Whether you know it or not, your citizens are online writing opinions about your community, your local businesses, and your local government services. That’s why it’s important that your government organization establish a strong web presence and frame the discussions that are happening out there on the Internet about your community.

At the Monday session, “Social Ideation: Using the Internet to Gather Citizen Ideas,” Granicus’s Tom Spengler, Alissa Black of the New America Foundation, and Mesa Deputy City Manager Karolyn Kent, discussed a new way to communicate with citizens.

The old ways of citizen engagement were often in-person, expensive, time-consuming, and unproductive because feedback was neither focused nor representative of the broader community. In a recent local government survey, 72% of respondents said they still rely on these traditional forms of communication (phone, e-mail, in-person, mailings).

But, citizens increasingly expect government to provide a convenient way to voice their feedback and participate online.

The new way of citizen engagement is:

• Online Collaborate with more people to address community priorities
• Cost-effective Decreases the time, money, and effort required for citizen participation
• Automated Capture and manage community input easily
• Productive Use “crowd sourcing” to bubble up the best ideas from your citizens, find out what matters to them most, and develop responsive policy and programs

Social ideation helps you get citizens input on fiscal budgeting, capital improvement projects, and other important initiatives so you can make better budget, policy, and strategic decisions.

However, while the new form of citizen engagement is highly effective, it is still recommended to combine both online and offline engagement strategies to reach the broadest audience. Some citizens still like to participate in public in-person forums. Cover all your bases.

The City of Mesa, Arizona has been using social ideation successfully for a few years. The City’s iMesa program is a resident-driven, online, grassroots program to engage the citizens of Mesa to find out what they value, how they envision the future of their community, and what are they willing to invest in. Through iMesa, the City asks its citizens to imagine and dream of a better community and challenges them to come up with ideas for transformative community projects. All voices are heard and all ideas are considered.

Check out the program here on the City’s website.

So here’s the question: is your government missing an opportunity to better engage your citizens and find out what’s important truly to them?