As I was thinking about which companies use social media and online communication to their advantage, the first 'company' to come to mind was the National Parks Service. While they are technically a part of the government, I believe that they use social media and online communication to their advantage in many ways. For example, this week is bat week, so they'll post all sorts of information about bats, including funny montage videos etc. Even their website is user friendly and informative, all in all, they use all sorts of online communication in order to get interaction with both their websites and parks.
To start, their social media is up to date, which is often a struggle with older businesses and corporations. The NPS readily accepted the challenge and made their social media friendly towards the younger audiences (who they're likely trying to get more interested in nature and the national parks). We can see their use of social media here:
We can see here that this post on twitter uses a few different ideas to get interaction with their page. For one, they're using social media, rather than keeping this information on their website. Along with this, they start with what I have to say is an 'otterly' hilarious pun. But even without that, they tell a fun fact about otters that is easy to comprehend and introduces interest into both nature, and the animals in it. Overall, they do an amazing job formatting this post to make it more effective and interesting for users.
The website is another high point of their online presence, it is easy to use and easy to find the information you're looking for.
Looking at their homepage, you can see at the top there is an interactive picture where you can 'plan your visit'. This is likely what most going to the page are doing, or what the NPS wants most people to do when coming to their website. They also mention what's going on at the park at the time, it's fall and so they use the leaf peeping to get people interested about visiting the parks. At the middle of the page, they have a simple search engine, where you can either search for a park that you're interested in, or look up articles of a certain subject you're interested in. Finally, at the bottom of the webpage, they have articles that are relevant to what's happening in the parks today. We can see three articles here, one pertaining to Hurricane Helene and Milton, one about the pumpkin park carvings challenge in the National Parks, and finally, one last one about bat week. All of these are important articles pertaining to something relevant today. The reason they have this organized this way, it likely due to relevance. Most people looking into the NPS are likely looking for one of two things, information about a national park, or an article the NPS did. This website provides both the moment you open it, so in my opinion it is very effective.
I would say that the NPS does use an identity online, mostly on social media. The identity they use is a lighthearted funny one, which is useful for providing engagement in younger audiences. We can see this in the aforementioned social media post, and also in the following examples:
Both of these posts are humorous in nature, while also showing a glimpse of nature (kind of), but along with this, they also provide great fun facts on their social media, along with pictures that you might not see day to day. Overall, their social media has a very useful social media identity that helps get people engaged and interested.
There is not much I can think of that would improve their online communication. Maybe they could provide more scientific articles on their homepage, but that is just nitpicking. Overall, they do a great job with their social media and online networking.
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