The Immediate Future

The numbers for VA’s other social-media efforts are equally impressive, considering the short amount of time the agency has been active.

VA’s 151 Facebook pages have a combined subscribership of 356,000 fans. The department’s 64 Twitter feeds have a combined 77,000 followers. The 350 YouTube videos that VA has posted online have garnered 840,000 views, and the 12,000 photos on VA’s Flickr account have been viewed more than 1.1 million times.

“Our Facebook page has grown at a faster rate than any other of the Cabinet agencies,” Friedman said. “There was such a high demand for it from returning veterans.” 

In the immediate future, VA wants to extend its use of Twitter and to cement its social-media efforts with its websites.

“We’re taking another look at VA’s website and how it’s structured. We’re going to do a pretty comprehensive change to the www.va.gov site,” Friedman said. “We would want this year to be a little more interactive with some live-chats or live tweet-chats.”

“To use a cliché, the sky’s the limit here,” he added. “We have these tools, and it’s up to us to leverage them effectively. There are a lot of veterans out there who still need to find out about the services VA provides and the benefits they’re entitled to.”

VA on Facebook

US Medicine on Facebook

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