Booz Allen Hamilton
Challenge
Making the American Outdoors More Accessible
The government website, Recreation.gov, is the online gateway to thousands of campsites and other leisure activities across America. Every year millions of people use the site to plan and book their adventures in the great outdoors.
In 2017, Booz Allen won the contract to rebuild the aging site and manage it on behalf of the numerous federal agencies it supports. Booz Allen helped these federal partners reinvent Recreation.gov, building it from the ground up with modern e-commerce solutions for a transformed digital customer experience (CX). The project had to be handled with care, Recreation.gov had an extremely loyal user base who were used to the site functionality and were likely to be vocal about and changes.
The project scope included everything from site design and build, to management and marketing of all digital properties, including the development of content for the site as well as various social media channels associated. Outside of technical management of the website, the team has to manage the Recreation.gov brand, working closely with the client team to share an understanding of consumer sentiment and feedback. The project also manages relationships with stakeholder groups such as the US Forest Service and the National Park Service in order to ensure a seamless integration of branding and collaboration across specific locations.
“We landed on Meltwater Social because we get the most bang for our buck with our license - we can search for as many things as we want, no limit on volume or queries which was particularly important for such a broad topic – parks and outdoor recreation.”
Sara Snead, Lead Associate
Solution
Integrated Social Management & Listening
The Booz Allen digital experience team partnered with Meltwater Social to demonstrate the need for a social solution that encompassed publishing, engagement, and listening all in one platform. The Meltwater team helped build social listening reports which identified customer sentiment to help inform general marketing and social media strategy.
Meltwater Social’s publishing and engagement platform, Engage, was used to manage the Instagram and Facebook pages. The tool’s analytics capabilities enabled Booz Allen to identify which content was performing best, to help inform their ongoing strategy and ensure optimal ROI from social activity. Meltwater’s listening tool, Explore, was also used to monitor for relevant mentions of Recreation.gov beyond the owned social channels. Having this integrated in one platform simplified analysis and reporting.
“When we were working to sell in the need for a social media publishing, engagement, analytics, and listening tool, our Meltwater account team worked with us to build a really robust report, which is when the problem with bots showed up. It’s SUCH a pleasure to work with our reps Jeannette & Emilia.”
Christine DiNardo, Associate
Summary
Meltwater Social Helps Booz Allen Hamilton
1. Find social insights that help win pitches
“We leverage Meltwater to quickly develop an eye-catching snapshot of the digital landscape relevant to that clients work and priorities. These Digital Listening overviews typically lead to actionable insights that ultimately drive conversation toward additional work. It is now a standard that we pull a report before we go into a prospective client conversation.”
- Sara Snead, Lead Associate, Booz Allen Hamilton
2. Manage multiple social channels in one platform
“It was useful to be able to publish and schedule through the tool, but also the analysis was really robust so we were able to see where we were increasing engagement and what that looked like over time.”
- Christine DiNardo, Associate, Booz Allen Hamilton
3. Track sentiment across owned and earned social channels to drive customer experience improvements
“We used Meltwater to understand how people were talking about specific campsites, what issues they encountered, and workarounds citizens used. This data is continually leveraged to drive improvements in the park experience across the US and to understand consumer sentiment specific to the website and booking to drive an enhanced digital experience.”
- Christine DiNardo, Associate, Booz Allen Hamilton
