Having now worked under the wing of public sector communication specialists Westco for almost 6 months now, and specifically focusing on the operational needs of Richmond Council, I’ve reached the point now in which I feel fairly confident of being able to pin down my personal local government social media top tips:
Become a community leader
A key goal of any local authority is to win over the hearts and minds of your residents. By winning their trust will result in an increased likelihood that residents will then engage more effectively with your services, be it social care, recycling, or supporting the local economy.
Here at Richmond we find that building a Twitter and Facebook list of key stakeholders and sharing/ engaging with their content on a regular and consistent basis not only helps build trust but positions your organisation as one that ‘listens’, a key point that I will come back to later!
Remember content is king
Here at Richmond Council we have created a ‘content hub’ on our website, which we title Community News. It is a regular feed of super short news articles and acts as a one stop fix for residents to visit and get a quick insight into all the latest gossip happening locally. This helps position our ‘brand’ as a ‘community leader’, but also by duplicating the content onto your Google+ page you will (on the sly) also significantly improve your SEO, and then sharing that content onto Facebook, Twitter, (or even Vine if you’re feeling super creative) helps build up your social media klout.
Be aware of social media best practices
The exciting thing about social media is that it has established itself as a 21st century communication medium in which it is no longer necessarily about how much money you have but how effectively you can use the medium relatively to your competition. Everything now becomes fair game as organisations battle it out on an even playing field competing for their users attention. Being aware of social media ‘cultural codes’ is essential in order to win over your audience’s attention.
Be innovative
The world of local government is huge, and we’d like to think quite exciting too.
Huge in regards to the volume of services authorities are responsible for, from promoting local art, to education, supporting local business and enterprise, and promoting more sustainable and ethical cultural behaviours. Exciting in regards to the mission authorities undertake i.e. improving people’s lives.
Local authorities should be an authoritative voice within the fabric of a community, the need for innovation is therefore key in order to ensure that voice is listen to and taken seriously.
Use it for customer services
As mentioned earlier listening to residents is very important, therefore a customer service presence on social media is essential. It can help resolve issues but also build trust, reputation and insight. Here at Richmond Council we are at the beginning stages of building our Customer Services twitter page LBRUT_Help.
Use it for other departments too
You may find you only have resources to maintain a single corporate page. Or as an authority you may find it best to hold multiple accounts aligned to services. A resident, for example, may be happy to follow their local library for targeted information but would not be happy to sift through the corporate account for the same information. Trusting staff members to run social media accounts for the authority, aligned to their area of expertise, is a good way to implement this. However, you should also create a social media guide to help pin down brand and communication guidelines.
No comments:
Post a Comment