Cities and towns are accelerating their adoption of social media as a communications tool, and the panel at a social media session during the Municipal Association’s Annual Meeting showed how this can involve many people involving the city’s leadership and staff.
The panel featured Newberry Mayor Foster Senn, whose Twitter account works alongside all the City of Newberry channels like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Christopher George, meanwhile, serves as communications manager for the City of Spartanburg (Twitter, Facebook and Instagram); and Shawn Bell serves as city administrator, complete with social media duties, for the City of Fountain Inn (Facebook).
Over time in Spartanburg, George said, “social media has become, without a doubt, our number-one way of reaching people.”
He said the original build-up of the audience occurred around 2012.
"We were very keen on pushing downtown development at a time when it [social media] was really just getting started for us," he said. "The local media wasn’t paying quite as much attention to it. They are now."
George added that business development may have gotten the audience subscribed, but they are now engaged in communication on other topics. Spartanburg routinely gets thousands of views for city council meetings on Facebook Live.
In Newberry, Senn’s use of Twitter is not unusual for an elected official. Pushing out information, he said, promotes transparency and helps residents to be informed.
"They want to know about their town, they want to know that they’re a part of it. If they’re informed, they feel more a part of it," he said.
Social media channels now do much of the heavy lifting for special event promotion, and Bell drew attention to Fountain Inn’s Facebook promotions of its Saturday farmers market, Fourth of July celebration Christmas events and Coffee with Council gatherings. He also uses it to promote Ask the Administrator sessions, a quarterly appointment for Bell to answer questions on Facebook for a couple of hours on a Thursday evening.
Social media is a two-way communications tool. The panel discussed the careful and thoughtful responses to negative posts, and addressing those posts that are blatantly abusive of profane after documenting them, as social media is subject to the SC Freedom of Information Act.
The Municipal Association and its technology partner VC3 are bringing Tech Talks — short sessions to cover critical IT topics — throughout the Annual Meeting in Greenville later this month.
Many topics will be covered, with the full list available here. Because technology is becoming a pivotal role in our lives, there are several available resources explaining why cities and towns should take an interest in the session topics. Here are some of the Tech Talk sessions paired with some advance reading/listening that can help attendees prepare for them.
- Cybersecurity Checklist: How Do You Rate? – This session will take a look at some key cybersecurity needs like email encryption and cyber liability insurance. Cybersecurity was the subject of a recent City Quick Connect podcast with Krystal Daily, information technology director for the Municipal Association. In that podcast, Krystal also dug into the issue of ransomware attacks on municipalities, which will be the threat discussed in the Tech Talk session Be Prepared With a Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan.
- Text Message Archiving Basics – The need for archiving solutions for text messages on city devices comes about because such texts are subject to the SC Freedom of Information Act. Learn more about the challenges of digital document retention in the Uptown article “Keeping Digital Public Records on the Record.”
- Crafting a Social Media Policy – Social media has opened up worlds of opportunities for cities in terms of resident and visitor engagement and even with things like police work, since law enforcement agencies can use social media to improve transparency and working relationships with the public. Even so, city staff need to be careful to use social media appropriately and in accordance with planned rules, and that’s where social media policies come in.
