On September 6, 2018, I gave a keynote address at the annual conference for the City-County Communications & Marketing Association. These are my slides.

1. Delighting Your Residents with Proactive, Thoughtful, and
Timely Communications

2. Hello, neighbor! My name is @JosephPorcelli
2
Public Agency Lead
and Professional Neighbor

3. 3
#3CMAannual + #NextdoorGov

4. 4
Setting the stage

5. 5

6. 6
Questionnaire results,137 responses

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“The fine art of drawing someone out, of asking questions to which you
do not already know the answer, of building a relationship based on
curiosity and interest in the other person.”
My questionnaire was a #HumbleInquiry

8. Approach to social media
8

9. The digital channels you use to communicate
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10. Priority audiences ranking
10

11. Perceptions of the function of communications
11

12. Primary business objectives
12

13. Primary business outcomes
13

14. Questionnaire themes and how #NextdoorGov fits
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• Mostly, de-centralized
• Primarily focused on residents, then visitors and media
• Perception of function is community engagement, customer service, and
marketing
• Objectives you care about most are increase participation and attendance,
followed by increasing preparedness/resilience, reducing crime/fear and
increasing health and well being
• The end game business outcomes are to increase trust, satisfaction, and
well being

15. “Air game”
Public Affairs/Community Relations
● Goals: Tell stories to humanize government, demonstrate care, and aptitude
● Audience: Residents, businesses, visitors, media, electeds
● Region: Local, regional, national, global
● Author: Institution/person
● Approach: Entertaining, creative, informative
● Primary tools: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
● Goals: Solve problems to increase resident satisfaction and trust
● Audience: Residents
● Author: Person - Invested communication and program practitioners
● Region: Local
● Approach: Personal, thoughtful, proactive, relevant, geo-targeted communications
● Primary tools: Nextdoor
“Ground game”
Customer Service + Marketing + Neighborhood/Relational Engagement

16. Analyzing your Return on Communication (ROC) - 454%!!!
16

17. To improve satisfaction, trust, and well being…
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we must think and communicate
like community organizers.

18. Humanizing government does not go far enough,
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we must personalize government.

19. Key ingredients to delight Nextdoor members
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• Communicate with aim to increase customer satisfaction,
trust, and improve well being
• Communicate regularly
• Target communications so they are locally relevant
• Allow discussions, and respond to questions as time allows
• Seek input with Nextdoor Polls for Public Agencies

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Past, Present, Future

21. “29% of Americans know only a few
of their neighbors and 28% know
none of their neighbors by name”
Pew Research Center, June 2010

22. There are social networks for many important parts of our lives
22

23. Nextdoor is the private social network for neighborhoods

24. Nextdoor empowers neighbors who might not
otherwise connect or communicate with each
other and government.

25. Built from the ground-up for the neighborhood
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Private
Real names and address
verification; no public access
Local
Discrete neighborhood
boundaries; map-based UI
Useful
Recommendations, classifieds,
events, crime/safety, and more

26. Your residents already rely on Nextdoor

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Once connected, we can do things with and for each other

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Once we are connected, we can do stuff with and for each otherAnd, we can create a new societal norm of service
@iamrodneysmith

29. Columbus, OH
“Basement flooded - I could use some assistance”

30. A critical lifeline in times of need

31. Cynthia F.
Houston Heights East
Rescue needed
11 Thanks · 35 Replies
A rescue is desperately needed at 6007
Wister Court. 4 feet of waster in the house
and rising. Occupants headed to the roof
with animals. Have been calling for help but
can’t get through. If you can help, please
head to the above address. Thank you!
Michael D.
Yorktown/Concord Colony
Road Closures!
175 Thanks · 429 Replies
Ok folks, this is the thread where I will do my
best to post road closures as best I can...
Keep in mind, we do own a wrecker service
IF needed or IF you need advice call
832-771-6998.
Tim S.
Southbridge Crossing
Hurricane Help
388 Thanks · 111 Replies
If you have an EMERGENCY, please contact
me and I'll do my best to help you and your
family. I'm a former Army Medic and have a
4x4 Jeep to reach you during this storm. I'm
in South Ridge Crossing and I'll be out in the
rain helping our neighbors.
Mel M., Greater Southdown
Just saw the
coastguard make a
rescue a couple of
streets over - I hope
everyone is ok.
Thelma W., Avalon Terrace
AWWWSOME, Tim. Thank you for your service,
and your caring heart for your community, but
please be safe and don't take any unnecessary
risks. everyone be safe!!! pray we all come out
on the other side of this, whole!!!!
M
Olivia D., Villages of Bear Creek
They just said on the news they are releasing
water from the dam and we are going to flood
even more. Per ABC 13
Nichole C., Yorktown/Concord Colony
They are saying if you
live in the white area
on the map you do
not need to leave.
Otherwise yes, pack
your bags and leave in
the morning when there is daylight and it is safe.
N
Chris M., Houston Heights East
Headed that way, but not sure if we can cross at
11th Street.
Chris M., Houston Heights East
There is a boat
here I will give this
boat your address.
Sandra S., Houston Heights…
I have someone on stand by. Please advise.S
Members reach out to help each other

