Introduction to Kristine:
Kristine Brunsman has worked in some capacity with the National Park Service since 2010. Currently Kristine is in a permanent position through the Heritage and Historic Preservation division of the National Park Service and is based out of the WASO (Washington DC) office. Considering the competitive nature of the National Park Service, she has worked as a volunteer, intern, seasonal ranger, and pathways intern at a combined nine park sites, before competing for and earning her current permanent position. Her position duties include developing social media posts for her division of the NPS. In addition to creating social media content for the Heritage and Historic Preservation division, she has created posts for Dry Tortugas National Park, Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, Fort Pulaski National Monument and San Antonio Missions National Historic Park.
Interview Highlights:
Within Kristine’s position she creates content for numerous social media platforms, including: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Tumblr, and Periscope. The one social media site that she wishes the National Park Service could use as a whole is Snapchat, as she thinks that Snapchat and Instagram are the two most important social media sites for millennials.
Kristine’s most successful social media post, which was posted on Facebook, was a video post that showed the historic preservation rangers at Dry Tortugas National Park. This post, which was later shared by the main National Park Service page on Facebook, reached over 136,000 people, received over 34,000 video views, had 207 likes, and was shared 322 times. This post can be viewed here: post. We discussed the process and benefit of when the main National Park Service Facebook or Instagram sites share parks or divisions post, their audience reach expands tenfold. Smaller and lesser known park service sites, who have less than 10,000 followers gain so much more audience members with the National Park Service pages share post because the main page has well over 875,000 followers.
When discussing the National Park Service’s ability to attract and maintain current and future followers, Kristine believed that the NPS was not functioning at its fullest potential. Stating that the government is not able to keep up to date with all the latest social media trends and social media platforms due to all the government bureaucracy and the restrictions that follow. Kristine made the point of saying that mangers and those in supervisory positions are the ones to blame for lack of potential. She feels that these supervisors, many of whom are older in age and close to retirement, do not understand the potential of social media and are content with the bare minimum. Kristine also stated that parks need to invest more in hiring social media coordinator positions and stated that rangers working on social media post in their spare time would not cut it in the long run. Considering the National Park Service has well over 300,000,000 visits a year and yet less than 1 million followers on the main park Facebook page, this proves that the NPS is not reaching its fullest potential.
Caroline: One post with a reach of 136,000? That’s jaw-dropping!! I can imagine the bureaucracy Kristine faces while under the employment of a government agency. Somewhat, I can understand the conservatism, yet is must be frustrating for a marketer.
Caroline,
Kristine had some really great strategies which is reflected in the number of new followers every week! Her approach to make posts personable while being cognizant of the length and substance is key to grab user’s attention. We’ve talked several times about the length of posts and how for some it can seem overwhelming or intimidating. Her diversity of content can attract different types of users while her consistency is appealing to the everyday followers.
Kristine is a energetic person that really has a lot to give. Her strategies and her approach totally reflects this. Having a post that has the ability to reach so many people must be truly rewarding!
Kristine is brutally honest about a problem that plagues many institutions- where social media is considered an add-on or ancillary operation as opposed to a core part of an interpretive and/or marketing strategy. It could be due to a lack of budget, staff, etc., but I think she gives a great suggestion to multi-staff parks to delegate the social media position to at least one person, as is done in many brick and mortar organizations. This type of embracement is the only way to break her stated self-fulfilling prophecy of lack of time/resources to social means minimal results means minimal time/resources.
First off, I had no idea that federal agencies needed an agreement with Snapchat to use it legally! That is interesting.
Her point about creating good content (like memes, as you were discussing) but putting it on the wrong platform is so important. Hamilton posts would probably go over really well on Tumblr and maybe even Twitter but I would fully expect them to fall flat on Facebook. As we’ve talked about, active users on Facebook seem to skew older. I think that audience is less likely to be familiar with Hamilton, leading to a great post falling flat.
I appreciated her candor in discussing the fact that bureaucracy is holding back the success of social media. We’ve discussed bureaucracy being a roadblock to effective social media, and no one does bureaucracy better than the federal government. She also made a comment that really crystalized something I had been thinking about which was that while social media is treated as optional it won’t be able to reach it’s full potential. Many of those older managers she mentioned as getting comfortable with a single platform and being unwilling to look at newer ones will continue the same course until it is mandated from higher up to do otherwise.
It seems like Kristine is dealing with an interesting dynamic that is both unique to NPS as well as relatable to the rest of us–social media is seen as a “extra” and not given as much as attention as it could. Her comment made me curious– who is responsibile for NPS’s main page that shares the posts from the smaller individual pages? They clearly understand how to use social media to their advantage!
It was great to hear from someone who works in social media under a government office. I think a lot of times we take for granted that we can post anything (within reason) on social media. Katherine believes that Snapchat is such an important tool, but i could tell in her voice the disappointment that the department has to wait to use it since their is no agreement between Snapchat and the U.S. Federal Government. I think that she had shown her passion for working for the National Parks and that will continue to show no matter what platform she uses.
The NPS is such a huge and layered organization, I can’t imagine trying to navigate this with regards to running social media. Although social media is a great way to communicate grant money opportunities.The Dept. of Interior has a Snapchat? That is surprising to me! It is interesting that Kristine believes Snapchat is the most important platform not being utilized. I think she made a salient remark about how social media can garner so much more attention for smaller national parks that don’t normally receive attention on a national level – 3 or 4,000 viewers on a single Snapchat where they could never get that big of an in-person audience.
I was immediately drawn to this interview because I know that the National Park Service is a government entity and I was curious to see how Kristine makes it work with having such a big audience looking at her. I expected and yet didn’t expect to see how limited she was in her creativity. I completely understand why the social media posts have to be so controlled and even approved but as someone who has the freedom to post anything within reason, I can’t imagine having to get approval for something that we take for granted.
Caroline, I thought it was really interesting how Kristine highlighted how content that may be very creative may not be well received if posted on the wrong site (12:50-13:00). I think this comes back to understanding both the demographic uses each platform that you are posting to as well as your specific audience. Content may need to be adjusted accordingly in order to effectively adapt to the different types of audiences who use each platform.
I also want to note that I think Snapchat would be great for the National Park Service. There are so many beautiful places in this country that would be so cool to see on Snapchat.
The school I work for is also a state school, so it is a government-run agency, so I liked hearing about how Kristine deals with the same situation. My school certainly not as large or as looked at as the National Park Service, though! I liked hearing about using social media to raise awareness of smaller parks that people may not know about. It’s especially interesting to think that the amount of people who see a SnapChat is so much more than the amount of people who would ever go to the park in person.
Interesting to not hear mention of Twitter when asked about what social media sites are used and/or preferred. She didn’t mention Twitter in her personal or business ventures into social media. I am sure there would be an audience to be reached through Twitter but the NPS does not seem to put much into that basket and relies on Facebook (again the most used).