Social Media Resource Guide - AUMA.ca · PDF file2.1 Creating an effective social media plan 10 2.2 Getting ready 11 ... deemed to include social networking sites, blogs, wikis, folksonomies,

AUMA/AAMDC

Social Media RESOURCE GUIDE

January 2015

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association and the Alberta Association of Municipal District and Counties Social Media Resource Guide.

Citizen engagement provides a means for incorporating citizen values, interests, needs anddesires into decisions that affect their lives and supports improved municipal decision-making by bringing all perspectives to the table. The Alberta Urban MunicipalitiesAssociation (AUMA) and Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties (AAMDC)are committed to supporting their members as they pursue strong and effective localgovernance through citizen engagement. As part of this commitment, AUMA and AAMDCare partners, through the support of grant funding, in developing this resource guide.Collaborative initiatives, including the 2007 Citizen Engagement Toolkit and now this guide,are one way both associations seek to serve member interests.

The proliferation of social media has challenged traditional means of citizen engagementand this guide is designed to provide you, whether an elected official or member ofmunicipal administration, some relevant and practical advice and tools to support effectivedigital engagement using social media.

The first thing that you need to know is that social media should not be used as astandalone solution to engagement, nor should it replace your traditional means ofconnecting and engaging with your citizens and stakeholders. Social media presentsimmense opportunity – opportunity to be harnessed as part of your overarchingengagement and communication planning and activities.

The second thing is that, while there are risks associated with using social media, it can beextremely beneficial with some thoughtful and careful planning. This guide is designed toprovide some helpful best practices to give you good food for thought as you consider howbest to engage and communicate with your citizens and stakeholders; it also provides therelevant templates to build your capacity to use social media and move you to action. Notwo elected officials, municipalities, municipal districts or municipal counties needs are thesame, making it important to invest in your own plan – one that is designed for your uniquecontext.

This guide is laid out in three sections, each designed with a specific purpose.

Section 1 focuses on the benefits, opportunities and potential pitfalls associated with using social media as part of municipal engagement.

It begins with a brief history of social media, explaining why it is important for municipalagents to use social media to complement traditional means of engagement andcommunication. It goes further to outline some of the top reasons that social mediaastounds and confounds municipal users, as well as explains some of the ways you canexpect to see and use social media in your engagement activities.

Section 2 focuses on good planning to prepare you for success with all of your social media activities.

It provides a step-by-step look at the eight components that make up a meaningful socialmedia strategy. It goes further to emphasize the importance of evaluating the impact ofsocial media on achieving your desired outcomes, as well as to describe how to developsocial media policies to guide decisions and achieve rational and beneficial outcomes.

Section 3 emphasizes you and your municipality's social media readiness.

This section presents three inter-related pillars that affect your social media readiness. Itpresents key questions, relative to the three pillars, that you should ask yourself beforechoosing to engage through social media. It also offers a one-page readiness assessmentworksheet and a comprehensive set of questions to support a thorough SWOT analysis ofyour readiness.

As you make your way through the guide you are encouraged to reference the AlbertaMunicipal Affairs Public Input Toolkit and the AUMA/AAMDC Citizen Engagement Toolkitfor additional context.

• Alberta Municipal Affairs Toolkit

• AUMA Citizen Engagement Toolkit

• AAMDC Citizen Engagement Toolkit

http://www.aamdc.com/toolkits-initiatives-2/211-citizen-engagement-toolkit

http://www.auma.ca/live/AUMA/Toolkits+%26+Initiatives/Citizen_Engagement_Toolkit

http://www.municipalaffairs.alberta.ca/documents/MDRS/AMA_Public_Input_Toolkit_Sept2014.pdf

Section 1: SOCIAL MEDIA AND MUNICIPAL ENGAGEMENT

1.1 A brief history of social media 1

1.2 A place for social media in municipal government 1

1.3 The benefits of social media for municipalities 3

1.4 Overcoming the risks and concerns social media presents for municipalities 5

1.5 Seeing and using social media in municipal communication and engagement 8

Section 2: PLANNING FOR SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS 9

