Yes, You Should Facebook and Twitter

It’s been great to see local governments embracing social networks and realizing their importance as both communication and marketing tools. Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have become an oasis for cities and counties wanting to interact with citizens in a relaxed atmosphere.

While it’s quick and easy to set-up a fan page on Facebook or a profile on Twitter, it can be difficult to align these pages with your official brand. CivicPlus has made this easy with consulting and design services for your Gov 2.0 and social networking initiatives.

Your Fans Will be Raving on Facebook
Once home to only drunken party pics of early twenty-somethings, Facebook is now the largest online social network; outranking MySpace by more than 380,000,000 visits a month (1). Between June 2008 and January 2009, Facebook experienced a 276.4% growth in users age 35-54 (2).

As user numbers continue to rise across all demographics, cities like Hutto, Texas are utilizing CivicPlus’ services to maximize their image on Facebook. Working with the City’s IT Analyst, Tim Howell, CivicPlus developed custom graphics for the Boxes tab that includes the “Hutto Help Center”, “Hutto’s Hot Hits” and “How Do I?”; which link to the City’s main navigation as well as their frequently visited pages. They are also pulling their RSS feeds into the Boxes tab to keep it updated with official announcements and events.

The City is fully utilizing their Wall tab to provide links to H1N1 influenza information; announce upcoming council meetings; and post videos and snapshots from around the City.

CivicPlus has also recently developed custom Facebook pages for the cities of Santa Fe, NM and Dania Beach, FL; with pages for Billings, MT and Cumberland County, PA coming soon.

Don't Be a Twit on Twitter
Twitter, the 140-character social phenomenon that broke into the limelight during the 2008 presidential elections, is now the third most popular social network in terms of monthly visits (1).

Innovative cities such as Navasota, TX; Santa Fe, NM; and Levelland, TX, have recently worked with CivicPlus to develop custom Twitter backgrounds that are aligned with their online branding efforts. These unique backgrounds set each organization apart from the vast crowd of mundane Twitter profiles.

The advantage the Twitter is that it lets you instantly develop relationships and involve constituents. As soon as a tweet is published, it can be picked up and re-tweeted, delivering the information to those that other mediums may not have touched.

It’s important to note that on Twitter, users want a sense of personalization. It’s easy to distinguish between those who just pull in RSS feeds and those that make the effort to personalize posts. You will be rewarded with more followers and more interactions if you take the time and update your profile yourself.

I came across this chart, and even though it’s business-oriented, it relates well to local governments (since customers are citizens and products are services provided). It was released under creative commons by Ogilvy PR (360 digital influence).



Photo credit: ogilvyprworldwide

It Takes Time
The key to an effective social networking strategy is the dedication of time. You cannot set-up an account, update it once a week and expect to gain an involved following. Whether its 15 minutes or an hour, you have to dedicate a certain amount of time a day to update your pages and interact with constituents.

You must devote time to marketing your profiles. Adding links to your website, announcing it in newsletters, and distributing articles to the press are some of the most effective ways to gain a following. You can also do a little research, find users in your area and build your following by asking them to join your network.

Measuring Your Success
Measuring the success of social media campaigns for local governments is different than that of, let’s say, a business-to-business company. For local governments the idea is to engage and interact with citizens—so, this is how you should measure your success. The objectives will vary depending on the size, location and demographics of your community. Some may define success as a specific number of monthly interactions between citizens and their organization, while others have a completely different set of metrics. Just remember to clearly state your goal for the campaign and then work backwards to develop metrics that will help you analyze your success.

1 Compete.com “Top 25 Social Networks Re-Rank (Jan ’09)”
2 iStrategyLabs.com “2009 Facebook Demographics and Statistics Report”