To: Dr.

William Barry
From: William Thompson
Date: October 7, 2015
Subject: Proposal to Improve Office Twitter Account

Dear Dr. Barry,

As you know, thanks to the efforts of this office, our official Twitter page, @NASAhistory, has
become a significant outreach tool for accomplishing the mission of the NASA History Program
Office. Given the importance that you place on public education, our Twitter page, with its
following of over 240,000 users, can objectively be called a success. As I am sure you are aware,
the public format of Twitter makes it a very useful mouthpiece for our office in the dissemination
and preservation of the history this agency and spaceflight. However, as one of the two interns in
charge of researching and monitoring our Twitter account, I believe that we have an opportunity
to improve our offices use of the medium. Given that we are expected to tweet solely about
anniversaries and birthdays, and the fact that most of our tweets start with Today in, #OTD
in., or Now in our Twitter feed has begun to look like a wall of monotonous information.
I believe that this has hindered the growth opportunities for our Twitter, by not making it
interactive and diverse for the public. I suggest that we improve our use of Twitter by tweeting at
other users and official Twitter accounts, incorporating more hashtags and references to current
culture into our tweets, as well as posting more images of our office and some of the daily
occurrences at NASA Headquarters. By implementing these steps, we will be able to expand our
audience and more effectively use Twitter for public education and awareness purposes, the goals
of NASA History.
Tweeting at Other Accounts
According to Business Communication: In Person, In Print, Online by Amy Newman, the
primary purpose of using social media for organizations is to connect with people online. As she
states, social media is about having a conversation1. I do not believe that we are successfully
utilizing Twitter to consistently have that conversation with the public, we are simply stating
information without a back and forth dialogue. It is my opinion that by tweeting directly at other
accounts, we can begin to have a higher level of interaction with Twitter users. In implementing
this, it is possible to for us to use Twitters built-in search function to find when people are
tweeting about NASA or space-related topics, and reply to some of these tweets with information
on the subject. This demonstrates that we are an active and three-dimensional social media
account.
I also suggest that we tweet at the official accounts of other government agencies. Given that the
primary duties of our office are public education and the spread of information, this serves our
purpose by showing the diversity of the government, and may also have the additional benefit of
drawing attention to other, less popular Twitter accounts. In order to maintain our accounts focus
1 Amy Newman, Business Communication: In Person, In Print, Online, Cengage
Learning, 2013, p. 14

on the history of our agency, we could address topics such as agencies that NASA is older than,
or agencies that we have worked with at various points in our history. Ideally, these accounts
would retweet us or tweet back, facilitating some interplay that I believe our followers would
find interesting, at the very least, and possibly draw some of the other agencies followers to our
Twitter. We could also consider tweeting at celebrities who have official Twitter accounts,
especially individuals who have some connection to space exploration or science in general. I
would suggest celebrities such as Bill Nye, who is very active on Twitter.
Implementing this course of action would require additional time on the part of both myself and
my fellow intern in order to monitor Twitter and find opportunities for interaction with other
accounts and users. Obviously, this will take time away from our other duties, including
conducting research for NASA Historys articles and publications. However, I believe that this
cost can be mitigated by compiling a list of keywords to search, for example NASA, space,
planets and so forth. We can use five minutes every hour to search for some of these terms, and
determine if there are any appropriate recent tweets to reply to or retweet. The process of
brainstorming and drafting topics to tweet at other official accounts can be incorporated into the
first few hours of the morning that we already dedicate to researching and writing tweets to post
throughout the course of the day. In keeping to this schedule, our Twitter account can remain
dynamic throughout the day, attracting followers through a heightened level of interaction and
activity.
Pop Culture
Over the past week, our Twitter account has averaged a little over 60 retweets per tweet. While
we should be glad that dozens of people want others to see our tweets, that figure represents less
than 0.025% of our total followers. I am certain that we can improve that rate. After all, without
being retweeted our information cannot be seen by the wider Twitterverse and our message
cannot be spread. Obviously it is important for us to distribute information and commemorate
anniversaries in the format that we do, but I think that it would benefit us and our popularity to
add some variety to our Twitter page.
Of our tweets from the past week, the two that were far and away the most popular were the ones
that commemorated the birthdays of Neil deGrasse Tyson and Sigourney Weaver. This follows a
trend that I have noticed over the past three months, that in general our most popular tweets are
those that reference pop culture topics such as celebrities or films. I believe that we should take
advantage of this correlation in order to expand the appeal of our Twitter.
By actively seeking to disperse occasional pop culture references amongst our drier,
straightforward tweets, we can attract a broader range of users to our account. This would
succeed in better engaging our audience, and make both our office and agency appear more
personable. In addition, I believe that we can do this without sacrificing our dedication to public
education. For instance, with new and popular space-themed movies such as Star Wars: The
Force Awakens and The Martian coming out, we can capitalize on the fact that the concept of
space exploration is very relevant in the public mind right now, using references such as
#ForceFriday and #WookieWednesday in our tweets. We could also tweet facts relating to these
movies, for example, as The Martian concerns an astronaut being stranded on Mars, we can post
about the speech Nixon had prepared in case Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became stranded
on the moon, or the drama of the Apollo 13 improvised rescue mission. I believe people would

