1. 2012 Georgia National Guard Website White Paper
For any given communication medium, it is
necessary to identify how to leverage the
channel to optimum effect. As Lasswell's
model of communication indicates, a
communication professional’s cardinal task is
to configure who says what to whom in which
channel to what effect.
Starting in January 2010, the Georgia
National Guard (GNG) Public Affairs Office
(PAO) incorporated an ambitious and far-
reaching strategic communications plan,
which sought to sync organizational words,
actions and images with one another, with a
sophisticated and comprehensive online
outreach program. Central in all of this has
been the Georgia Department of Defense’s
official website: www.GeorgiaGuard.com.
From the offset, the GNG PAO identified its public facing website as a “hub” of information. Each of
the Georgia Guard’s various online channels – as well as the satellite online presences of our
ancillary units and organizations – has been integrated with the website in such a way as to facilitate
the overall strategic communication efforts of the Georgia Department of Defense – allowing the
organization to sync command messages across all channels and communities.
There is no major subset of public information about the Georgia Guard which cannot (directly or
indirectly) be ascertained through the organization’s external website. We realized early on that the
priority was to leverage pre-existing resources so as to provide the maximum possible amount of
quality information.
This wasn’t just going to be an online billboard for “sticking” public affairs products and stories. It
was going to be a one-stop shop for all public, salient information about the organization. With all
that information flowing to and through the website, and with all the third party links, it then became
necessary to design the website in an easy-to-navigate manner, to place things in an intuitive way…
to provide all the information anyone might reasonably need to know about the organization without
overwhelming them or burying what they wanted to find.
This has been, and remains, no easy task.
The Georgia Guard website remains an ever-changing animal – constantly evolving to make an
already exceptional site more appealing and more effective. From a complete redesign, including
new iconography and logos and a banner, to a revamped menu bar, to the new article previewer on
the homepage, to a complete overhaul of the site’s inner workings which allowed for cleaner and
more uniform text formatting throughout the website – GeorgiaGuard.com has pivoted from its
former status as a little-known pin board for PAO stories, to the organization’s esteemed flagship for
public online information.
2. Of course
GeorgiaGuard.com is most
frequented by Georgians,
but it attracts
The Public Affairs Office did not even maintain a public facing website until March of 2009. During traffic as well
international
that year, the website totaled just 43 articles, press releases and updates during 2009 (or – from deployed
4.3 posts per
month). With a new strategic communication vision in place at the beginning of 2010, the website interested
Guardsmen and
has seen an explosion of content – with 172 additional news stories, news releases and special eventspartners.
international
updates in the past year alone (or 14 posts a month)! That’s more than a 300% increase in the content
generated and posted to the website annually. Website traffic went from a few hundred hits a month
in 2009, to a monthly average range of nearly 26,000 views in 2012 (which is 125% more than the
traffic we saw even last year!).
The articles posted to the website feature appealing imagery, relevant hyperlinks, and embedded
videos (when applicable). The link from each story produced and posted on the website is, in turn,
posted to the Georgia Guard Facebook fan page where individual updates generated just under three
million impressions in 2012 alone. Needless to say, the stories that the Georgia Guard PAO has
always spent countless manhours producing, are now each generating thousands of views, as opposed
to hundreds.
Most every state Guard agency has a website to post stories, of course. What makes the Georgia
National Guard page unique and exceptional is both the look and functionality of the website
combined with its outstanding search engine optimization (SEO). Despite having an outdated portal
engine and no professional webmaster on staff, the Georgia Guard website is among the best looking
in the National Guard. But instead of simply leaning on a slick, expensive interface (which we could
not afford), or a graphic designer (which we do not have), or a webmaster (which we also do not
have), we focused on purpose, underlying principles, fundamental online outreach strategies, and
clear command messages to transform the website into the command information channel we needed
it to be.
The transformation has been a success.
3. Of course
GeorgiaGuard.com is
most frequented by
Georgians, but it
attracts international
traffic as well – from
deployed Guardsmen
and interested
international partners.
4. A close analysis of Google Analytics and Google Ad Words metrics indicates the GNG website is
dominating its keyword market, drawing in thousands upon thousands of organic viewers from
related keyword searches. Indeed, our website is the first non-paid-for Google result for “Georgia
National Guard” and a host of other relevant key word searches. Given that Google constitutes 80%
of the search engine market share, and there are (according to Google ad words) nearly 10,000
monthly global searches for “Georgia National Guard,” we can estimate that our website’s premier
SEO placement generates for us the lion’s share of those monthly click-throughs.
This is significant because it allows the organization to have more centralized control (a la command
messaging) over what people discover and ultimately think about the organization. Of course we
have other web presences (on various social media and other online channels) that compete for the
top spots in related search results as well. This means that, of the first websites that appear in a given
relevant search result, the Georgia Guard homepage and many of the other channels we manage are
most likely to appear at the top of the list of results (the ones most likely to be viewed by people
looking for information about our organization). This is the epitome of “controlling your brand,” and
it’s a surefire litmus test for any successful online strategy.
