Municipal governments are using social media and HootSuite to disseminate information to citizens and engage with them. The city of New York (NYC Digital) aimed to become the world's leading digital city by creating a strong social media presence and providing accessible emergency information. Using HootSuite's tools like teams, scheduling, analytics and search streams, NYC Digital decentralized communication across departments while maintaining a consistent voice. These efforts helped NYC Digital double its social media audience and see significant growth during Hurricane Sandy.

1. Becoming a Digital City with HootSuite
Introduction
Municipal, civic, state and federal governments strive to keep their citizens
and visitors up to date with the information they need. In an attempt to
increase accessibility and transparency, these governments are turning to
social media to amplify information that their citizens need. Using HootSuite,
these government groups are able to securely disseminate the right
information while at the same time listening and engaging with their citizens.
At HootSuite we offer a robust set of social
media tools to help government organizations
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 analyze
your social media metrics.
“Day to day,
NYC Digital
streamlines digital
communication
with the public and
creates meaningful
public-private
partnerships that
serve New Yorkers
and support local
industry.”
In January of 2011, the city of New York (NYC Digital) set out on a mission
– they wanted to provide New Yorkers with an easy way to stay informed
on the most critical information from City government in emergencies and
everyday life. NYC Digital recognized the importance of implementing an
an opportunity for the City of New York to become a world leader in social
media initiatives. Through their Digital Roadmap initiative, NYC Digital set
out to make the city of New York, the world’s leading digital city.
NYC Digital
RoadMap
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2. Case Study: Becoming a Digital City with HootSuite
The Challenge
NYC Digital wanted to make the city of New York the world’s leading
digital city. By creating their Digital RoadMap Initiative, they set out to
reach the following goals:
Provide New York citizens an accessible and easy way to stay
informed about news and information to do with their city through
social media.
“Crisis management
is about making
sure the
information people
need is consistent,
accurate, and easy
to access.”
Create a strong social media presence
Maintain a consistent social media voice as one entity, while at
the same time decentralizing communication to all of the various
departments and agencies.
Provide emergency information that is consistent, accurate, and easy
to access.
Facebook:
New York City Fire
Department: 113,000 Stories and news from
the New York City Fire
Department
NYPD: 87,649 - Latest
news, information and crime
prevention tips from the New
York City Police Department
Disaster Response
During Hurricane #Sandy, the City of New York met the storm with a
NYC:
54,115 - Find tips on events,
things to do and places to
eat in the City.
Twitter:
of its social media presence. Whereas previously during Hurricane Irene,
@NYCMAYORSOFFICE:
127,208 - Updates straight
from the Mayor’s Office
response teams to share accurate information with each other ensuring
messaging had a consistent voice.
@NYCGO: 69,189 - The
official guide to New York
City
@NOTIFYNYC: 57,138 Emergency notifications
and alerts from the Office of
Emergency Management
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3. Case Study: Becoming a Digital City with HootSuite
Achieving Success
In order to accomplish all of the objectives of NYC Digitals initiative, they
relied on the following tools in the HootSuite Dashboard:
HootSuite Teams with Limited Permissions
The City of New York needed to be able to add team members with
individuals in their organization, they were given approval permission,
so that every message had to be approved before being sent out. Team
members with less responsibility were given a level of permissions
where they could use HootSuite to monitor the conversation without
overwhelming them with the responsibility of publishing. Lastly, the team
tweets and comments to supervisors.
Scheduling / Publisher
For the dissemination of daily city information at certain times, the City
of New York needed a functionality that could help them plan ahead and
schedule messages. Using the Scheduling functionality, they were able to
schedule messages like daily tweets for Alternate Side Parking rules right
During the #Sandy
storm recovery, the
Mayor of NYC, issued
an emergency order
for a schedule of when
gas was available to
purchase. NYC Digital
used scheduling to
pre-schedule tweets
that outlined when
citizens could purchase
gas. This made it easy
for morning commuters
already checking for
city updates, to now
find out which day they
could purchase gas on.
Analytics
The City of New York needed metrics on the most re-tweeted tweets
as well as snapshot of the level of engagement of their social media
engagement. HootSuite Analytics allowed the City to pull metrics on the
top most re-tweeted tweets. This information allowed them to gain
insight on what information was of most value to the public. NYC Digital
also compiled these metrics to measure account growth during the
Hurricane #Sandy.
Keyword and Hashtag Search Streams
NYC digital needed to track what was being said about certain topics.
They used Keyword Search Streams to track responses, monitor inquiries,
and correct misleading messages.
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4. Case Study: Becoming a Digital City with HootSuite
Results
The 2012 Digital RoadMap continues to outline a path to realizing the
City of New York’s potential as the world’s leading digital city. Among an
impressive list of digital initiatives, NYC Digital has:
Increased the City’s digital reach each month to nearly 5.5 million
individuals through social media, managed by HootSuite, smartphone
apps, SMS programs, newsletters and NYC.gov.
Learn More
For more information on
HootSuite Enterprise, visit:
hootsuite.com/enterprise
Follow us on Twitter:
@HootBusiness
Doubled their social media audience to 2.8 million (since May 2011)
Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube and Foursquare.
Seen a social media growth of +180,657 followers/Likes
Had a 71% increase in followers from 74,016 to 127,154 for the
during and after Hurricane #Sandy.
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