also be interested to know that The Martians crew consulted with NASA and the European
Space Agency in order to make the film as realistic as possible.
Again, this course of action would require additional time on the part of me and my fellow intern
devoted to drafting tweets. However, I anticipate the added time to be negligible, especially in
light of the potential additional followers we would be able to attract to our account. Just because
we are a governmental office that deals in history and facts does not mean that we cannot show
our personality and provide some of the lighthearted and engaging material that many people
desire from social media. Of course, our growth will always be limited by the actions of our
followers and whether or not they choose to retweet or recommend our account, but I believe this
will demonstrate that we are an active Twitter account that can relate to our audience and the
world around them.
Office Images
Finally, I believe that we should occasionally post images of our office and occurrences at NASA
Headquarters on our Twitter account. This is in order to remind our followers that our agency is
not just a two-dimensional bureaucratic machine, but that it is made up of people who enjoy their
jobs. In addition, I think it will serve our mission by helping the general public to visualize what
NASA and our office in particular does on a daily basis. I believe that this will facilitate the
interaction between our Twitter and our audience.
We can begin implementing this by simply posting one photo a week of something that is going
on in the building. For instance, we can a group selfie at our next office meeting, take pictures of
the archives or library, take selfies with the security guards or even the Administrator, or post a
picture of the view from our floor. This will add more personality to our Twitter feed, and make
our followers feel more involved in what is going on at NASA, ideally making our agency less
opaque. I do not believe that people can have a true conversation on social media if they cannot
picture the other party, and that this will make our account more relatable. In addition, I think
that this will have the added benefit of increasing employee morale.
I do not anticipate this course of action to add any significant amount of additional time or
monetary costs to our office. However, as we are located in a secure government building, I
would need to speak with the security office in order to determine which, if any, areas of the
building they would be concerned about us posting images of. However, outside of a few
restricted areas, I do not anticipate this becoming an issue.
Taking Action
I believe that we are not utilizing our Twitter to the best of our abilities, and that we have an
opportunity to better engage the public and accomplish the mission of the NASA History
Program Office. I have discussed this proposal with my fellow intern, and she agrees that these
steps could be immediately implemented. In addition, all of these steps can be implemented
concurrently, which I believe would be the best course of action to expand our following. I am
not suggesting that we need to completely overhaul our Twitter, or even get rid of the OTD and
Now tweets that have served as the bread and butter of our account. I simply believe that we
are not engaging our audience or spreading our brand in the most effective way. I think that
through some of the suggestions I have laid out, we have a chance to breathe new life into our
Twitter page and better utilize one of our most important mouthpieces for public education and

interaction. I look forward to speaking to you about my suggestions, and any concerns you may
have at our weekly meeting on Wednesday.

Sincerely,
William Thompson

Works Cited
Newman, A. (2013). Business Communication: In Person, In Print, Online. Stamford:
Cengage Learning.