Social Media in Public Administration

Social Media in
Public Administration
James Flick, MPA
April 10th
, 2014

www.jamesflick.weebly.com 2
James Flick, MPA
• 2010 Graduate from NKU MPA Program
• Chairman of NKU MPA Alumni Association
• Vice President, Research & Marketing at
Cassidy Turley Commercial Real Estate
• Responsible for all research, data analysis and
marketing of Cincinnati and Dayton markets
including:
• Advertising
• Public relations
• Event planning
• Community outreach
• Marketing strategy development
• Website management/SEO
• Social Media Content
About Me

Social Media Timeline
History of Social Communication (not to scale)
550 BC
Earliest
form of
Mail
delivery
1792
Telegraph
1890’s
cinematographe
1876
Telephone
1936
First freely
Programmable
Computer
Source: history.com, University of North Carolina at Pembroke
1450
Gutenberg’s
printing press
1844
Morse sends
first telegraph
1901
Transistor
radio
1974
Personal
Computer
1827
photography
1877
phonograph
1971
First email sent
1991
World Wide
Web
Introduced
1992
Mosaic
(Netscape)
web
browser
1978
Online Bulletin
Board Systems
Created
1994
Geocities
Yahoo
1985
AOL
1997
Blogging
AOL Instant Messenger
Sixdegrees,com
Blackboard
1998
Google
2003
MySpace
Second Life
LinkedIn
2004
Facebook
Podcasts
Flickr
Digg
2005
YouTube
2006
Twitter
2009
Bing

What is Social Media?
• The use of social networks such as:
– Blogs
– Microblogging (example: Twitter)
– Video Sharing
– Photo Sharing
– Online Bulletin/Message Boards
– Wikis (collaborative Web site comprising the work of many authors)
– Social Gaming
– Podcasts
– RSS feeds
Social Media Marketing is….

Social Media Uses
• Increase Exposure to:
– Personal, corporate, or agency brand
– Reaching targeted audiences
– Increase credibility
– Build support for campaigns
– Improve organic search engine search results
• Expand Reach to:
– Create strategic partnerships
– Identify and recruit influencers
– Gain intelligence
– Gain information
– Promote your message to many; FAST

Trends
Social Media is the fastest growing part of the Internet
• Mobile technology has caused the exponential growth of
social media
• App use has officially overtaken PC use in America
• 93% of marketers use social media for business
• 70% of markets have used Facebook to successfully gain
new customers
• 34% of marketers have used Twitter to successfully
generate leads

Public Sector Embrace
• 2004: Howard Dean successfully uses MeetUp
• 2008: Then Senator Obama campaign uses social media
sites with an unprecedented success rate.
• 2009: During his inauguration President Obama instructs
federal executive departments to “harness new
technologies”
Significant Public Sector Moments

Government 2.0
• Following initial experimentation with social media gov’t IT
pros labeled actions as Government 2.0
• Intended to:
– Increase Participation, Transparency, and Interagency
Collaboration
What is it?

Sites Used in Public Sector

Facebook
• 1.3 billion monthly users
• 1 billion of the monthly users use mobile technology to access
Facebook (in addition to possible PC access)
• # users increased 22% from 2012-2013
• Total # of minutes spent on Facebook each month 640 million
• Most popular social networking site used by government agencies

Facebook
• To be where people are
• Forum for Pushing News Out
• Informing and Engaging Public
• Posts have potentially unlimited reach
Why Use?

Optimization of Facebook
• 1-2 posts per day sharing frequency
• Use “Facebook Insights” to determine the best time to post
to reach your audience
• Wait a minimum of 3 hours between posts
• Use a call to action to prompt audience to click or
comment
Best Practices

YouTube
• Video sharing platform
• #2 search engine on the web
• More than 1 billion unique monthly visitors
• 35 million searches per day on “How – To” videos
• According to Nielsen – reaches more US adults 18-34 than
any cable channel
• 72% of marketers use video to educate views about
products and services.
What is it?

YouTube
• Providing background info about issues
• Promotional videos for a community or
organization
• Other purpose-driven videos with strong
content that will resonate with viewers
• To integrate your video campaign with your
social networks
• Drive your viewers to take the next step
• Provides an alternate to traditional TV
coverage
• Responses to events or press reports
• Virtual Town Hall Meetings
How is it being used?

YouTube
• Use “tags” to appropriately categorize videos for search
engine optimization purposed
• Organize videos into playlists
Best Practices

Twitter
• Microblogging site – can
only use 140 characters
per message
• 243 million active monthly
users
• Fastest growing
demographic is people
aged 55-64

Twitter Components
• Follow others to stay informed
• Reply to posts to have conversations
• Re-tweet: forward conversations
• Use Hashtags (#) to categorize tweets
Best Practices

Twitter
• Push out content relevant to agency or community
• Spread useful links to external content or drive traffic back
to website
• Similar to Facebook the reach of a tweet could be limitless
• Improve transparency and accountability
• Can lead to increased inclusion of public opinion
• Share timely information faster than traditional news
outlets
• Personify your brand
• Build credibility and influence
Why Use?

Twitter Do’s and Don’ts
• Do’s
– Sound Knowledgeable
– Be positive
– Pose questions
– Answers the questions of
others
– Announce news and other
updates
– Space tweets out throughout
the day
– Content variety
– 1-4 tweets per hour
• Don’ts
– Sound too formal like a press
release
– Spam with constant linking to
user websites or other social
media sites.