2.1 Creating an effective social media plan 10

2.2 Getting ready 11

2.2.1 Setting desired outcomes 11

2.2.2 Identifying barriers 11

2.2.3 Selecting opportunities 11

2.3 Getting set 12

2.3.1 Identifying the people most likely to help you achieve your outcomes 12

2.3.2 Developing your content 12

2.3.3 Selecting your tools 14

2.4 Taking action 16

2.4.1 Your plan 16

2.4.2 Social media protocols 16

2.4.3 Evaluating your progress 19

2.5 Policy development 23

2.5.1 Administrative policy 23

2.5.2 Elected officials and social media policy 26

SECTION 3: MAKING IT HAPPEN 27

3.1 Assessing social media readiness 28

3.1.1 SWOT analysis 31

3.1.2 Next steps 34

APPENDICES: Guiding Principles for Content Curation 35

Social Media Plan Template 36

Social Media Action Plan Template 38

Analytic Tool Options 39

Evaluation Guide 40

Social Media Policy Template 41

Social Media Readiness Assessment Questionnaire 43

Social Media Glossary 44

References 55

A U M A / A A M D C S O C I A L M E D I A R E S O U R C E G U I D E

1Social Media and Municipal Engagement


Gone are the days when government could control its message. Social media offers thepotential to break down many of the barriers that once prevented the public from beingconsulted on issues and decisions that affect them. However, municipalities need to beprepared to embrace it.

This starts with understanding how media has changed and, ultimately, evolved fromaudience to participant-based communication. It also requires municipalities tounderstand the benefits, challenges and possibilities associated with using social media to support and conduct municipal engagement.

1.1 A brief history of social mediaMedia offers the opportunity to amplifyyour voice. It can extend your reach, putyou in touch with larger and more diverseaudiences, and give you a greater level ofexposure. Our media began as broadcastmedia – a means for one person, group,company or organization to share itsmessage with the masses.

Broadcast media was the norm for almost100 years, including radio broadcasts(1906), television broadcasts (1952), andcommercial internet (mid-1980s). Ittaught us many things, including that wecan be in control of our messaging, havelong lead times to decide on the bestmessage to share, and target largecollections of people with the samemessage. We operated on the belief thatpeople are audiences and they exist,primarily, to consume content. We set upour municipal organizations tocommunicate and engage under thesepretenses.

Internet-based communication hasevolved incredibly quickly. It started as asmall network of academics exchanginginformation (1960s). Its potential toexpedite information was realized, and itbecame a commercial means toexchange information (1980s). By theearly 1990s, the internet was functioningas a way for people to exchangeinformation through email and discussionforums and broadcast informationthrough websites. The game changer wastransparency.

With the creation of discussion forums(1994) and blogs (1997), conversationbecame possible and visible on theinternet. Instead of engaging in 1:1 conversations (email) or 1:manyconversations (broadcast media), the

internet allowed people to, in thepresence of many, engage with oneanother in conversation. In essence,people were able to socialize in the onlineenvironment. As part of this, onlineprofiles became instrumental to creatingan identity to aid interactions and moreand more tools were created to helppeople to connect and share informationaround common interests (Six Degrees,1997; Friendster, 2002; MySpace 2003; Hi5,2003; Facebook, 2004; Twitter, 2006).

The term social media followed the adventof Web 2.0 (1999), which referred topeople interacting and collaborating witheach other through social dialogue bycreating user-generated content in virtualcommunities. This was a direct contrastto Web 1.0, where people were limited topassive viewing of content. Web 2.0 wasdeemed to include social networkingsites, blogs, wikis, folksonomies, videosharing sites, web applications andmashups. Social media were the tools,whether websites or applications, thatallowed people to create and sharecontent within a social network.

1.2 A place for social media inmunicipal engagementMunicipalities are, by their very nature,social. They are made up of people, andmunicipal governments, both officialsand administration, are people servingpeople. They are also, as part of Alberta'sMunicipal Government Act, charged withcitizen engagement requirements thatspecify how citizens can work with theirmunicipalities. While many of theserequirements focus on face-to-faceinteractions (e.g. - public hearings, counciland committee meetings) andbroadcasting information (e.g. - advertising,public notices), social media presentsvaluable opportunities for more publicinput – often earlier in the process.

SECTION 1Social Media and Municipal Engagement

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S E C T I O N 1 : S O C I A L M E D I A A N D M U N I C I P A L E N G A G E M E N T

CHARACTERISTICS OFBROADCAST MEDIA

One-way communication

Broadcast corporate messagesand information

Targets collections ofindividuals with somespecialization based ondemographics and viewer or listening statistics

Audience simply consumes content

http://www.qp.alberta.ca

Outside of their legal obligations,municipalities, and particularly electedofficials as municipal representatives, arein place to meet citizens’ needs. Whilesocial media may be fairly new andunfamiliar territory for many municipalorganizations, some members of yourpublic, and particularly your youngercitizens, have been interacting usingsocial media for over a decade. Theyunderstand that social media is a way toamplify their voices and make directconnections to decision-makers in theircommunities. They have greaterexpectations of the people who servethem. They expect more say intodecisions that affect them. They expectbetter access to information and services.They expect to have more influence intohow, where and when they receiveinformation. Gone are the days whencitizens are comfortable being anaudience to municipal messaging; here are the days when citizens want tospeak directly to people who makedecisions, and are already in conversationswith other people who care about thesame issues as them.

