Social media best practices for government agencies
By Julia Phil
In our fast-paced digital era, where information travels at the speed of a click, the spotlight on government agencies' communication efforts has intensified through the lens of social media.
Whether it's sharing crucial updates, fostering civic engagement, or navigating through the intricacies of crisis communication, the digital presence of government entities plays a pivotal role in shaping public perception. Let's dive in to why social media should be a top priority for cities, ports, water districts and other government agencies, and address pitfalls to avoid.
Social media strategy: Why it's important
A well-defined social media strategy is crucial for government agencies to effectively communicate with constituents, enhance transparency, educate the public and build community. Without a clear strategy, it can be easy for government communicators to miss important opportunities, or worse, risk reputation damage.
Well thought out social media strategies will clearly assign roles across departments and teams, outline when it is appropriate to post information to which social channels, address posting cadence and define target audiences for engagement.
Social media best practices
No matter if you are creating a post for LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, these basic best practices will give you a great foundation to build attention-grabbing posts.
Engage with your audience: Social media is not a tool to speak at your audience or following, but a tool to garner open, two-way communication. Ignoring comments, especially negative feedback is a recipe for building mistrust. Responding to comments and inquiries through social media also demonstrates responsiveness and helps show your agency's commitment to public engagement.
Provide valuable content: When crafting your social media post, be sure to ask yourself this important question: Is this post adding value to our followers lives? If the answer is no, it may be best to rethink the information you are sharing. Is there a better platform to share this information? Or, is this information important to our community? Some examples of content that adds value are community events, construction updates and educational resources.
Choose eye catching visuals: A picture is worth a thousand words, especially on social media where there is endless content to consume. If you are not able to grab your audience's attention right away, you will lose your chance at engaging with them. Best performing content on social media includes photos, videos and infographics. Be sure that whatever graphic you choose best conveys your message, and avoid text heavy graphics, which are not accessible to everyone.
Be authentic and transparent: Building trust with your audience is key to your organization's credibility. Being intentional about how you speak about the tough topics and decisions will go a long way with your followers.
What NOT to do
Over promote: We have all seen an instagram grid with the same graphic over and over pointing to the same event. Most social media algorithms will penalize accounts for reposting the same post and same graphic multiple times. Instead, find unique ways to promote the event by creating individual graphics and writing different copy to highlight various aspects of the event.
Ignore comments: Engaging with your commenters is the quickest way to building an online community for your city. Whether positive or negative, make sure to reach out and let them know you hear their feedback.
Skip the editing process: There is nothing cringier than a misspelled word or missed punctuation in a social media post. Having an internal editing process with at least one extra reviewer is crucial to ensure no errors make it to the grid.
Lack consistency: Social media platforms reward accounts who have a schedule. Whether you post daily or weekly, make sure to keep your channels updated and keep a consistent tone across posts.
Overlook accessibility: Accessibility is important in building community, especially accounting for users with disabilities. Use alt text for images, provide captions for videos, and adhere to accessibility guidelines to make your content inclusive and accessible to everyone.
Ignore metrics: Monitoring engagement and high performing content helps you hone in on what your audience is telling you. Through metric and analytics monitoring you can ensure you are providing content that is most valuable to your followers at all times.
In honor of those who are doing it right, we wanted to share a couple of our favorite recent posts and campaigns from local agencies.
Eastern Municipal Water District: Shout out to EMWD for hopping on the Super Bowl trends for an engaging series of posts. Click here to view.
City of San Marcos: In a recent campaign, the City of San Marcos highlighted local business Roshambo to encourage users to learn more about their economic development efforts. Check out the video here.