Breaking the County/Public Invisible Barrier with Social Media
Tom Christensen San Diego County
Followers (7/1) County Major City 58,974 Fairfax, VA Fairfax (Washington, DC area) 40,390 San Diego, CA San Diego 37,921 Clark, NV Las Vegas 35,303 King, WA Seattle 30,290 Montgomery, MD (Washington, DC area) 24,711 Mecklenburg, NC Charlotte 24,654 Miami‐Dade, FL Miami 20,120 Wake, NC Raleigh 19,120 Hillsborough, FL Tampa Bay 18,802 Bexar, TX San Antonio 16,420 Multnomah, OR Portland 13,983 Allegheny, PA Pittsburgh 13,538 Ventura, CA Oxnard (Los Angeles area) 12,523 Hennepin, MN Minneapolis 12,181 Palm Beach, FL West Palm Beach 11,978 Pierce, WA Tacoma 10,814 Los Angeles, CA Los Angeles 10,121 Westchester, NY (NYC area) 73,799 San Francisco, CA San Francisco (*joint city account) 12,144 Honolulu, HI Honolulu (*joint city account) Followers (7/1) County Major City 25,614 Miami‐Dade, FL Miami 19,522 Fairfax, VA Fairfax (Washington, DC area) 10,603 Allegheny, PA Pittsburgh 8,529 Cobb, GA Marietta 7,567 San Diego, CA San Diego 5,398 King, WA Seattle 5,206 New Castle, DE Wilmington 5,203 Harford, MD Bel Air (Baltimore area) 5,031 Union, NJ Elizabeth (Newark area) 4,760 Clark, NV Las Vegas 4,523 Washington, MD Hagerstown 4,339 Orange County, FL Orlando 4,319 Hillsborough, FL Tampa Bay 3,958 Montgomery, MD (Washington, DC area) 3,829 Wake, NC Raleigh 3,763 Snohomish, WA Everett (Seattle area) 3,557 Bergen, NJ Hackensack 252,192 San Francisco, CA San Francisco (*joint city account) 3,448 Denver, CO Denver (*joint city account) 3,317 Honolulu, HI Honolulu (*joint city account) San Diego County
HHSA Customer Service Public Safety Land Use/Environment Finance
Healthy Works Registrar OES Public Works
Housing Matters Library OES Spanish Parks & Rec
ItsUp2Us 9 Library branches Probation Planning
Oxy Task Force Air Pollution
Beach Water Quality
7 Elected Officials San Diego County
HHSA Customer Service Public Safety Land Use/Environment Finance
Healthy Works Animal Services OES Public Works
Housing Matters Library Probation Parks & Rec
ItsUp2Us 24 Library branches Waterfront Park
Rx Drug Task Force Housing 5 Comm. Centers
Live Well East Recycling
First 5 San Diego Env. Health 852 5 YouTube Youth Employment Agriculture 3 Pinterest 6 Elected Officials 3 Instagram • Share the stories of people who live and work in your County • Make your content shareable • Extend the experience to as many senses as possible • What do you want people to associate with your County? • What are you known for? • Designate a person to lead your team • Trust that person • Establish a clear approval process • Develop channels for content • Share the workload/have backups • Have a clear vision/goals • Clearly communicate comment policies • Schedule tweets/posts • Ask! Ask employees, friends, everyone • Advertising • Links in your email signature • Follow button on your website • Content that is shareable • Retweeting and sharing others’ content • Follow/like others • Have a contest! • Live tweet • Use #hashtags – but only one or two Share/comment on breaking news/events Share/comment on breaking news/events Post a call to action Post a call to action Share stories/photos/video from events Milestone events Launching/highlighting programs Share stories from the field Interview experts/link to experts Job openings Share resources and useful tips Numbered Lists Pet of the week Throwback Thursday/Twitter trends Crime prevention/most wanted Generic/evergreen library of posts Emergency notifications Hard news Customer service/solving problems Customer service/solving problems New facilities Incorporate mainstream references Stories from the media Quick videos The most viral government Vine with almost 40 million “loops” a.k.a. views is by First Lady Michelle Obama. Part of an online Q&A about her Let’s Move childhood obesity campaign, the FLOTUS’ Vine brings root vegetables to the attention of youth using a pop music‐inspired pun on Lil’ Jon’s song hit “Turn Down for What.” Thanking/acknowledging community partners Holidays/observations Holidays/observations Ask questions Interesting facts Volunteer opportunities Public Service Announcements Repurpose great content Free stuff! Retweet followers Retweet! Even yourself… Contests Photos CountyNewsCenter.com 31 Free Things to do in July 31 Free Things to do in July
Generated 7,727 views on CountyNewsCenter in the first 24 hours of being published. Social media becomes an even more powerful tool in emergency situations but in order to be effective you must have laid the groundwork and gained a following first. There is a whole generation of younger adults that gets the majority of its news from the internet and social media. Both during and after the power outage, we received dozens of tweets from the public acknowledging us for providing them with constant information. If anyone had doubts about the power of social media, they were erased during the power outage.
We gained about 2,400 followers between our main County account and ReadySanDiego account on the day of and day after the blackout.
Live Press Conference Tweeting Wildfire Statistics
o We gained 5,704 new followers during the five‐day fire period o We sent out 172 tweets and 71 tweets responding directly to questions o Our tweets were retweeted 4,707 times and favorited 1,489 times o Out of our top 60 tweets, 20 of them were from live press conferences o We gained 985 new likes on Facebook o We made 60 posts to Facebook Social Media in an Emergency Bottom Line
Once you have established yourself as a reliable source of information, people will continue to turn to you in a crisis.
Social media allows you to get your message out directly to the public and allows them to help you spread that message even further. In an emergency situation, it makes a great partner with traditional media to get your message quickly to as many people as possible. www.nptechforgood.com www.govdelivery.com www.Pew Research Center www.JeffBullas.com www.Niemanlab.org www.socialtimes.com www.Digitalgov.com www.GlobalWebIndex.net Blog.civicplus.com www.cubiclebot.com www.Twitter.com www.Facebook.com www.Google.com/analytics www.MediaInsighProject.com Naco.org
Tom Christensen [email protected]