Social Media and the Municipal Customer Experience: Thinking Outside the Box
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Connecting state and local government leaders
The most successful digital communities use their official government websites as central communications portals. Here’s how communities in Arizona and North Dakota have built strong connections online.
It’s no secret that local government has struggled to provide the same level of customer experience offered by leading private sector companies. Today’s citizens expect to find the information they need online and to access it anywhere, anytime, from any device.
The good news, however, is that many local governments have made significant improvements in how they use the technology to serve citizens. Advanced websites linked to social media are helping cities across America close the gap and meet citizen expectations for digital services. Better yet, self-service saves money; this digital transformation is making local government agencies more effective, efficient and transparent.
The most successful digital communities use their official government websites as central communications portals. They underpin those websites with content management systems—the company I work for, Vision Internet, offers a powerful and flexible platform called visionCMS™—that allow them to present information that is well-organized, easy to find and easy to update. And then they stimulate citizen interaction by linking those websites to the social media platforms most important and relevant in their communities.
One size does not fit all but important lessons about the synergy between municipal websites and social media can be learned from the experiences of progressive municipalities like Queen Creek, Arizona and Grand Forks, North Dakota.
In Queen Creek, Digital Media Specialist Jen Snyder harnesses the power of the town website and Facebook to drive business to the central business district. In addition to providing business owners with a multitude of digital forms that make it easy to start-up and maintain a business, the Queen Creek website prominently features the town’s Facebook page on its homepage along with other social media channels. Jen says social media is her most effective communications tool and that it all starts with the website.
The Town of Queen Creek Facebook page has garnered “likes” from more than 8,000 of the town’s 30,000 residents and is an important advertising medium for local retailers and restaurateurs. In fact, Rachel Broughten, owner of Rachel’s Bake Shop in downtown Queen Creek, said every time the town shares one of her Facebook posts or re-tweets one of her promotions, two or three new customers walk through her door.
John Bernstrom, communications specialist for the city of Grand Forks, is also a believer in the power of municipal websites and social media to engage citizens and free up staff time.
Last fall, he used the tools provided by Vision Internet’s content management system to create a seasonal leaf collection page featuring a color-coded map that tracked the progress and next stops of Public Works leaf collection crews.
The dedicated section quickly became the website’s most visited page. The map received nearly 4,000 visitors over the course of the campaign, peaking at 225 visits on Oct. 27. The result was a dramatic decrease in phone calls and emails to the city asking questions related to leaf collection, which freed up staff time.
Social media was also an integral part of John’s leaf collection communications strategy. The program’s 21 Facebook posts reached more than 6,800 residents and dramatically boosted the city’s Facebook followers. Twitter posts resulting in more than 9,400 additional impressions. Overall the program was deemed as a great success and 2014 data will serve as a baseline for future campaigns.
John and Jen are just two of the thousands of talented, digitally skilled municipal professionals who are changing the face of citizen communications. They, like the vast majority of the more than 330 local government IT and communications professionals who weighed in on the state of digital communications in a recent Vision Internet survey, believe that local governments have the responsibility to keep pace with ever-changing technology.
Fortunately for municipalities that haven’t made the transition to digital communications, the tools now are available to make it happen and digital pioneers like John and Jen are happy to share their experiences.
Ashley Fruechting is the senior director of strategic partnerships for Santa Monica, California-based Vision Internet, a leader in government website development with more than 600 government, non-profit and education clients across the U.S. and Canada.
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