1. CASE STUDY:BARCELONA CITY COUNCIL
CaseStudy:
Barcelona
CityCouncil
The 3 Steps a Spanish City Council Took
to Engage Citizens
Barcelona City Council needed to develop an organisation-wide social
media strategy. Before putting a Centre of Excellence in place, they had
hundreds of inactive and off-brand accounts.
Barcelona City Council
As one of the two biggest cities in Spain, with 1.8M residents, Barcelona is
governed by a city council made up of 41 city councillors who are elected
for a four-year term by universal suffrage. The Barcelona City Council is
responsible for the city’s municipal infrastructure and putting taxpayer’s
dollars to efficient use.
300%
increase
in follower growth YOY
293%
growth
in engagement YOY
1400%
growth
of social reach within
a year

2. CASE STUDY:BARCELONA CITY COUNCIL
What They Did
The capital of the Catalunya region prides itself in innovation. As such, the
City Council driving municipal decisions and infrastructure must lead the
charge for progress, innovation, open data, transparency, and participation.
While 8000 council workers strived towards becoming a social city,
there was no clear social media strategy in place to support the goal.
As a result, digital communications became unorganised, inefficient,
and without focus. Barcelona City Council had over 600 social media
accounts—many of which were inactive, off-brand, or rogue.
Barcelona City Council was challenged to become a social organisation
and tell their story better to constituents. This meant they had to build
guidelines, focus their social media plan, train employees, and unify
their online presence. In June 2013, Thais Ruiz De Alda, the council’s
Digital Marketing Manager, onboarded several key departments on
to Hootsuite Enterprise and established a plan. “It wasn’t a matter of
empowering employees to be social,” says Ruiz De Alda. “The issue was
whether they were thinking strategically about it or not.”
How They Did It
Here are the 3 steps that Barcelona City Council took to organise social:
1. Organisation-wide social media audit
In June 2013, Ruiz De Alda began to audit the council’s social
organisation. To understand Barcelona City Council’s current social
media landscape, she looked at who was on social, which accounts
were inactive, who the “social media superstars” were, and what
existing engagement processes were in place. By conducting an audit
of existing processes and profiles, Ruiz De Alda downsized 600 social
profiles to 350 to ensure the social channels were consistently and
accurately serving the broader objectives of the city. These 350 social
media profiles represent small online communities: from municipal
neighbourhoods, to public libraries and other public social services.
Barcelona City Council designed a strategy based on a long tail model
applied to a city and citizens needs.
Once essential profiles were established, the need for a more
purposeful approach to social media became apparent and Ruiz De
Alda received executive buy-in to begin implementing a focused social
media strategy.
“Hootsuite not
only allowed us to
meet our goals, it
secured our content
management across
the organisation.”
Thais Ruiz De Alda,
Digital Marketing Manager

3. CASE STUDY:BARCELONA CITY COUNCIL
2. Strategizing social
To meet these key objectives, Ruiz De Alda created two different
brand voices: Barcelona.cat and Bcn_ajuntament. Barcelona.cat is
a community-focused voice that is represented across many social
channels and aims to increase awareness with locals by sharing
stories of Barcelona’s history, future, and people. #Barcelonainspira
is the main hashtag for engaging on these channels. Bcn_ajuntament
discusses new laws, City Hall discussions, and issues related to
governmental actions. Once these brand voices were established,
Ruiz De Alda strategized content that would resonate best with each
channel’s goals.
“Hootsuite not only allowed us to meet our goals, it secured our
content management across the organisation,” says Ruiz De Alda.
For Barcelona City Council, key Hootsuite features for collaborating
within best practices included: Teams, permissions, analytics and
assignments. With these, they can collaborate internally on issues that
come up and establish appropriate responses for the future.
3. Establishing a Centre of Excellence: Global
social strategy for 350 social media profiles
Even with half of the social profiles, Ruiz De Alda couldn’t oversee
all digital communications sent on behalf of the city. Setting up a
Social Media Council, or Centre of Excellence, allowed her to share
the responsibility with social media experts and executives. This
Social Media Council collaborated together to develop guidelines and
standards for individual departments and specific campaigns.
“We are trying to standardize social, and through our Social Media
Council, we educate people who don’t necessarily understand the value,”
Ruiz De Alda says. Since onboarding a social strategy in late 2013, Ruiz
De Alda has worked with many of the city council’s employees and
community managers to educate them on how to create strategic social
profiles and engage in the established best practices.
The Results
“Making people feel close to the social media strategy helps turn them into
evangelists,” she says. Showing key performance indicators (KPIs), such as
increased click thru-rates to web properties, through Hootsuite reporting
helps people see the value in being strategic on social. Today, Ruiz De
Alda has expanded her social media program to include over 50 seats in
Hootsuite—meeting the growing demand of departments that want to be
strategic on social.
With the tools and education in place to be more strategic and collaborative
on social media, Barcelona City Council is set up to properly represent the
smart and innovative city they pride themselves to be. Across their official
social channels, they are now effectively listening to and engaging with their
social audience of more than 5 million reach monthly.
“Making people feel
close to the social
media strategy
helps turn them into
evangelists.”
Thais Ruiz De Alda,
Digital Marketing Manager