Email is for work, Facebook is where you find out about local events and Instagram is where you go to learn about new products by millennial brand ambassadors.
As our communication channels become more diverse, government agencies are constantly clamoring to find new ways to get constituents the information they need.
Late last month, in an effort to expand their outreach and get valuable feedback from the community, the city of Gilroy’s public information office joined Nextdoor, a free private social network that allows users to share and post to people in their own neighborhood.
Last year, public agencies were allowed their own custom Nextdoor interface, enabling them to share updates and request information from residents.
“Like a lot of other cities and agencies, we are trying to transition to get more community engagement,” said Joe Kline, the city’s public information officer for the last 16 years. “We can better explore that with social media tools like Facebook and Nextdoor.”
The city’s first foray into social media was Facebook, where they currently have 3160 likes. Kline calls Facebook “amazing.” The platform’s analytics allow publishers to quickly see who and how many are looking at their posts.
“We look at what time of day people access our posts so we can better direct our outreach,” he said. “We don’t have unlimited public resources, so we try to get the biggest bang for our buck.”
This year, Kline will also be looking at other free tools like Periscope, which allows people to broadcast live videos in real time, and Instagram.
With so many facets of government, said Klein, it can be challenging to get people the information they need in the way they want it.
“We look at other cities, review best practices,” he said, adding that an interesting side note to our modern way of getting information via smartphones and websites, is the rise of the soundbite.
“People want their information in short, concise messages.”
Kline said he and his part-time assistant aim to produce videos of 30 seconds or less, with links to further information.
“Some things are easy to explain,” he said. “Construction projects, road works, but most things in government are very complicated.”
With cable television being more elusive than it once was, the city began live streaming City Council and planning commission meetings about eight years ago.
“As important,” said Kline, “we archive all televised council and planning commission meetings.”
They are listed on the city’s website, which was redesigned earlier this year. Each video is mapped to that meeting’s agenda so users can easily skip to the part of the meeting they want to view.
“Most people are interested in a specific issue,” said Kline.
While new channels like Nextdoor and even Facebook are used for engaging with members of the community, Kline said a lot of folks still like to print out the city newsletter and read it over a cup of coffee.
“We can’t forget about them,” he said.
