Last week, PublicStuff hosted a webinar on how local governments can better leverage social media platforms to facilitate collaborative and constructive conversations with residents. Lynne DeWilde, PIO of Suwanee, GA, joined us to demonstrate actionable tips on how to use today’s most popular platforms, how to determine a social media policy and voice, how much to post, and more.
Our resident social media expert, Barrett Martin, introduced today’s most commonly used platforms and dug up some insights on how each one is used by different community types and age groups.
Finally, our listeners also had great questions for Lynne DeWilde, and here’s our top three:
How much time do you spend on social media?
It takes only 5-10 minutes to actually post anything, but you really end spending a lot more time thinking about it. On average, Lynne from Suwanee spends three hours per week on social media.
How often do you post?
The goal at Suwanee is once a day, but the reality is that they post about three to four times per week. This has worked out quite well for Suwanee so far, and it’s important to be careful not to overdo it. Facebook itself recommends posting no more than once a day, so that should be a good place to start.
How do you build a strong following?
Once you’ve set up your presence, get your own family, friends and extended networks to like and follow your pages. Monitor what kinds of posts are getting you the highest traffic. At Suwanee, the city had people dress up as their favorite superheroes and take photos together at their City Hall, which kind of looks like the Hall of Justice. Although unintentional, this post was picked up by Comic Con and went viral on a small scale and earned the city a lot more visibility and support.
If you missed the webinar, feel free to check out our full presentation!
This post was originally published on the PublicStuff blog on February 18.
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