA social media followers during a Facebook Live on the International Space Station Facebook page. The New Media team conducted the broadcast using an iPhone mounted on a smartphone tripod, creating a professional look with efficiency, cost and setup time in mind. Image courtesy of Megan Krause.
Megan Sumner, Megan Krause, Hayley Fick and Gary Jordan of JSC External Relations pose with Rubins (second from the right) after a Facebook Live Rubins did ahead of her launch to the International Space Station. Image courtesy of Megan Krause.