While changing citizen expectations mayseem daunting at first, they are very well-aligned with the business andengagement requirements of municipalelected officials and administrations. A challenging aspect of municipalbusiness has always been finding ways todisseminate important informationefficiently and timely, increase publicengagement, and find ways to connectwith hard-to-reach citizens andstakeholders. Social media provides alow-cost, timely and highly accessiblesolution for these challenges.

Social media can complementmunicipal engagement efforts by:

• Providing more legitimate andeasily accessible ways toparticipate in conversationswith citizens and stakeholders;

• Diversifying public input byincluding the voices of hard-to-reach citizens andstakeholders;

• Allowing access to existingcommunity interests andnetworks;

• Providing cost-effective meansto share information aboutoffline engagementopportunities;

• Driving traffic to hosted spaces,including websites withimportant information ordiscussion forums; and

• Offering creative ways to makedata and information moreuseful and understandable tocitizens and stakeholders.

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FIVE KEY TRAITS OFSOCIAL MEDIA

1. PARTICIPATION

Social media is curated andcreated. Someone createsthe space for interaction andthen other users are invitedto contribute and providefeedback. Social mediaplatforms rely on thecommunity to create social norms.

2. OPENNESS

Communities are typicallywide open for participation;passwords and other barriersare frowned upon.

3. CONNECTEDNESS

Social media createsnetworks, brings peopletogether and providesmeans to share all varietiesof information. It linkspeople, ideas and digitalmedia.

4. CONVERSATION

Social media is two-waycommunication, also calledconversation.

5. COMMUNITY

Community is the goldenticket of social media. Donewell, social media canquickly and effectively rallycommunities of peoplearound a shared topic.

SOURCE: Adapted from Mayfield, A.(2008).

http://wronghands1.wordpress.com © John Atkinson, Wrong Hands

1.3 The benefits of social mediafor municipalitiesAs a municipality, a good portion of yourbusiness is connecting with people. Insome instances, you’re providinginformation and sharing ideas. In otherinstances, you’re collecting informationand ideas. Sometimes you’re doing both,as part of a conversation, to collaboratewith your citizens or stakeholders. Socialmedia is a way to make this possible.

Most people think of specific tools whenthey think of social media. They focus onthe features of the tool (e.g. – video, links,

pictures). They get caught up in theconversations and activities that aretrending on these sites. They get fixatedon the potential for content to go viraland influence thousands, if not millions,of users. They get focused on cleverhashtags and the popularity (e.g. - Facebook likes, Twitter retweets) of their content.

The truth is that social media tools are just tools, and tools exist to help us do our work. The true benefits of socialmedia, as tools, will be realized when theyare helping you to achieve your municipalgoals.

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Social media users are pet crazy. Log into any one of your social mediaaccounts, scroll down, and see how long it takes you to find a postingshowcasing an adorable critter. It won't be long. Internet sensations likeGrumpy Cat, Sockington (house cat) and Boo (Pomeranian dog) havemillions of followers - more than many A-list celebrities. To top it off, it isestimated that 1 in 10 pets has its own social media profile.

Strathcona County is one municipality that is putting purpose to our near-obsession with cute animals. The County receives a number ofcomplaints each year about dogs roaming off-leash and deposits ofdoggie-doo. These are hard messages to sell, and the County was seeking a positive and high profile means to get pet owners’ attention.

They decided to speak directly to pet owners' hearts. In the spring of2014, they ran a photo contest for dog owners. They encouraged petowners to submit photos of their prized pooches on Facebook. Pet owners jumped at the opportunity and residents, true to the trend,responded by viewing the photos more than 20,000 times.

The impact - Strathcona County framed every dog photo with a captionencouraging good pet practices, including "Everytime I poop, you scoop" and "Keep me safe - on a leash". They were able to connect directly with dog owners and share an important message as part of a positive and joyful interaction.

GO VIRAL means thatcontent becomes very popularby circulating quickly fromperson to person.

