JAC Tweets from Wembley Stadium During NFL Game; Joins New Social Media

  • Published
  • By Peter G. Park, Commander's Action Group
  • JIOCEUR Analytic Center
Wembley Stadium, London & RAF Molesworth, England --  Today's servicemembers, like the general public, get their news feeds from modern social media outlets such as Twitter(c), Facebook(c),
MySpace(c) and more.

JIOCEUR Analytic Center Public Affairs Officer, Ms. Melony Angelilli initiated the JAC's first foray into social media with realtime Twitter and Facebook coverage of the RAF Molesworth Honor Guard and British Joint Color Guard performance during the presenting of the colors from both nations on Sunday October 25, 2009 before 84,254 fans --including JAC Commander Marine Corps Col Pete Devlin -- as the New England Patriots beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 35-7 in the NFL International Series, at London's Wembley Stadium.

According to EUCOM Social Media Chief, Maj. Kristi L. Beckman, social media like Twitter(c) and Facebook(c) are a leading edge part of EUCOM Commander, Adm James G. Stavridis's efforts to reach a wider military and civilian audience who use these media to get their news today.

"EUCOM has been at the lead for some time now in our social media efforts, said Major Beckman. "Gone are the days of broadcasting to an audience and hoping someone hears you. We now communicate in real time and have followers and fans and most importantly we have conversation with people."

Inputting realtime commentary and photos from the stands at Wembley, Angelilli fed the #EUCOM site on Twitter.com with 'tweets' like, "RAF Molesworth Joint Honor Guard presents the US Colors at the NFL game at Wembley Stadium today. To follow them, go to #EUCOM." and "JAC Joint Honor Guard now talking to players after the game."

Her entries on twitter during the big game kept the large number of EUCOM twitter followers up to the minute with the JAC Honor Guard Performance. Near simultaneously she loaded commentary and photos from the game on her Facebook page and the EUCOM PA Social Media Team picked up her posts and photos and put some of them on the EUCOM Facebook page which has over 1,300 fans.

"Melony's efforts assist our overall vision of transparency, credibility and knowledge in the cyber realm," said Major Beckman. "She followed up her tweets and Facebook postings with a blog that we've hosted on the EUCOM Web site. The idea behind all of this is to reach a larger audience and do it in a way that people can relate to and hopefully respond to."

Read about EUCOM on: www.eucom.mil, On YouTube: www.youtube.com/EUCOMvClips  On Facebook: www.facebook.com/EUCOM   On Twitter: www.twitter.com/US_EUCOM  On Flickr: www.flickr.com/groups/eucom  On Delicious: www.delicious.com/EUCOM