32. Social Media Officer Douglas
Houston Police
A Warning from HPD
837 Thanks
Flood Plain Management inspectors have
returned from the field with some disturbing
news. Supposedly there are individuals …
Public Information Officer
Harris County Sheriff’s Office
Addicks & Barkers Reservoirs
148 Thanks
See maps and get info on Addicks and
Barkers Reservoirs from the Harris County
Flood District on ReadyHarris' site: http://
readyharris.org/News-Information/Harris-
County-Alerts/Post/26633.
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During Harvey, 136 agencies communicated over 1,200 messages
Public Information Manager
Harris County Community Services
To Check for road accessibility, visit
Houston Transtar Traffic Map: http://
traffic.houstontranstar.org/layer...
Visit https://drivetexas.org
Road Access
234 Thanks - 58 Replies
Public Information Officer
Houston Office of Emergency
Urgent Alert
756 Thanks
FLASH FLOOD EMERGENCY issued for
Houston. DO NOT TRAVEL. Dangerous
Conditions Occurring. -City of Houston
Public Information
Houston Solid Waste Management
Garbage Collection ONLY
The ONLY regularly scheduled solid waste
service is garbage collection. All
other scheduled services
are suspended until further notice.
276 Thanks
Officer D. P. Von Quintus
Houston Police
Boats
12 Thanks · 41 Replies
If you have a boat and want to help come to
W Lake Houston and Rustic Woods for
staging.

33. NEIGHBORHOODS
180,000+
STATES
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US COVERAGE
86%
Nextdoor is relied upon by over 86% of US neighborhoods

34. Nextdoor is also available in the UK, Netherlands, Germany, and
France and we look forward to continuing our international
expansion in the future.
Stay tuned….
Global Footprint

35. Verified residents
Confidence you are connecting with
actual residents
Targeted communications
Control over audience reach based
on location
Community based
Neighbors who know each other,
look out for each other, and problem
solve with government
Over 3,200 public agencies use our free government interface

36. How Nextdoor for Public Agencies works
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• It is an opt-out platform, all members
automatically receive your messages
• Communications are initiated by the agency
• Agencies can geo-target into service areas
or neighborhoods
• Members can mute discussions or
unsubscribe from an agency
• Residents see agency posts on their
Nextdoor website or mobile app, as well as
through email

37. How Nextdoor for Public Agencies works (continued)
37
• Agencies cannot see information about
residents or what they are discussing in
their neighborhoods
• Residents can thank and reply to
agency posts, or send agency users
private messages
• Discussions can be closed and private
messages may be turned off by each
user

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What’s new?

39. The neighborhood map is back!
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40. You can now include video from Youtube and Vimeo
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41. Type in address and select that neighborhood, or expand out
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Awesome changes to Urgent Alerts
In the past:
• Urgent Alerts were limited to just 110 characters.
• You also could not add photos.
Today:
• You can have unlimited characters.
• You can add photos.
• Note: Text messages are still limited to 110 characters.
As a reminder:
• Urgent Alerts create push notifications, ignore email digest settings, and send out text messages
• They should ONLY be used during emergency situations

43. You can now see post impressions
43
See post impressions, a sum of three numbers:
• Unique views of the post in the newsfeed
• Unique opens of the email notifications that
are sent to members
• Unique clicks on the daily digest that many
members receive

44. And see and download robust metrics
44
Download metrics for neighborhoods and service
areas (additional metrics in a .csv file)
• Metrics by user and area
• Metrics by post
Download Content & Engagement Metrics
• How many posts
• Comments by post
• Who posted what, when, and where

45. Report members
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Agency users now have the ability to report Nextdoor members who respond
inappropriately to agency posts

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What’s coming?

47. On the roadmap
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What we hope to have done by the end of October
• Threaded inline replies
• Comments (for members) only visible in nearby neighborhood clusters
• For non-public safety agencies, change default category to “General”
What we plan to work on early next year
• API for archiving for services like Archive Social and for scheduling posts with tools
like Hootsuite
• The #NextdoorGov app, finally!

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Making the most of Nextdoor

49. Save the #NextdoorGov web app to your home screen
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On your iPhone
• Open Safari
• Navigate to https://nextdoor.com/login/
• Tap the Go To icon
• Then select “Add to home screen”
• The shortcut to the website will now appear as an icon
on your home screen
On your Android
• Launch Chrome for Android and navigate to https://
nextdoor.com/login/
• Tap the menu button and tap “Add to home screen”
• Enter “Nextdoor Gov” for the name of the shortcut and
then Chrome will add it to your home screen.

50. Agency content analysis: Method
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We defined post engagement as the combination of “thanks” and replies,
weighing replies more heavily than “thanks” (0.7 and 0.3, respectively).
We pulled ~80,000 agency posts from the past six months to understand how
certain factors contributed to the engagement of an individual post.
The thank/reply count has been normalized by resident count.