Blogging
• Most blogs are text based content sharing services
– Tumblr is predominately an image based blog service
• Why Use?
– Offer updates in less rigid way than press releases
– Provide personal connection to agency/community message or
content
– Can use both text and visuals to provide information
– Help organic search engine results

Blog Optimization
• Don’t have an overly formal tone – this is not a press release
• Connect personally with content
• Use a combination of text and visual elements
• 1 post per week (or at least every other week) best frequency
• Use “tags” to categorize content for searchability
• Push out blog posts on all other social media channels
Best Practices

Time Commitment
• It takes time
– To maximize presence various sources agree takes 1.5 per day
per social media site
• Content
• Responses
• Staying informed
• It’s at least a part time job
– I personally spend (on average) 1-2 hours a day on social media
To Maximize Social Media Presence

Social Media Strategy
• Time to dedicate to social media can be limited
• Tools that can help (and they can be accessed for free)
– Schedulers
• Hootsuite
• Tweetdeck
– News Aggregators
• The News Funnel
• Feedly
Tools to help

Additional Uses of SMM
• Build the presence
– Facebook
– Twitter
– Blog
– YouTube
• Presence should accomplish the Government 2.0 mission:
– Increase Participation
– Transparency
– Interagency Collaboration
• Having an established presence allows for secondary uses like
supporting Economic Development efforts
Harnessing for Economic Development

Economic Development with SMM
• Using reliable data from local, county, or state agencies,
regional economic development groups, or other
organizations to target
– Example: Using regional transportation data to identify distribution
and logistics as target industries
Target an audience

• Once target industry is known a list of companies needs to
be compiled
– Tools
• Chambers of Commerce
• Reference USA (assessable for free through the
Cincinnati/Hamilton County Library among other
places)
Identifying target companies

• Need a catchy headline that will capture attention of the
community
• Logos and graphics to go along with headline
Brand the Social Media Campaign
Budgeting
• Establish budget
– Traditional marketing campaign
– Web designer (if needed)
– Social media expert (if needed)
– Photographer/Videographer

• Advertising
– Trade Publications
• Distribution
• Warehousing
• Ecommerce
• Logistics
• Site Selection
• Area Development
• Direct Mailings
• Trade Shows
Traditional Marketing Campaign

• The campaign branding is added to the landing page
• Discuss advantages of region for distribution and logistics
• Market characteristics added to web site
• The agency, government, economic development office promotes the
campaign in press releases and speaking engagements throughout
the community
• Make sure all social media platform buttons are featured on page for
ease of access and generating community growth
The Web Page

• The community’s Facebook edited for the branded
campaign.
– Change cover photo
• Facebook is updated with posts about market
competiveness for business
– If need be use a scheduler (Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, etc.)
Facebook

• Create/post video about the community
• Link video to the agency/community web page, staff
LinkedIn profiles, agency/community Facebook page, and
other social media channels
• A link to the video is added to all staff email signatures.
YouTube

• Hashtags are used to find links with distribution/logistics interests
• Create a specific hashtag to brand your campaign
• Contacts are made with key individuals or groups that optimize
distribution/logistics connections
• Valuable information about doing business in community is tweeted on
a periodic basis
• Tweet significant data from initial research relating to
distribution/logistics
Twitter

• Use branding, headline, photos and research to write
posts positioning community as hub for distribution and
logistics
• Highlight data points from initial research in posts
• Make sure to be more informal in tone then traditional
press release
• Distribute posts via other social media channels
Blogs

• Successful example of Economic
Development with SSM
– Charlotte lured Chiquita partially by
using a Twitter war against Cincinnati
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/chiquitas-new-world-headquarters-in-charlotte-decided-with-help-from-a-twitte
This can’t work…. can it

Measuring Effectiveness
• Monitoring social analytics
provides feedback on your
marketing activities and brings a
higher level of clarity and insight
to them
– social media monitoring enables
an accelerated response to
shifts in the marketplace
– Agency/community can make
adjustments
Monitor Feedback

Social Media Do’s and Don’ts
• Do’s
– Maintain your accounts. Update daily, if
possible
– Choose a consistent schedule whether
that’s once per week or once a day
(becomes part of your routine)
– Make sure content is fresh in order to
boost your agency/community rankings
with search engines
– Remember whom you are "talking" to.
Tailor messages to audience
• Facebook is more personal
• Twitter is more public
General Things to Remember
• Don’ts
– Forget to proofread content carefully
– Wing it without an actual plan
– Forget that email is a great marketing tool
and can assist with cross promotion of
eblasts with social media

Sources of Information
• Beagle, Kristy D. "Social Media Best Practices." Personal interview. 1 Apr. 2014.
• Lee, Mordecai, and Ethan Lee Elser. "The Nine Commandments of Social Media in
Public Administration: A Dual-Generation Perspective." PA TIMES Online. American
Society for Public Administration, n.d. Web. 2 Apr. 2014.
• Mergel, Ines. Social Media in the Public Sector: A Guide to Participation, Collaboration,
and Transparency in the Networked World. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2013. Print.
• Mooney, Jim. Social Media Marketing for Economic Development Professionals. PDF.
Washington State Department of Commerce, 05 Mar. 2012. Web. 5 Apr. 2014
• Social Media Icons. N.d. Search Pro Systems. Web. 6 Apr. 2014.

Social Media in Public Administration

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