The Marine Corps, Social Media and Millennials

It was a year ago today that I became a blogger. What a year it’s been!! Blogging has been a journey of growth, learning, self-discovery, new friends, communities, and horizons!!

I began to blog with the purpose of capturing the entrepreneurial journey I was undertaking with WhyGoSolo however, what blogging turned into, was my introduction to brand new and exciting worlds.

Becoming a blogger and a blog reader, opened my eyes to so many things that were happening on the web that I wasn’t aware of; although, I was starting a web startup and claiming to know a lot about online communities/social networks. Bloggging has been a key to establishing my foundations in the web/social media communities, where I definitely needed to be for my undertakings.

I jumped into blogging the same way I jump into everything – head first. I absorbed everything there was to know about blogging and began learning about all aspects of all things that relate and “touch” the blogoshere.

I say that blogging is a journey because you don’t know who you might meet, connect with and what opportunities your blog might open up to you. Entering the world of blogging is entering a world of new opportunities and potential.

I now have three blogs…why three?? Because my world is a complex one My interests, my knowledge and what I dabble in expands in quite a few spectrum and although, they all tie back together, it’s best to separate them at the moment to appeal to the right audiences.

My Blogs (It’s rather ambitious of me to have three blogs so we’ll see what happens)

On the Official Plugged-In Blog for WhyGoSolo I write about what’s happening with WhyGoSolo. It’s my least demanding blog at the moment but that will rapidly change in the next two months.

Don’t Spray and Pray is to talk entrepreneurship – one of my most favorite topic of all time.

The Marine Corps, Social Media and Millennials is new and I’m finding it to be a lot of fun because it involves a lot of new research and exploration. I’m taking my knowledge of Social Media and seeing how it applies to the Marine Corps/Military…while discovering what’s going on with MilBlogs.

The Next Year

My goals for the next year is to hone my skills and my knowledge. To apply more of what I know and to learn more about SEO and monetization. By this time next read, I want to have 10x the readership I have now.

I definitely look forward to meeting a lot of new people and opening up new doors. My goal is to make it to Blog World Expo in September!!

Oh…and I’ll work on my typos and bad grammar.

Thank you!!

A big thank you to all who read my blogs!! You’re awesome. A big thank you to all who support my many endeavors and who have become a big part of my world.

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The hardest thing I ever did in the Marine Corps was escort a young fallen Marine home. I went to Iraq shortly after that - before leaving I told my family that if something happened to me while I was there (in Iraq) that they needed to know I had lost my life doing what I believed in.

Every time I tell people I have gone back in the Marine Corps…they look at me with a worried look and say “Are you going to be sent to Iraq?” I say No, and I see relief on their faces. I don’t feel that relief…instead I feel a pinch of guilt for not being in Iraq or Afghanistan, but in the safety of Quantico.

I always pray for all my friends, fellow Marines and all the troops who are in harm’s way. There can be no forgetting all of those who have come before us and the freedoms they have fought for us to have and all who fight to preserve them.

Please take a look at the EmailOurMilitary blog as they have done a fabulous job writing about Military Appreciation Month and meaning of Memorial Day.

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Yesterday I did quite a bit of research on the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy because through my surfing for military blogs; I came across a newly started blog about a Marine who is blogging about being gay. The blog reads like soft gay porn.

In my opinion the blog is completely inappropriate…unfortunately, I don’t have a Marine Corps Order (MCO) to turn to and use to addresses this matter.

In yesterday’s post I mentioned how the concern with MilBlogs is OPSEC – and of course with Marines and other service members blogging from Iraq and Afghanistan that is a real important concern to address but what about self-incrimination and other matters that can get a service member in trouble?

I’m wondering if written material on a blog or in a social network is enough to stand-up during Nonjudicial Punishment (NJP) (Office Hours), or a Court Martial? Or for that matter – could blogging be proven has being used for espionage (HUMINT)…

In the civilian and corporate sectors many companies began addressing this matter back in 2005 when blogging was first becoming mainstream.

In a CNN Money article from February 2005, Cliff Palefsky, a San Francisco employment lawyer really captured the essence of what people aren’t thinking about:

…he says, there’s a false sense that employers can’t punish their workers for voicing personal opinions — on their blogs or anywhere else. “People mistakenly believe that the First Amendment protects them in the workplace, which is generally not the case,” he said.

Incidents have happened in corporations like Wells Fargo, Delta, Google, CNN, IBM and Apple. There is a great article from the New York Times called: How to Lose Your Job on Your Own Time

It’s not just about blogging though, it’s also about social networks and what people do, say and post there as well. You can find quite a few articles on teachers who have been fired over pictures they have posted on social networks, students who have gotten in trouble because of study groups on Facebook, and even a 911 Operator who lost her job for inappropriate pictures posted on her MySpace profile.

As for the Army, in 2005, Specialist Jeff Howe was separated from the Army because he outed himself on one of his online profiles in a social network. Read Story.

