That is something you should  ask yourself when thinking about how your local government is using social media. While watching an informative webinar “Social Media in Government,” that I encourage you all to watch, I learned a few key lessons about what social media can do for local governments:

• Social media is an opportunity to create a streamlined brand and public-facing front for your local government. There are many ways to do this; the most simple is making sure that all of your social media uses the same color and graphics schemes. In addition to your city or county’s social media accounts consider having key employees create professional social media accounts so they can spread your information to a wider audience of people who are only looking to follow a local government official but not the entire government.
• Right now many local governments are focused on transparency and social media is a way to provide your citizens with just that! When a city has a 311 Twitter account then everyone can be alerted to potholes or other goings on in the city. Additionally, the city can quickly and publicly share information about efforts to create more public and open lines of communication. Plus when you answer a tweet or Facebook post, everyone with a Facebook or Twitter account can see the answer. For example, when you answer a phone call, only one person gets answer. As they say, time is money, so effective engagement in social media can help your local government’s bottom line.
• Social media can be used to create a culture of constant engagement. During a disaster, social media can be used to connect with citizens, answer many questions at the same time, and keep citizens calm and informed about what steps the city is taking. During non-disaster times, social media can be used to break down barriers to entry of traditional citizen engagement. People who need to work during a town hall meeting or are out of town can still engage in the conversation if the city chooses to live tweet the event or take questions from social media.

Social media can help you create a united front, increase transparency, save you time and money, and increase citizen engagement. If social media hasn’t been a priority for your community in the past consider about making it one in 2014! And if you need help then you have come to the right place as ICMA has an enormous amount of resources to help get you started.

Check out the resources below and as always please comment below if you have any questions to share OR post on your Facebook page or tweet at us on Twitter!

• There is a topic page dedicated to social media where you can find all of the latest documents, articles, blog posts, and questions related to social media. In addition, there is also a citizen engagement page if you are more interested in that side of the equation.
• If you are interested in very basic social media guidelines you can see ICMA’s Social Media Engagement Guidelines. These will provide you with the very basics for local governments that are just getting started with social media.
• Social Media Usage in the Workplace Policy is a document produced by the city of Christiansburg and outlines the social media policy for its local government employees.
• The University of Pennsylvania’s Fels Institute of Government created a manual, Making the Most of Social Media, which includes case studies of local governments usage of social media as well as their research into this topic.
• This previously answered question contains a number of links that show how different local governments are handling the topic of balancing social media usage as a public employee.

Best,

Robin Saywitz

ICMA Knowledge Network Intern

rsaywitz@icma.org