SOCIAL MEDIA RESOURCE GUIDE VIGNETTE STRATHCONA COUNTY

As an elected official, social media can help you:

• Connect directly and personally withresidents and stakeholders;

• Use plain language to introducecomplex ideas and issues;

• Gain broad access to people withdiverse ideas, input and experiences;

• Foster transparency;

• Allow you to engage in importantconversations that are taking place inyour area;

• Keep the pulse of your community bylistening to people’s concerns andfollowing trending conversations;

• Build a personal brand through youronline profile and the content that youcreate and share;

• Clarify misinformation and shareinformation;

• Request feedback on your ideas ordecisions made by your Council andCommittees;

• Invest in and build strongerrelationships;

• Align yourself with and leverageconnections with people,organizations and stakeholders tomove forward the priorities of yourcommunity;

• Probe and further explore input andideas generated by citizens andstakeholders;

• Invite your citizens and stakeholdersto engage further (e.g. - visit website,attend a public meeting); and

• Build credibility by sharing timely andaccurate information in a respectfuland professional manner.

As municipal administration, social media can help you:

• Introduce and provide informationabout programs and services to yourcitizens and stakeholders;

• Invest in community building bycollecting and sharing stories, imagesand other local content;

• Market your community to networkswithin and outside of your area;

• Build a community brand throughyour online profile and the contentthat you create and share;

• Drive citizens and stakeholders to yourorganization’s website, special eventsor public engagement opportunities;

• Manage emergencies by providing animmediate, low-cost, and direct way toshare information with people;

• Invite feedback on ideas for programs,services, policies or bylaws to makeimprovements in the community;

• Share information on pending orimportant decisions;

• Humanize your municipalorganization and its impact in thecommunity; and

• Build a positive reputation by sharinginformation in a respectful andprofessional way.

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1.4 Overcoming the risks andconcerns social mediapresents for municipalitiesSocial media has changed the way thatwe connect through media by increasingthe transparency of our interactions andmaking it possible for many people toconnect with many other people (knownas many:many interactions) in a commonvirtual space. While increasedtransparency and many:manyconnections in near real-time can greatlyenhance public involvement and thepublic’s ability to provide input tomunicipal representatives, they also limitsome of the traditional and predominantlyaccepted processes and protocols ofmunicipalities communicating with andengaging their citizens and stakeholders.

Some things that deter effective onlinecommunication and engagement are:

• Long lead times to create content andrespond to inquiries;

• The public as audiences (as opposedto participants); and

• 1:1 conversations and interactionsbetween municipal representativesand citizens or stakeholders.

Social media also comes with a number of perceived concerns. Some of theseconcerns are being shown to be mythsand fallacies surrounding social mediawhile the others can be managed withgood planning.

Our citizens and stakeholders aren’tonline or looking for municipalinformation through social mediaSpend a little bit of time learning tonavigate social media exchanges, andyou’ll quickly discover that people arehaving conversations that matter to youeven if they’re having them without you.The purpose of social media isn’t to createa home base that attracts people to you;that’s your website. It’s for you to be partof creating and sharing content thatmatters to your municipal organizationand the people who rely on it. The onlineconversations about potholes, snowaccumulation, local infrastructure, oraccess to recreation programs in yourarea – they all could have, depending onyour goals and levels of service, been yourcue.

I can’t measure the impact of social mediaYes, you can. If you are intentional aboutcreating clear goals that drive your use ofsocial media then you’ll be able to createperformance measures that align witheach of these goals. There are extensivesocial media metrics and analysis toolsavailable, many at low to no-charge, thatcan help you understand the impact thatyou are making through social media.

Social media requires extensiveresourcing

While it’s true that social media doesrequire resourcing, it offers substantialpotential as a value-add. When youconsider the cost of investing in manytraditional broadcast mediums, such asprint, television, and radio, social mediahas the potential to offer significant reachfor a fraction of the cost per citizen orstakeholder.

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AS OF APRIL 2013,

97 per cent of the 831 Albertanspolled by Insights West werefamiliar with Facebook and 75 per cent were using it.

REACH

A data metric that determinesthe potential size of audienceany given message can reach.


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People participate in social media 24/7One of the truths about social media isthat it makes conversations visible. Whilepeople and municipalities may fear whatothers have to say, the truth is that theseconversations are often happeninganyway. Social media helps make theseconversations visible. While it isimportant to listen and engage regularly,social media mimics the socialinteractions in life. We aren’t tuned in 100 per cent of the time and we tend tomatters as they present themselves. Inthe event of emergency situations, yourregular processes and protocols are inplace to help you.

Not everyone uses social media for goodThis is true. There are trolls out there.Remember that you’re participating aspart of a community. Your communityhas the ability to make its own judgmentsand also the freewill to step in and helpmanage troll activities. You also have theopportunity to invoke social mediapolicies and guidelines that direct yourresponse to these situations.

One of us may misrepresent or saysomething negative about ourmunicipalityMunicipalities have policies in place for allsorts of activities. They also havedisciplinary policies in place to manageday-to-day scenarios. Social media doesnot take place outside of your regularbusiness; it’s part of your business. Thesame policies and procedures that havemerit in face-to-face interactions havemerit relative to social interactions aswell.