Military Policies on Social Media (Blogs and Social Networks)

I have to keep researching what policies are in place but I did come across the DoD Information Security/Webiste Alert and quite a bit of information for the Army.

My initial thoughts on what these policies should include (i.e. if I were writing the MCO on use of Social Media)

• Differentiation between Personal and Official use of Social Media
• Guidelines for Personal use of Social Media – Clear outline of what can and does compromise OPSEC. Guidance on expectations of upholding good order and discipline through personal blogs.
• Steps and considerations for establishing an Official Social Media campaign
• Clear definitions of Social Media Terms and Purpose
• Directory of mainstream social networks and functionalities
• References for additional information and training

…more to come

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I’ve been pretty busy since my last post in which I requested some feedback on Blogger X and I’ve also been doing some thinking and further researching on the phenomenal of Military Blogging.

On May 20^th articles hit the blogosphere about Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, who heads the Combined Arms Center [CAC] and Ft. Leavenworth and how he told his soldiers in a recent memo that:

faculty and students will begin blogging as part of their curriculum and writing requirements both within the .mil and public environments. In addition CAC subordinate organizations will begin to engage in the blogosphere in an effort to communicate the myriad of activities that CAC is accomplishing and help assist telling the Army’s story to a wide and diverse audience.

Even Mashable covered the story…

On March 31, 2008 another interesting blog post was written by Noah Shachtman where Noah states:

Since the start of the Iraq war, there’s been a raucous debate in military circles over how to handle blogs — and the servicemembers who want to keep them. One faction sees blogs as security risks, and a collective waste of troops’ time. The other (which includes top officers, like Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. William Caldwell) considers blogs to be a valuable source of information, and a way for ordinary troops to shape opinions, both at home and abroad.

A Different View of Military Blogs and Social Media

What’s intrigued me in my research thus far, is that no one is really looking at military blogs or the military using social media as a recruiting and retention tool. All the focus is on the potential security risks…and the harm of blogs on official military operations.

To me this is due to complete lack of understanding of Social Media by the military. Blogger X is an attempt at using blogging for social media purposes but unfortunately, it’s not properly implemented.

Recruiting – The Military’s Bottom Line

Corporations use social media to help build loyalty and community around their brand. They focus on creating viral marketing campaigns, gain valuable feedback and insight from their target market and directly handling dissatisfactions with their product(s). They use blogging to connect and communicate with their clients and expand their current market…at the end of the day; it’s an effective way to increase their bottom line.

I’m a business woman and a web/social media entrepreneur who happens to wear a uniform right now…so when I look at social media and the military I see a complete lack of leveraging social media to increase the Military’s Bottom Line – RECRUITING.

The military isn’t all that different from a business in this particular regards. Businesses have a cost to customer acquisition and the aim is to lower that cost…businesses have turned to social media to help them achieve that goal.

Well same is true in the military. The military have an increasingly high cost to acquisition of new recruits – and efforts really do need to shift to using social media to lower that cost and appeal to the new generations…

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I was sitting at my desk talking on the phone today, when one of the Master Gunnery Sergeant (MGuns) in the office walked by with a Marine magazine in his hand…nothing too exciting about that except the back on the magazine really caught my attention – the only thing written on the back in nice flashy letters was BLOGGER X.

I couldn’t speak, but I definitely had a reaction to seeing the back page so the MGuns left the magazine for me. When I got off the phone I was excited to look up the URL…

The URL took me to the Marine Forces Reserve website and at the bottom right corner I saw Blogger X. I clicked on it and the link took me to this page.

I was honestly disappointed when I finally got to Blogger X…which has lead me to this blog post. As a blogger, I have come to have certain expectations from blogs – and I look for a variety of things but before I talk about those I would love to hear from you and get your feedback.

If you are a blogger, please visit Blogger X and let me know what you think…I’m wondering if I’m being too critical.

Thank you.

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On May 12, 2008, I checked back into the Marine Corps, after being out for three years, to fill an ADOS billet. It was an extremely hard decision for me to make because although I am still very much a Marine – my heart is in love with my entrepreneurial endeavors.

As the founder and CEO of WhyGoSolo, I have found my new calling. To be completely honest, being an entrepreneur has challenged me more than anything I had ever done in the Marine Corps.

However, circumstances came to be that I needed to take a “job” in order to get some income. The thought of having a 9-5 scared the crap out of me. Actually it was the thought of having a job. I need to be passionate and believe in what I do…otherwise, I don’t do it.

As an entrepreneur and as a Marine, I have worked around the clock and it has rarely felt like work.

I came to realize that the knowledge I have gained and the things I have learned in the past three years, particularly in the last year; community development, social media and networking could be very useful to the Marine Corps and perhaps be a big help to the Marine Corps.

The Marine Corps needs to look into leveraging social media and appealing to Millennials in for retention and recruiting.

My first love (the Marine Corps) is falling behind the power curve…so I’m hoping to carve the opportunity for myself to combine where I came from with who I have become.

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