Chong: Eight Tips on How Government Agencies Can Draw Users in With Social Media

It is a challenge for a government agency to attract users in the noisy social media world that most folks with smartphones, tablets, laptops and PCs live in.  With some creativity, government agencies can be heard amidst the noise.  Here’s 8 tips on how to get your agency’s mission and projects noticed and draw in users to your sites:

1. Tweet on Twitter Daily:  Twitter is influential and so use your agency head or senior officials to tweet agency news, and report straight from agency events or activities at your remote sites.  Sharing brief updates like these help users feel more connected to your agency.  It shows that your leaders are real people working hard on their tax dollars.  Keep your Twitter tone friendly, upbeat and conversational.   This is a place where you can highlight how your agency impacts real people and situations, by humanizing the work you do with stories about your projects, programs and results.
2. Get Liked on Facebook:  Use Facebook to tell your stories in more depth.  Establish an agency Facebook page, and encourage users to "Like" you to create your community.  Then tell stories about your programs or projects and how they impact real people and make a difference in their lives.  This is a place to appeal to people’s emotions, and hope they will comment, like or share your posts to their friends.  Use this page to announce events, and link to your agency blogs.  Be consistent in sending out information via all your social media outlets to keep things fresh.
3. Create Events on LinkedIn.  LinkedIn has an Events feature, which allows you to easily create and share an event with the agency’s connections.  Use traditional media outreach to promote your event too, like press releases, media outreach, posters and email.
4. Encourage Pins on Pinterest.  Make use of this photo-centric site and pique people’s interests about your agency’s work with an interesting image, then provide a URL link to your agency’s webpage or Facebook page to learn more.  For example, if you are an environmental agency, you can show photos of projects that are helping clean the air or reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  If you are a public utility agency, you may show photos of solar or wind farms.  If you are the department of motor vehicles, you can use a cartoon or character to promote wearing your seat belt or no texting while driving.
5. Go Crazy on YouTube.  YouTube the video site is hugely popular, especially with younger demographics.  Be creative in your video posts for the agency.  Try to inspire people to get involved with your agency, by spotlighting your programs or projects at work, or educating users in a creative way.  YouTube is also a great way to have a call to action to do something your agency is promoting.
6. Educate with a Webinar.  Google+ gives your agency the ability to hold webinars to educate the public about a topic.  Brief informational speeches with a chance for Q&A is a great way of agency outreach, minus the travel costs.  You may also record the webinar for on demand playback in the future.
7. Everyone Loves a Contest.  Think about creative contests where people create a YouTube video to explain an aspect of your agency’s work with winners highlighted on your website and a prize for the first place winner.  Or the user that tweets the most about your agency’s upcoming event on Twitter wins a prize or a chance to be in a raffle for free entry to the event.  Hold a contest on Pinterest for the best pin of the most inspiring photo about your agency’s work; the winner is the person who got the most repins of the photo.  Hold a treasure hunt of QR codes hidden at agency public spaces with a prize at the end.  Hold an Instagram photo contest with a specialized hashtag and a deadline.  Have some kind of prize and always highlight the best of the entries on your website and other social media outlets.
8. Infographics = 8X More Retweets!  Use infographics, which is a visual tool to graphically portray information.  According to TargetClick, 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual and 65% of people learn things visually.  People are 832% more likely to retweet an infographic on Twitter, so present agency data using an infographic and highlight it on your Facebook page, Twitter and Pinterest.

Overall tips:

• Be sure you have enough agency staff to handle your social media postings and responding to users’ questions and concerns in a timely manner. Social media is 24/7 so this may require daily staffing.
• Keep metrics on how long it takes your staff to answer a user’s question.  If it takes more than five minutes, work together to create an agency cheat sheet on frequently asked questions to ensure uniformity of the answer and speed in responsiveness.