By Dan Knight
Penflex, Inc.
What if you’re a town? Could you share urgent news? Sure. Tweet a link to town board meeting minutes, issue snow emergency alerts, ask for public participation in a ceremony? All that and more. What about drumming up tourism? Absolutely.
Lake Arrowhead in California, for example, had a very small marketing and advertising budget and found it difficult to compete with the larger, richer communities in Southern California. They took the bold step of moving completely away from paid advertising and turned exclusively to social media. Issuing tweets and using Facebook to interact with potential tourists, the town with a population of less than 10,000 has seen tourist bookings hit new highs only a year after they started while the total investment for the campaign was time only, not cash.
Other towns used the photo sharing service Flickr to upload scenic pictures of their town, its restaurants and other tourist attractions. They then tweeted links of the pictures to their followers and posted the pictures on their Facebook page. They invited others in their community to upload their own pictures.
And then they took another brilliant step: they monitored Twitter regularly for mentions of their town and other terms like travel or bed and breakfast. Then they invited the people they identified to visit by supplying them with links to their pictures and Facebook pages and answered every inquiry they received instantly. They frequently requested that those who had visited their town post messages on the Facebook wall. All of these steps resulted in a thriving social circle where friends recommended friends and tourism increased.
Other towns take videos or ask visitors to submit their own for posting on their Facebook wall. In turn these towns thank the visitors for their time and solicit comments about how they liked their stay by posting on the tourists’ own Facebook wall. This creates user generated content, but more importantly, instant and widespread word-of-mouth about your town, complete with a wealth of information and pictures with which to bring in a whole new round of visitors.
One restaurant in a small town in Oregon uses Twitter to monitor mentions of the local airport and the name of their town. If someone, for example, tweets a message indicating they just landed at the local airport the restaurant immediately answers, welcoming the person to town and offering them a free drink if they stop in for dinner!
What does all of this prove? That social media levels the playing field for your town, volunteer department or business. A town with a population of 10,000 can have a social media campaign that is every bit as effective as the town with 30,000 people. The cost is the same for both and the only investment is time, persistence and innovation.
And don’t forget the interactive part of the equation; your followers can and will comment on what you post, ask questions and provide valuable ideas. Let’s say, for example, that your town holds a meeting where the public can speak on a topic or proposal. Not every voter is brave enough to take to the microphone and some just can’t make it to the meeting.
So after the event you take to Twitter and ask people what they thought. It’s pretty likely that you will get suggestions on how to better run the event, some compliments, and more importantly the opinions of those voters who otherwise would have stayed silent. Social media can be the great equalizer for the otherwise bashful or time-constrained voter and consumer.
Customer feedback
Some companies have used social media with amazing results to bolster customer service. Have a problem with your Xbox or Netflix service and you can take to Twitter or FaceBook to complain or ask for advice. Think of how amazing it is for a companies’ customer service departments to not only have the ability to instantly rectify an issue but to do so on a stage where hundreds of their followers, and hundreds of the customers followers, can watch them do it.
Is a town that much different? Imagine a supervisor or mayor able to answer a voter’s complaint or question from his or her desk, instantly, without the voter having to attend a meeting and wait his turn. Imagine that hundreds of other voters see how responsive you are and can share in the important information you offered. You might even receive comments that indicate to you this was a far bigger issue than you thought it was, allowing you to better prioritize the time and attention of you and your fellow board members.
If you’re a volunteer fire or EMS department maybe you just held a recruitment drive. First, hopefully you let everyone know about the event on Facebook and Twitter. Secondly, once the event is concluded, look to your social media campaigns to ask what people thought of it. Did they attend? If they didn’t, why didn’t they? How do they think it could improve? Was your pitch to make them volunteer successful? If not, why not?
One caveat here if you’re a volunteer fire or EMS department would be this: Try to ensure that the information you are providing is of interest and importance to everyone in the community and not just strictly department related news.
In other words, everyone where you live may want to know how many fires you’ve put out this year, where to view the new budget, what your local ISO rating is and even just random community news. It will do you no good to simply tweet about department business and in-house developments.
Remember the point of your social media efforts is to communicate with the town at large and you don’t want to have a campaign viewed solely by the other people in your organization. Don’t be afraid to issue tweets or Facebook updates about news items that might be interesting or unique, even if they aren’t always directly related to your department and it’s efforts.
One of the goals is always to get your followers to share what you’re saying with THEIR followers, hopefully generating ancillary interest in your message and attracting even more followers. That’s how your listeners will grow and hopefully it’s how you will gain new members and a greater appreciation in the community for what you do.
Community relations aren’t just for newsletters and church bulletins anymore! It’s online, on your website, your Twitter feed and your Facebook updates. It’s how you will not only reach people, but maybe most importantly also how they will reach you.
About the author:
Dan Knight is a marketing and public relations professional with 15 years of experience working with a diverse list of clients that includes everything from financial institutions to software development companies. As part of the new Web 2.0 initiative at Penflex, Dan has helped grow successful Facebook and Twitter accounts where the staff can personally interact with volunteer firefighters and EMS workers all over the country. Like Penflex on Facebook or follow them on Twitter to join the conversation!