I Caught my Staff on Facebook . . .

. . . and I Thanked Them!Presented by:

André Pichly, M.S., CPRPRecreation SuperintendentCity of West Sacramento

• Summarize how West Sac Parks developed its social media presence and how it is evolving

• Identify the key components for developing our user-friendly social media policy and training for staff

• Share examples of good posts and not so good posts, and a social media editorial calendar

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Be able to articulate the purpose of your organization having a social media presence and identify the key components in both a user-friendly policy and strategy

• Take material from this session that can be used to implement your own social media staff training session*

*Most documents will be sent out electronically

When you leave . . .

• Where do you feel your agency is with social media right now?

• Why does your agency use social media? If not, why?

• What are your concerns in regards to staff using social media?

Small Group Discussion

"In a time when customers have the power to tarnish a brand and reach hundreds of thousands of people instantly via social networks, shouldn't you make it easy as possible for them to communicate with you in as many ways as possible?“

Tom Frick, Return on Engagement (2010)

Control your social media presence.

Social media is not a trend, it is a cultural shift and we need to embrace it.

We developed a policy that was ‘user friendly’ and would

allow us to evolve

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and City iLights are the only authorized social media outlets for use by the City. If other social media outlets are found to provide value to the workplace and the public they will be added to the list of authorized social media sites.

The City reserves the right to restrict or remove any content that is deemed to violate the social media policy or any applicable law

[Any and all posts must] Directly pertain to City of West Sacramento business, OR is information/question not related directly to the City of West Sacramento, but is designed to encourage a response in an effort to engage the follower and thereby increase the likelihood of appearing in their newsfeeds more often.

Employees representing the City via social media outlets must conduct themselves at all times as representatives of the City of West Sacramento and act professionally and within established work rules and policies. Employees that fail to conduct themselves in an appropriate manner may be subject to discipline up to and including termination.

We decided to do it ourselves vs.

having someone do it for us

"Consider creating an editorial calendar to help manage your content schedule.“Tom Frick, Return on Engagement (2010)

Think like the customer . . . . . . .• If you have your own Facebook account, how

do you use it and what do you enjoy about it?

• What do you believe makes for a good post?

Small Group Discussion

“If someone posts a legitimate gripe about you or your company . . . if you want to be a good social citizen the best thing you can do is either refute it with tangible evidence to the contrary or offer to fix the problem. As Mitch Joel said in his book Six Pixels of Separation, ‘You can’t control the conversation. . . You can control whether or not you take part.’”

"If you edit dissenting comments, you could be viewed as undermining an open dialogue, which could be detrimental to the perception of your company or organization."

• Who are our customers?• Do we know which of our customers are using

social media?• What are the benefits of engaging customers

vs. ‘pushing’ information

Questions we asked ourselves

Know Your Audience. . . throwing content blindly against a wall to see what sticks doesn’t tend to be a very effective way to engage users. Instead, figure out who those users are and what they want and then provide it to them.

Tom Frick, Return on Engagement (2010)

• Our next move with social media should be to . . . . _________________________________

• Who will need to champion our social media effort?

• The three (3) things I want to take back to my organization are . . . . ____________________

Small Group Discussion

Presented by:André Pichly, M.S., CPRPRecreation SuperintendentCity of West Sacramento(916) 617-4627andrep@cityofwestsacramento.org : www.linkedin.com/in/andrepichly Department website: www.westsacfun.org

Thank you!