Fulfilling our mandate to provide for wide sharing of NASA's missions and programs, our use of social media in 2014 inspires millions of followers with outstanding scientific storytelling and visuals about the curiosities of the universe and our home planet from the unique vantage point of space. We have challenged ourselves to focus on clearly communicating what can often be scientific and technical information in better ways that resonate and capture the attention of our followers. In 2014, we saw increases in the amount of engagement across all social media profiles and a richer level of interaction with the space community online.
In 2014, NASA reached for new heights on social media by focusing on providing richer and more compelling content that allowed for an increase in engagement with our audience on our flagship social media channels.
We continue to build on our nation's record of compelling scientific discoveries and achievements in space, with science missions that will reach far into our solar system and universe, as well as provide critical knowledge about Earth. Curating images to accompany these great scientific achievements and zeroing in on providing better visual storytelling to accompany many of these accomplishments, we increased engagement in 2014. For example, NASA's Instagram account went from 464,000 followers with 28,624 average likes per image in January 2014 to 1,920,000 in November 2014 averaging 68,933 likes per image.
The International Space Station remains our flagship orbiting laboratory. Astronauts flying to the station ensure a steady stream of amazing images of Earth and videos from Space reach our community of followers. One notable example is Astronaut Reid Wiseman who struck a tone of constant awe at his daily life in space as he embedded his audience on the expedition of a lifetime, growing his accounts to 367,000 followers. Additionally, during his 165 days on orbit in 2014, Wiseman's stunning #SpaceVines wound up being looped over 49,813,000 times.
We also showcased the work of NASA's people here on Earth that support our cutting edge aeronautics and space technology innovations, research, and development efforts. Developing deeper bonds to the taxpayers that fund us, we invited our social followers to behind-the-scenes, in-person experiences 22 times in 2014. Totaling over 1,285 participants this year, we cultivated a community that acts as brand ambassadors for NASA to non-traditional audiences. These experiences provide unique information, speakers, and access that convert casual space enthusiasts into collaborators who want to share what NASA is doing.
Underlying this brand ambassador initiative is our ability to harness the community during key moments when space trends in the public consciousness. One example of this was when the movie 'Gravity' was up for a record number of Oscar awards. NASA and its community of followers flooded social channels with images from decades of human spaceflight about the real work being done in space using #RealGravity. Throughout the Oscars broadcast, #RealGravity trended in the U.S., allowing this multi-platform campaign of sharing images from NASA's archives to be one of the "5 best real-time marketing moments of the Oscars," according to Digiday.
In December 2014, NASA hosted one of our biggest social campaigns ever around the Orion spacecraft's flight test. We hosted a multi-center NASA Social with hundreds participating from nine locations from coast-to-coast. Participants learned about Orion, met and asked questions to engineers, astronauts and NASA management, plus toured NASA facilities. To build excitement for the test, we produced a significant amount of online content – from the "Trial by Fire" video viewed over 700,00 times on YouTube, to a campaign encouraging the public to submit their name to fly on a microchip on Orion's historic flight. Our #JourneyToMars tweet, which communicated our plan to send humans to Mars, was retweeted over 20,000 times on Twitter, a 100x factor over our routine social media posts. We had live coverage of the Orion flight test that set 2014 records for new levels of online engagement. There were over 500,000 tweets inspired by Orion's test the day of launch, reaching a potential 3.7 billion users online, and over 1 million total online posts in the last seven days leading up to the test. During the test, Orion trended #1 in the U.S. and high in many regions around the world. Further, social media was highlighted on the NASA TV broadcast, where the agency fielded #askNASA questions and included segments on the social media conversation.
All of this would not have been possible without the incredible content afforded NASA. With new technologies advancing unprecedented missions like the first-ever mission to identify, capture and relocate an asteroid – NASA social media has to raise the bar to cover our activities and milestones of human exploration and discovery. We believe our use of social media in Government is unprecedented in its depth and in the results. By focusing on deepening the engagement with our followers in 2014, NASA was able to interact and engage more audiences on more platforms than ever before.
