Preventing Suicide in the Military Community With Outreach and Engagement
Increasing military family awareness of peer support services to resolve issues before they escalate
DEFENSE SUICIDE PREVENTION OFFICE
The Challenge
Brand, develop, launch and grow a social media presence for the DoD BeThere Peer Support Call and Outreach Center to spread awareness of the program and increase calls to the center.
The Impact
Increased service and family member peer support calls, emails, texts and chats by 5,875 in the first year and increased the social media reach to 578,296 people.
The Outcome
Increased military family awareness of DoD suicide prevention/ peer support program through social media campaign, resulting in 5,875 call center contacts and social media reach of 578,296 the first year.
The Bowen Group team created the branding for the center and the printed, digital and video content for download on the website and for social media in order to provide contact and program information to the masses. The call center provides peer support, resources, coping strategies and problem-solving techniques for life’s everyday challenges and needed Bowen’s help in getting their message out to the military community. Team Bowen also conducted research, outreach and strategic communications to pinpoint the target audiences and best ways to reach them. The team wrote speeches, talking points and created multiple PowerPoint presentations so the government office that focuses on suicide prevention could share the information with top government officials, military academies and community partners.
Team Bowen went above and beyond the job description by attending strategically chosen events in order to personally share the call center information with service and family members. Making the most of these opportunities, the team networked with other military community service providers in order to cross-promote services resulting in making more of the military community aware of their resources.
The team’s original and creative content in blogs, posts, videos, PSAs, memes and message series created a unique voice for the center on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. As the content connected with its target audience on social media, the call center’s traffic increased. A Thunderclap campaign rocketed the social reach numbers to 578,296 people. By the end of the first year, team Bowen exceeded all goals set at the beginning of the contract. Facebook post impressions increased by 3,908 percent, engagement increased by 381 percent and the fans increased by 752 percent. Twitter post impressions increased to an average of 5,281 and the engagement increased by 7,417 percent.