Tasked with building a social media
program for a city or county government, but overwhelmed with the
details? Don’t fret. IT and communications experts from three U.S.
cities have suggestions to help cut through the clutter and engage with
your local community.
Susan Guthrie, managing director of external relations for Tyler, Texas,
said it’s vital at the outset to encourage interaction, and embrace
what social media is — a two-way dialog between government and
constituents. This way, platforms like Facebook can be viewed as a
communications asset, rather than a potential loss of control.
“It’s hard when someone is very critical, but so often what they are
saying is uninformed and they don’t have the relevant facts,” Guthrie
said of negative comments from citizens. “So when they say it, it allows
us to respond, provide our perspective and the facts behind the issue.
It really gives us a chance to set the record straight. If we didn’t
have this platform, they would just be saying it out in the community.”
Tyler first dipped into social media a couple of years ago with Facebook
and Twitter. Since then, the city has expanded its online
communications portfolio to include social media newcomers like Pinterest.
In the beginning, Guthrie said she found herself spending a lot of time
on social media sites, watching what other cities were doing and noting
what practices worked best for Tyler as a community. But that time
investment has shrunk to about 10 minutes per day as working with social
media pages became routine.
Guthrie encourages other local governments that are just getting social
media pages established to remember the importance of the word “social.”
“We can’t forget that word,” she said. “To be social, not only should
you be posting, you should be commenting on other peoples’ pages. It’s a
part of engaging and social interaction.”
Fremont, Calif., is all-in when it comes to the two-way dialog that
social media provides. The Northern California city is in the midst of a
year-long social media pilot program. Fremont has five Facebook pages —
a main one and four for various city departments — two Twitter
accounts, a YouTube channel, a LinkedIn account and a Google Plus page.
Cheryl Golden, Fremont’s communications coordinator, believes that one
of the important keys to success is coming up with an effective vetting
process for who does social media updating and what type of content is
posted. She said most of the things Fremont is posting on its accounts
have something to do with promoting city programs, services and events.
“We’re trying to find the nexus between what the city has to offer in
our programs and services with what we’re posting,” Golden explained.
“So it’s not just some random posts; there really is some meaning and
they’re useful in terms of the information being provided.”
Fremont is also conscious of the balance needed between too little and
too much use of social media. Golden said staff members who are in
charge of the accounts attached to city departments have been encouraged
to communicate regularly on Facebook, but not to the level of spamming.
Departments are posting two to three times a week.
Lea Deesing,
IT director for San Bernardino, Calif., agreed that a successful social
media program requires regular updates. But instead of separately
posting on each individual account, she linked San Bernardino’s website
RSS feeds to the city’s Twitter and Facebook accounts to automate
content updates.
Each time someone updates the city’s website, the social media accounts
pull fresh information from RSS feeds established for certain topics,
resulting in a new Facebook status update and tweet. Deesing recommends
governments look into a similar approach if they are concerned about the
amount of time employees spend posting to social media.
In addition, Deesing is an advocate of the pilot program model Fremont
is using. She encourages other cities and counties to resist developing
policies ahead of time and instead test various social media accounts
first, after securing approval from city management.
Deesing reasoned that it only makes sense to write policy on how to
govern social media after people have had a chance to experiment with it
and see what works.
“Come up with a plan on what you would like to do and what you want to
get out of social media,” Deesing said. “Then go out and do a pilot and
find out what you can and cannot do.”
http://m.govtech.com/a/7-Tips-for-Better-Social-Media-Engagement-167595425.html
