Using NCI’s Cancer Information Service to Answer Social Media Inquiries

US Government agencies are always looking for better ways to connect with their audiences while making more effective use of existing (or shrinking) resources. To that end, many agencies – including ours, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) – have begun to use social media platforms to help serve their communications mission. As these tools have become more widely used, the Cancer Information Service (CIS), NCI’s contact center, has become an essential facet in NCI’s social media efforts.

NCI is the largest of the 27 Institutes and Centers within the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is part of the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). We are the lead US federal agency for cancer research. Our headquarters are in Bethesda, Maryland, but most of the work funded by NCI takes place across the US and internationally. Collecting and disseminating information about cancer is one of NCI’s core responsibilities. NCI’s CIS program has been around for 44 years, and responds to public queries by email, phone, live online chat and, NCI social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Linked In).

Here’s how our social media channels work: NCI staff create and manage new posts and tweets according to agency priorities and the needs of our audiences, while our CIS staff monitor and respond to user comments and questions. The CIS experience handling public inquiries from other NCI channels transfers beautifully to social media, with some tweaking in the style, length, and timeliness of responses for each platform.  This approach helps NCI maintain consistency and accuracy in its messages across all public-facing channels and leverages the skill of contact center staff when helping the public.

NCI and DHHS were among the first US federal agencies to develop policies by which government social media platforms should be managed, including guidance on how to moderate and manage user posts and comments. These policies guide the CIS staff daily. But as contact center leaders and managers know, not every public interaction has a clear right or wrong approach. And it’s exactly that experience that we have incorporated into NCI’s approach to social media so that both agency and constituent needs are met.

If you’d like more information about our social media policies and procedures, or how our contact center plays a starring role, feel free to contact me at maynarc@mail.nih.gov.