A quick analysis from HubSpot’s website/SEO grader (before it converted into a “marketing” grader)
indicated that the GNG website ranked in the 93rd percentile of all websites in the world and that its
copy read at a graduate level.
One key element in generating traffic and improving SEO – across all
Georgia Department of Defense channels – has been the seamless
integration and syncopation of different types of content onto different
channels. Basic traffic metrics show that YouTube holds more than 43%
of the market share for online videos, and Flickr holds a significant
portion of market share for sharing photos – positioning these two
websites as the prime candidates for hosting Georgia Guard videos and
photos, respectively. Instead of hosting videos or photos directly to the
website alone (or doubling up work and splitting viewership by posting
the same files to both the website and to social media), we embed
applicable videos straight from YouTube onto the website and hyperlink
all our story images to their Flickr counterparts. Doing this not only
reduces the burden on our server and our staff, but it also drives traffic
between our channels, thus optimizing our overall online reach.
Other features on our website include a live feed from our Facebook fan
page – where we post all the latest news, images, videos and updates
about the organization. This widget, located on the right side of the
website (regardless of which page you happen to be on) ensures that even
those who do not have Facebook accounts have exposure to the high-
quality updates posted there.
Just below our Facebook widget is the NGB news widget – which helps ensure that NGB command
messaging has a prominent placement on our premier command channel.
5. The website, of course, has separate sections for news, archived news, news releases and special
event updates. Each of these is fed into an RSS feed which can, in turn, be subscribed to through the
GovDelivery service – a service Georgia was one of the first states in the Guard to start using. To
date, more than 1,000 individuals have opted in for our e-mail updates. These are opt-ins, mind you,
not addresses we manually added to a distribution list.
At the bottom of the website and on the far-right section of the menu bar, we have prominently
featured links to our internal communication channels. At the top of the page, we’ve taken great
strides to include as much salient information as possible in our newly designed menu bar. The
“news” tab displays a host of command publications and websites as well as a link to all the older
internally produced news stories. The websites tab features a multitude of resource which have
proven useful to our Citizen-Soldiers and their families, and our multimedia tab features a variety of
current and archived multimedia.
The “press” tab features a chronological listing of Ga. DoD news releases, and the biographies of the
executive leaders of the Georgia National Guard. These biographies are more in depth than most any
provided by other military organizations, featuring not just a one-page bio of the individual, but also
a link to all the videos, photos and news stories in which the individual has recently appeared as well
as links to that leader’s most recent speeches and op-eds. This provides the press, and anyone else,
6. with the fullest possible context with which to positively view our leaders. To that end, the bio of our
Adjutant General is the second most viewed page on the website – second only to our “contacts”
page.
The community relations page helps to streamline the approval process for special events support by
providing all the necessary documentation and guidance one needs to make such a request. Also
featured in the community relations tab is a link to the public events calendar, a listing of pending
special events within the organization, and a link to a comprehensive list of military discounts.
The speaker’s bureau stands as a tangible resource for the many officers and enlisted Soldiers who go
out into their communities to speak about the National Guard, on behalf of the National Guard. Not
only have we provided a host of resources and tips on how to write and deliver a speech, but a
plethora of example speeches written by the PAO and delivered by Georgia Guard commanders is
available as well.
The history tab links to the various sources where Georgia Guardsmen can go to learn about the
significant and storied history of Georgia’s Citizen-Soldiers. The contacts tab hosts the most
comprehensive list of primary office lines ever made publicly available by the Georgia Guard, and
the home page tab offers links to both the disclaimer and the most recent annual reports.
A new inclusion on the website in 2012 was the
“employment” tab, which – itself – links to a newly
constructed “Guard Your Business” microsite focused on
helping our unemployed Guardsmen find gainful
employment. From that microsite are two subpages, one
for employers looking to hire Guardsmen, the other for
Guardsmen looking for work. There is an abundance of
other resource links provided both in the drop down menu
of the “employment” tab and on the microsite page itself.
Another new
inclusion is the
“command
updates” tab,
which serves as a
host to the
Adjutant General’s
direct line to
public communication. Because traditional Guardsmen often
have difficult accessing our IT-run internal network, our
Adjutant General wanted to provide a place for them to go to
get an immediate update from leadership. To that effect, we
created an RSS of content that shows all the “command
updates” in one, neat list.
All of this comes together to help make GeorgiaGuard.com the central hub for information and news
about the Georgia National Guard. These are just a few of the reasons – both quantitative and
7. qualitative – as to why the Georgia National Guard’s website and the content it hosts are worthy of
praise.
8. qualitative – as to why the Georgia National Guard’s website and the content it hosts are worthy of
praise.
