City Communications is so important for government transparency and to maintain strong community engagement. With the onset of social media, cities and government agencies signed up for Facebook pages. The floodgate of information was opened. However, some cities are just fine posting once or twice a week. 

Why does your city communications need more than a couple of Facebook posts a week? What do people expect from cities now that we have an onslaught of social media platforms? 

Quantity and Quality 

Facebook and social media platforms will place posts of pages that are new, fresh, and gain more engagement. As a result, cities should create fun, interesting content that people want to engage with. Facebook will always prefer a post that is new that day, versus a post that is one week old. Continually posting quality content will make your city seen. 

Interactive Dialogue

Facebook and other social media platforms have created a dialogue between residents and cities. As a result, cities should look at their posts as ways to jump start conversations with the community, and generate engagement. When cities post, they should expect to respond to comments from the public. People are expecting responses when they comment on posts, and answers to direct messages. It is important to engage and quickly respond to people’s comments. A single post with no interaction is not enough. 

Diversify Platforms

On October 4th, 2021, Facebook went dark for 7 hours. Cities, organizations, and individuals that only used that platform had no way of communicating with their community. Diversify your platforms. When a platform goes dark, you will still have a way to reach the people. People need to be able to reach their city all the time, they expect it.

Processing Differently

Every person has a preferred social media platform. From Instagram, to reading blogs, to hearing a podcast, each platform brings pros and cons. As a result, you should devise a way to create long-form content, and contextualize it for multiple platforms. This is an efficient way to gather and post many different pieces of content. People will gravitate towards their preferred platform. Meet them there.

City Communications: Conveying Complex Ideas

As a city, there are many different service offerings and levels of complexity to the work. As a result, a single Facebook post may not do justice to the narrative of your community. NineNorth dives deeper into the city’s stories. We create dynamic videos that fully explain complex issues and initiatives. Reach out to NineNorth to discover what video can do for your city.