The USO was launching a massive brand campaign on Veterans Day, Every Moment Counts. The goal was to raise awareness of the general American public the everyday moments often taken for granted that our military families sacrifice. On Twitter and Instagram, the USO wanted to break through the noise to reach and engage a huge audience with the hashtag #USOmoments. The USO engaged their roster of celebrities and corporate partners with an explanation of the launching Every Moment Counts campaign and the delivery of multiple sample tweets and language. By making involvement as simple as possible, it ensured a high participation rate. The USO made sure their highly engaged online community could participate by developing a Facebook tab for the Every Moment Counts campaign. Working with Postano, a social content aggregator, the tab encouraged people to use the hashtag to share their own #USOmoments. Pulling from Twitter, Google+, Instagram, and Pinterest, updates were then published and shared on the USO Facebook page and USOmoments.org/share. The USO also set up a Thunderclap - a way for the online community to sign up to automatically push out a tweet with the #USOmoments hashtag at a set day and time. The Thunderclap was then promoted to employees and volunteers. The USO also planned out a social media schedule for the Veterans Day weekend, to include live tweeting at three key events: a Wounded Warrior's weekend in Las Vegas, a surprise family reunion at a NASCAR race, and a surprise proposal by the USO Coast Guardsman of the Year live on Good Morning America, with an appearance by Jason Derulo.During Veterans Day weekend, there was live tweeting with the #USOmoments hashtag by three USO employees at three separate events around the country. In addition to the employees on the official USO account, participants, such as the wounded warriors in Vegas, NASCAR and Jason Derulo, were also encouraged to live tweet using the hashtag. The USO has an extremely high share of voice over the Veterans Day weekend, and had the most popular campaign hashtag with a direct correlation to their brand. More than 40 influential celebrities and partners pushed out messaging with the #USOmoments hashtag over the Veterans Day weekend, including: @TwitterMusic, @JordinSparks, @ABC, @JasonDerulo, @GMA, @D_Copperfield, @NASCAR, @KelliePickler, @SlimJim, @SonsofAnarchy, @TheMirageLV, @LockheedMartin and more. The Thunderclap had 120% of its goal supported, which led to the #USOmoments hashtag trending in the DC Metro region for a small period of time on Veterans Day. In the end, the hashtag and messaging reached an estimated 43 million people on Twitter over the Veterans Day weekend, the main USO account received more than 1,000 new followers in three days, and Twitter was the highest driver to the campaign microsite, USOmoments.org.
