Governments are tapping into social media to keep their citizens informed and engaged. The City of Melbourne, the world’s most liveable city, is progressive, innovative and sustainable. To uphold this and connect with citizens, the City of Melbourne revamped their social strategy. Discover how they met their top goals with the help of HootSuite Enterprise Solutions.

1. Case Study: Connecting the City of Melbourne with HootSuite
Introduction
Governments of all sizes strive to keep their citizens informed and
engaged. In an attempt to open up a dialogue between the municipal
governments and their citizens, many are turning to social media as a way
to increase accessibility, transparency and to amplify information that the
public might need. Using HootSuite, these government groups are able
to manage their social media channels securely, while listening to and
engaging with people effectively.
At HootSuite we offer a robust set of social media tools to help
government organisations effectively and securely manage their
social media strategies. Use HootSuite to listen and track your social
conversations, securely collaborate with team members, engage with your
followers, schedule messages, and analyse your social media metrics.
The City of Melbourne is known as a progressive, innovative, sustainable
city that is internationally recognised for its diversity and livability. They
also recognise the importance of implementing an effective social media
strategy to connect with their citizens in a way that increases awareness
about all the city has to offer, as well as helping to support, promote and
provide services to the public.
The City of Melbourne is
a local government area
in Victoria, Australia,
located in the central
city area of Melbourne.
The city has an area of
36 square kilometres and
had a population of 93,625
people at the 2011 Census.
“Our audience
use social media
heavily and so
a dialogue with
them is essential.
Plus we have a
vast amount to
offer and share
about the world’s
most liveable city.”
City of Melbourne
HootSuite Media Inc.
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2. The Challenge
The City of Melbourne wanted to continue to improve their ongoing social
media strategy and connect effectively with their citizens. With this in
mind, they set out they set out to reach the following goals:
XX Social Media Management: Create digital strategies for the City Of
Melbourne’s sites and channels and manage all social networks from
one dashboard.
XX Social Customer Service: Connect directly and engage effectively
with Melbourne citizens in effort to learn more about what their
audience needed.
XX Social Marketing: Provide Melbourne citizens with an accessible
way to stay informed about news and information to do with their city
through social media.
◦◦Maintain a consistent social media presence while still decentralising
communication to various departments
Achieving Success
In order to accomplish all of the objectives of their social media initiative,
the City of Melbourne relied on the following tools in the HootSuite
Dashboard:
“HootSuite
provides real
time, mobile,
collaborative
input and we
monitor for our
core channels
(FB, TW &
G+). This helps
us maintain
contact with
our audience of
today and build
our audience for
tomorrow.”
City of Melbourne
“HootSuite is a service we used in the past for other Melbourne
businesses and this was again chosen for it’s mobility, collaborative
tools and ability to monitor our key customer channels in one place.”
Cross functional collaboration
• The City of Melbourne wanted to collaborate and improve
communication with internal team members. With HootSuite Teams
they were able to give team members different levels of permissions
which would then enable them to be involved in whatever way was
most effective. Some team members were responsible for planning,
scheduling and customer response while others were responsible for
monitor and review.
Tapping into the voice of their citizens
• The City of Melbourne needed to track and respond to brand mentions
and conversations. They used Keyword Search Streams to track
responses, and respond to their audience.
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3. Mapping out your social media strategy
• Some of the team members needed a tool that could help them plan
out and schedule upcoming social messaging. They used HootSuite’s
scheduling tools to effectively map out their upcoming social initiatives.
Insight into ROI and engagement
• The City of Melbourne needed metrics on their social media ROI as
well an understanding of level of their social media engagement.
HootSuite Analytics allowed their team leaders who were responsible
for the City of Melbourne’s social strategy to pull metrics and provide
visibility into how their social strategy was doing.
• They then used HootSuite Analytics to communicate the results of their
social media efforts to their leadership team.
• The City of Melbourne also needed weekly and monthly analytic
reports. They used HootSuite to access Google analytics and manual
statistics to compare themselves to other key local and international
council social sites.
“HootSuite
has made our
social media
management
significantly more
effective and I
would definitely
recommend
HootSuite
to other
organisations.”
City of Melbourne
Taking HootSuite on the Road
The City of Melbourne needed to be able to manage their social media
channels on the go. They used HootSuite’s mobile app to maintain their
online presence.
Results
The City of Melbourne was successful in improving their social media
digital strategy. With the help of HootSuite Enterprise solutions, they
were able to successfully connect with 325 000 followers, and increase
awareness of the city’s offerings across 80 Social Media channels.
335,000 followers & subscribers,
70 Social Media channels across
the organisation
25 posts on channels per day.
HootSuite Media Inc.
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