51. Agency content analysis: Photos
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• Posts with photos have better engagement than posts without photos
• While it’s a smaller bump in “thanks,” posts with photos see an 8.3% increase in
comments
• Photo’s render best in Landscape 2x1.1

52. Agency content analysis: Day of week
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• Lowest engagement on Sundays
• Other days are fairly comparable with engagement
• Thursday has a slight edge

53. Agency content analysis: Subject lines
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• After categorizing posts by subject line length, we found that subject lines with
character counts between 24 - 38 have slightly higher levels of engagement.
• As a rule of thumb for public agencies, subject lines should be comprehensive
enough for Daily Digest emails, but not overly wordy.
• Tell people what is happening where.

54. Posting as yourself drives 112.4% more engagement!
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• While most public agency users use their real first and last names, a number opt
for a generic department name.
• When looking at the data, posts published by agency users using their real
names saw an 112.4% increase in engagement.
• Neighbors want to interact with other human beings. By responding with your
name, you personalize the experience.

55. Our data tells us, members appreciate messages about…
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Urgent local incident
• Fire
• Power outage
• Shooting
• Significant weather event
Celebratory/Feel good
• Intro
• Retirement
• Success stories
• Arrests
Educational
• Crime prevention tips/scam alerts
• Program information
• Correcting misinformation
• Reminders of laws
Local updates
• Land use updates (new businesses,
planned development, etc.)
• Recycling/street sweeping changes
• Investigations
Requests for feedback/action
• Recruiting volunteers
• Program feedback
• Meeting invitations

56. What not to do
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The worst thing you can do:
! Post a message with the subject line that
says “Press release”, with the body of the
message that says “See attached” and
then attach a word document.
Don’t forget to:
! Spell and grammar check (write in Word
and copy paste to Nextdoor)
! Check out grammarly.com
! Include an image - images drive
engagement.

57. Don’t guess, #HumbleInquiry
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58. You can also gather input to educate and make them think
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59. And you can also assess satisfaction
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60. Warn them about things that could frighten or disrupt them
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61. Let them know about free resources
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62. Encourage them to lend a hand to each other
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Managing expectations and your
account

64. How to manage member expectations: Be proactive
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In each post:
• Remind residents that you cannot see posts they share with each other in their Nextdoor neighborhood
networks and that they must call 911 for emergencies or your constituents service line or 311 if they require
services. Enable the Forward to Police feature!
Quarterly (staggered every other month):
• Do a dedicated post to remind residents that you cannot see posts they share with each other in their
Nextdoor neighborhood networks and that they must call 911 for emergencies or your constituents service
line or 311 if they require services
• Look at top inquiries and request for services and do a post about how to work with the town/city/county to
resolve those issues
As needed:
• If you know there is an issue or area of concern, be proactive and communicate with those neighbors

65. Account management best practices
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• Ensure staff are posting regularly and following posting best practices (Content &
Engagement Report)
• Ensure communications should be conversational and in plain language (no gov
speak or acronyms)
• Do not close discussions by default, allow conversation to happen
• Have multiple people serve as admins and once a quarter do an audit of users,
deactivate those who are not posting or have moved on

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How to grow membership

67. Flyers don’t convert, we’ve tried
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68. But post cards do!
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And we will pay for them, try posting the message below
Subject: Please help us grow Nextdoor
Neighbors,
Nextdoor has proven to be an invaluable tool for us to share critical information and engage with you and your
neighbors. There are, however, many neighbors who have not yet joined Nextdoor.
We are writing today to ask you to invite your neighbors to join Nextdoor by having Nextdoor send and pay for
postcards to your nearby neighbors who have not yet joined.
The process is simple and only takes a few minutes. Please click the following link for directions http://bit.ly/
NextdoorPostcards.
With gratitude,
Your name

69. Post regularly, at least once a week
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On average, it will accelerate organic
growth an additional 25%

70. Slideout —> transform web visitors into community partners
70http://bit.ly/NextdoorGovSlideout

71. Print one of these, let residents take picture with it, and share!
71http://bit.ly/NextdoorGovCutOut

72. At each community meeting and press conference
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Encourage people to take out their phone,
download the app, and verify via phone

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Nextdoor resources

74. Resources for agency partners
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• Agency User Community http://agencyforum.nextdoor.com
• Agency help center - https://nextdoorhelpcenter.force.com/s/
• Weekly training webinars - bit.ly/NextdoorGovWebinar
• Training manual - bit.ly/NextdoorGovTrain
• Encourage residents to send post cards - bit.ly/NextdoorGovPostCards
• Get post ideas from your peers - nextdoor.com/agencies/
• Engagement Plan for Fire Department - bit.ly/NextdoorGovEngageFire
• Engagement Plain for Law Enforcement - bit.ly/NextdoorGovEngageLEA
• Engagement Plan for Emergency Managers - bit.ly/NextdoorGovEngageOEM
• Playbook - Increasing resilience with Nextdoor Polls - bit.ly/NextdoorGovOEMPolls
• Guide - Nextdoor Polls for Law Enforcement - bit.ly/NextdoorGovLEAPolls
• Recording of webinar with US Fire Recording - bit.ly/NextdoorGovWebinarFire

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Thank you, let’s stay in touch!
Joseph Porcelli ・ 857-222-4420 ・ Joseph@nextdoor.com ・ @JosephPorcelli