Our story of how we entered the world of social media. -the why, the how, the challenges, and the results
Museum and Lincoln Center already had facebook pages. Weekly requests or questions about how we departments could use social media. And then there was this…
Great Facebook page. 10K plus fans All types of engagement and Fort Collins info. Redirects to City website. Not our page. If you don’t engage in this medium, some one will do it for you. Sometimes that’s okay, sometimes it’s not.
Marketing budgets slashed due to budget constraints. Revenue earning programs looking for ways to market effectively at a low cost. Media options dwindling – one daily paper, no more weekly pubs Competition was already using social media (Denver Center for Performing Arts, Budweiser Ctr.) Big upcoming projects were already planning on using social media: Plan Fort Collins Attendance at public meetings has been steadily decreasing Engagement where people are already gathering (had success with this at community events with the logo, applying the concept online) Customer service – organizational priority, finding more ways to improve service, more ways to gather feedback and respond
Education and buy in from City leadership started with Social Media 101 Found that many in leadership positions weren’t familiar with social media at all – only experience were comment board on local newspaper site This is what we shared….
• Internet forums/groups • Social networks • Blogs • Wikis • Podcasts • File/data-sharing • Vlogs • Social tagging • Social bookmarking • Micro-blogging • Virtual communities • RSS feeds
Education and buy-in
Education and buy-in
Education and buy-in
Free-access social networking Web site that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people People can also add friends, send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about their activities
A social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them
Post articles Let folks comment and interact
Researched best practices Research!!! Other City’s, other organizations, etc. Found: varied, catered to needs of the organization and outcomes desired when using social media General enough to allow for flexibility, but strict enough to provide guidance Multi-departmental team - HR, Attorney’s Office, Communications Office Start with the purpose, not the tool How define unique business need: User perspective: not realize it’s a City service Who’s your competition/purpose Revenue dependent Amount of original content Lessons: web redesign = more things together instead of individual pages and sections divided by nonsensical categories. Users don’t think like we do. Comment Policy Monitored Rules Employee use = similar to e-mail using fcgov.com e-mails = identifying self as employee
Strategy Development Why are we going through all this trouble…
Conversation is happening with or without us some one from another community asking if they’ll do what we do
WoW – some one on Open Book found the charge, posted a tweet about it. I saw it and responded. Another twitter user said that they had a similar charge that was fraudulent, we reported that, everyone was happy. World of Warcraft
Not all positive Intersection complaint about safety Feedback on electric use campaign Blogs…haven’t gotten there yet.
Begin to aggressively promote with the launch of our web redesign
Currently this is how we operate. Still trying to figure out the best way to share the conversations that happen on social media with those who should know about it. Trying different topics and different calls to action to see how it goes. E-mail= open records rules and City e-mail retention schedules
Hard data: fans, followers, lists, downloads Program participation: How did you hear about today’s event? Interaction through social media accounts (comments, likes, RTs, replies) Still working on how to capture overall “value” Ultimate goal is to move citizen survey numbers
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