Using Social Media To Keep Residents Engaged

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Don’t complicate the basic idea of social media. Human beings have been doing this for as long as there have been human beings – sitting around and communicating. Now, there’s a digital realm for this kind of very human behavior. Hey, we create physical spaces for people to gather – we call them parks and spend millions of dollars creating and maintaining them. Why shouldn’t cities create a digital space as well?Social media is 24-7-365 – your constituents are busy. Most don’t have time to come to your meetings – that doesn’t mean you can’t have a dialogue. Now, you can have asynchronous conversations.

We have a kind of separate site, called Community Conversations, that runs on different software from our web site, but on the same server.

Don’t do a blog unless you’re good at dealing with controversies … you’re just inviting trouble. If you not good at dealing with controversies, you need to be … but that’s a different seminar and I’d be happy to tell who’s trained us in citizen participation.Have some goals, other than, it’s cool. Here are ours: Provide additional channels of input for citizens and other potentially-affected interests Increase the transparency of the City's decision-making process Facilitate a sense of community Reach new audiences with City messages and information.TERMS OF USE! Have to agree to them before you can comment, and comments are moderated. Highlights: Comment must be on topic. Your comments must be civil. They must not contain malicious, offensive, threatening, profane or insulting language. No references to the personality of other participants or individuals, or attacks on individual character will be permitted. This is a forum for community issues and not for electoral campaign purposes. Such messages will not be published. Advertising or promotional announcements are not permitted.Our blogs: Decision Points – for hot topics Projects – Downtown Redevelopment, General Plan, Sports Complex Improvement Project (a dozen posts, 95,000 views, 70 comments, 140 name suggestions) Library – Round Rock Reads, 26-Teen Parks and Rec – Special Events, Round Rocker – the 411We also comment on other blogs, if we feel we need to.

Number of followers has built up over time. Now at 728 followers.We just follow 47 folks – media and other government accountsUse of RSS feeds to send our tweets. We hired no additional staff when we started our social media journey, so we leverage content from web site and blogs.

Again, number of fans has built up over time. We’re actually at 696 as of yesterday.Anotherway to promote events – you can sent notices to fansParks and Rec has set up a FB Page for Texas Road Rash; library has set one up as well

Photo uploads are moderatedYou can automate a search on Flickr with the name of your community. When you find some pics, send ‘em a message. Our says: What a great shot! The City of Round Rock Group would love to have your photo added. Doesn’t live on your server or eat up your bandwidthBe sure to systematically back up the images

Need to promote natural beauty of your community?

Need to promote your downtown?

Promote your community as family fun?

How about your community has biting spiders?

Need to promote heritage tourism?

Sports Capital of Texas

Favorites, Groups & Events

Using Social Media To Keep Residents Engaged - Presentation Transcript

Using Social Media to Keep Residents Engaged and Informed Texas Leadership Institute June 11, 2009
Remember This • It’s just a conversation …
What We Do • Social Media Suite includes: – Blogs – Twitter – Facebook – Flickr
Blogs • Only for the brave … … and skilled
Twitter • @roundrocknews • 701 followers • Content comes primarily from RSS feeds from web site, blogs Psst! Great tool for pitching stories to media
Facebook • roundrocktexas.gov/facebook • 680 fans • Content comes primarily from RSS feeds from web site, blogs
Flickr • roundrocktexas.gov/flickr • 78 members • If you upload ‘em, we can use ‘em