How to Build an Audience, Increase Your Citizen Engagement, and Meet Your Mission Objectives

1. GovDelivery
Social Media for Government Communications
February 14, 2012
[happy valentine’s day]
1

2. Your Presenters
Lauren Modeen Joseph Porcelli
Digital Strategist Director
Engagement Services Engagement Services
@exilauren @josephporcelli
2

3. How To: Build An Audience, Improve
Your Citizen Engagement, and Meet
Your Mission Objectives
3

4. 3 Things You’ll Learn Today:
1.) The Engagement Funnel
2.) Your 15 Point Mission Objective Checklist
3.) Helpful Resources
4

5. Hypothesis
• Historically, Government not very
good at building audience and
engagement…
• Haven’t focused resources (time, staff,
money, training)
• Revenue is not the bottom line for
government; it is in the private sector.
Instead, mission delivery is bottom
line for government.
5

6. But Engagement Matters A LOT
• Government’s mission is to serve all its citizens
• Cost of mis-information
• Cost of citizen inaction
• Attack on brand – agency trust
• And above all not fully meeting YOUR MISSION
OBJECTIVES
6

7. So…We Constantly Ask Ourselves…
• How do we reach a large number of relevant
stakeholders?
• How do we build mutually beneficial
relationships with them?
• How do we provide them with clear, timely,
actionable information that is valuable?
ABOVE ALL:
• How do we get them to TAKE
MEANINGFUL ACTION with our
information and work in partnership
with us?
7

8. Mission Objectives
8

9. Question: How Move Through Funnel?
Answer: Increase Audience and Engagement…
9

10. How increase
audience and
engagement?
Preparation
Checklist*
1. Identify
2. Define Success
3. Logistics
4. Experts & Partners
5. Segment
6. Enlist
7. Cross-promotion
8. Educate
9. Empower
10. Energize *Why is this so darn important?
11. Enforce
12. Measure The more prepared you are, the more effectively
13. Adapt and efficiently you’ll move through the funnel.
14. Collaborate
15. Celebrate
16. Share More engagement = more value/service/mission
objectives
10

11. 1: Identify 15 Point Check List- - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
What problem are you trying to solve?
• What impacts matter most to my agency and the public?
• What are the specific outcomes I am looking for?
• What are realistic contributions that communication can make to
11the outcomes?

12. 2: Define Success 15 Point Check List- - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
What is Success:
• Size of audience?
• Quality of engagement?
• Press/accolades looking for
• 12 Define your goals and metrics!

13. 3: Logistics 15 Point Check List- - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Logistical questions to ask yourself:
• What is the time frame? Time to launch?
• Is it a campaign? Is it on-going?
• How does it tie into or complement our other
initiatives?
• What is our budget / staff resources?
• What technology(ies) should we use?
• What data do we have?
• 13 What have we or other learned in the past?

14. 4: Experts + Partners 15 Point Check List- - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Who are the experts/partners?
• Who are the experts on the topic?
• Who are/could be your
connectors?
• Who are/could be your partners?
• What is our ask of them?
• What’s in it for them - How can we
14
incentivize them?

15. 5: Segment 15 Point Check List- - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Why to segment?
• Figure out who is who, and where
• Reach these people specifically
• Give them what matters most
• 15 Repeat, and increase participation

16. 6: Enlist 15 Point Check List- - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Capture people
where they
are…get people
to sign up!
Enlist Your People:
• Who are our stakeholders?
• Where is the target audience currently?
• What would compel them to sign up?
• How can we get them to sign-up?
• 16 What have we done in past?

17. 7: Cross Promotion 15 Point Check List- - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Cross-promote:
• Re-tweet, Share, Send-on-behalf
• Participate in the GovDelivery Network
• Find partners and work with them
• 17 Work with other agencies who can share ROI

18. 8: Educate 15 Point Check List- - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
How do you help them learn?
• Make your content easy to find
• Sticky (so come back)
• 18 Make it fun!

19. 9: Empower 15 Point Check List- - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
How do you get them to own it?
• Ask them for feedback!
• Include their feedback
• Allow them to use their own voice
• 19 Invite them to co-lead/facilitate/organize

20. 10: Energize 15 Point Check List- - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
How do you keep them energized?
• Ask lots of questions/what they want, and if yes, delivery more
• Use weekly issues/themes
• Ensure latest/most interesting activity above the fold
• Highlight people’s accomplishments
• 20 Do stuff together in person: don’t only know people by their avatars

21. 11: Enforce 15 Point Check List- - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15
Tip =
Tons of resources on policies:
www.data.govloop.com
How do you get them to play nice?
• What is working?
• What type of content popular?
• What type of frequency popular?
• 21 What are our key problems?

22. 12: Measure 15 Point Check List- - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Most Useful Tools?
Questions to Ask: Free:
- Google Analytics
• What is working? - Facebook Insights
• What type of content popular? - Tweet Reach
• What type of frequency popular Cost:
- Radian6
• What are our key problems? - Viral Heat
• 22 Weekly/Monthly Analytics Reports - PageLever

23. 13: Adapt 15 Point Check List- - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
How do you keep them coming back?
• Experiment, iterate, and evolve
• Don’t recreate wheel - emulate examples by your peers
• Falling down is a way to remember how to get back up
• 23 Give them what is most interesting/vital for them

24. 14: Collaborate 15 Point Check List- - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
How do you get them to collaborate?
• Encourage collaboration around something they really care about
• Make it easy to join
• 24Provide positive reinforcement

25. 15: Celebrate 15 Point Check List- - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Importance of celebrating:
• Shared sense of ownership/pride
• Makes the content/community sticky
• Moves users to leadership phase
• Drives awareness
• 25 People love to celebrate/rally around something

26. 16: Share 15 Point Check List- - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
Why share:
• We are highly influenced by what our peers
do – sharing works
• Sharing exponentially expands our reach
26 and potential to reach new audiences

27. What Really Matters?
Saving a life
1 Million OR through a
Followers? successful flu
campaign?
27

28. Which Analytic Tools Most Useful?
Free: Cost:
• Google Analytics • Viral Heat
• Facebook Insights • PageLever
• Social Mention • Radian6
• Twitter grader • Authority Labs
• TweetReach • PostRank
28

29. Useful Tool Ecosystem
29

30. More Tools to Rock Your Communication
30

31. What are Your Challenges?
Pick our brains…
31

32. THANK YOU!
Joseph Porcelli Lauren Modeen
Director, Engagement Services Engagement Strategist
GovDelivery GovDelivery
Twitter @josephporcelli Twitter @exilauren
32

33. Photo Credits
•
Picture 1
Picture 2
Picture 3
Picture 4
Picture 5
Picture 6
Picture 7
Picture 8
Picture 9
Picture 10
Picture 11
Picture 12
Picture 13
Picture 14
Picture 15
Picture 16
Picture 17
33