This week, we’re trying something new to engage our Veterans Coming Home audience. It’s a video. I know, I know… doesn’t sound new, does it?

Well, here’s what’s new about it: This video, part of a series of three, asks specific questions of our audience to solicit their stories and questions — to get them talking amongst themselves in a meaningful way. Our first video features Staff Sergeant Elizabeth Hash, an Army National Guard recruiter, who wonders if she would be able to survive in the civilian world…

Jumping off Elizabeth’s question, we’re asking our audience: What’s the biggest difference between the military world and the civilian world? And we’re directing them to a really cool tool we’ve integrated into the Veterans Coming Home project: Hearken. 

Hearken is an interface that allows audiences to share their thoughts and questions — both with one another, and with our team, so that we can use this feedback as a jumping off point for crafting the docustories we produce. KG has been friends with the folks at Hearken for a long time, so we’re really excited to be able to bring their tool on board for Veterans Coming Home.

A little more detail about how we’re fitting these short “call for engagement” videos into our broader engagement plan — one of the processes we’ve begun implementing is to test each video using Facebook ads to see what videos and questions get which portions of our audience talking the most. So, as we work on engaging our audience, we’re trying to implement different social listening tools at various stages.

We’re interested to know: What are some of your best engagement strategies?

P.S. Psst… we’d also love to hear your thoughts on the biggest difference between the military and civilian worlds. Tell us what you think at www.veteranscominghome.org/yourstory.