Polite little scrap going on between the VA and Paul Reickhoff of IAVA, over comments he made to Huffington Post. Well I wold complain about him going on Huff Po, but since I do bits for Putin TV that would be kinda hypocritical. Here is what the beef was about. Getting the Facts Straight on VA’s Outreach to Vets By Brandon Friedman March 20, 2011 at 8:17 pm Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) is a great organization for Vets, but what in the world is their executive director, my friend, Paul Rieckhoff talking about? “I would also argue the VA does a pretty crappy job of outreach. They’re not really using social media. They’re not really active on places like Facebook. So they’re not going to where the Vets are. It’s kind of an old bricks and mortar system.” Certainly many of IAVA’s criticisms of the Department are merited and constructive. And I’m not interested in a petty argument over numbers here. But facts are facts—and Paul knows them. What he said to The Huffington Post last week about VA’s outreach efforts simply isn’t true. In reality, over the past year, VA has made a serious investment to methodically reach Veterans where they are online. Looking at the numbers, we see that while IAVA has a single Facebook page with over 205,000 fans, VA has 87 Facebook pages—with a combined subscribership of nearly 220,000 fans. VA’s main Facebook page alone has 100,000 subscribers—making it one of the largest in the federal government. With respect to Twitter, IAVA has three feeds with a combined followership of just over 7,000. On the other hand, VA has 51 Twitter feeds with a combined followership of nearly 35,000—almost five times the following of IAVA. Likewise, when comparing main Twitter feeds, IAVA’s followers number fewer than 5,200. VA’s number more than 14,000. That seems pretty definitive, so I call this one for the government lackeys. In addition to Mr. Friedman, who Lilyea calls Beaker, they also have the Dude, I mean C'mon Man, it's the Dude, dude. These guys outreach to us fairly effectively, and have responded when we sent issues to them on the back channel. So methinks Mr. Reickhoff should return to bemoaning the lameness of his NY Giants, and back up off the VA's tip.
Read the complete post at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blackfive/~3/zbbUptp9Kz0/va-and-new-media-outreach.html
Posted
Mar 22 2011, 01:09 AM
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BLACKFIVE