We don’t have the time or money toproduce flashy content Remember, engaging through socialmedia is about knowing your citizens andstakeholder and their needs. If you takethe time to understand what your publicexpects from your municipality thenyou’ll quickly understand that noteveryone’s aim is to produce a Youtubevideo that gains millions of views. You’llhave your own business needs, and theylikely rest a lot closer to home.

My colleagues will abuse social media accessAs a municipality, you provide asignificant number of tools that allowpeople to do their work. You trust themto be responsible in using these tools andaccountable for what they produce.Social media is no different. You can setpolicies and processes to guide efficientand effective use of social media, and youcan work with IT to monitor people’sonline activity. This can be a reassurance.However, ultimately, social media is a tooland it requires trusting employees in thesame way that they are trusted in otheraspects of their work.

Retrieved from https://algonquincollegesocialmedia.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/internet-troll-101.jpeg


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Privacy legislation, including Alberta’sFreedom of Information and PrivacyProtection Act, places too manyrestrictions on effective social media useAdhering to privacy legislation isimportant; it is in place to protect the verypeople that you are serving – yourresidents and stakeholders. At the sametime, working within privacy legislation issimply a matter of clearly stating yourmunicipality’s security and data retentionpolicies. You’ll want to be clear about howyou protect confidential information andhow you differentiate between solicitinginput (a record to be maintained) andresponding to public inquiries (no recordrequired). When in doubt, consult yourprivacy specialist or confer with theGovernment of Alberta’s Freedom ofInformation and Privacy Protection Act.

We won’t get the quality input that werequire for our engagement obligationsOne of the most significant advantages ofsocial media and online engagement isthat it brings people together and getsthem thinking and collaborating to createcontent. This doesn’t mean thateverything contributed is Grade A inputnor does it mean that everyone will agreeon content. However, it does mean thatyou’ll have access to a diverse populationwho will, as wikis have shown, worktogether to create valuable, meaningfuland, thanks to all the interfacing andconversation possible, accurate content(e.g. - Wikipedia).

People won’t participateWhile it’s true that the vast majority (morethan 90 per cent) of social media usersread messages without responding, thereis still value in using social media toengage your residents. First, sharinginformation and building awareness is an

important part of generating enoughinterest for people to feel compelled toinvest in a relationship or engage arounda topic. Second, you are participating as amember of a larger community. Therewill be times that you will start aconversation and times that youparticipate in conversations already inprogress. When you choose to start aconversation and engage your citizensand stakeholders, be sure that you’vedone your homework to understand theirneeds and what they care about.

1.5Seeing and using socialmedia in municipalcommunication andengagementSocial media should be part of municipalengagement; it should not stand on itsown. Social media doesn’t replace yourother forms of communication andengagement; it supplements them, andshould be part of an overarchingcommunications and engagementstrategy for your municipality.

By familiarizing yourself with theengagement practices aided by socialmedia, it becomes possible to developengagement outcomes, and a supportingplan, around these practices.

The following diagram illustrates thatthere are different levels ofcommunication and engagementdepending on your goals – Input, Listen &Learn, and Collaborate. Underpinningeach of the three levels is the goal toInform, which emphasizes using socialmedia to build awareness andunderstanding of issues and engagementopportunities. As you move through thethree levels, the potential impact on yourcitizens and stakeholders (yourparticipants) increases.

http://www.qp.alberta.ca/documents/Acts/F25.pdf

http://www.qp.alberta.ca/documents/Acts/F25.pdf

Mayor Bill Given was surprised to receive a textmessage well into a Sunday evening, December1, 2014, from a resident worried about a large-scale evacuation in his northeast Grande Prairieneighbourhood. As it turned out, the resident,and several more members of the public, werebaited by a Facebook post announcing a falseevacuation notice.

“One of the challenges with social media is thatit amplifies people’s voices,” says Mayor Given, “Inthis case, a misrepresentation of facts caused afair amount of panic for people.”

As it turned out, ATCO and the City of GrandePrairie’s fire department were asked toinvestigate reports of a noxious odour in onenortheast neighbourhood early Sundayafternoon. No source was found and no concernwas identified; the Facebook post – made afterthe investigation – indicated the city was on‘high alert’ with an evacuation in progress.

“The good news is that we were made aware of theconcern and, despite it being late on a Sundayevening, we were able to bring together the rightpeople to respond in a timely way,” explains theMayor. “We were able to issue a formal statement toour local media outlets that same night, and weissued a statement on our official City of GrandePrairie Facebook page on Monday morning.”

While it took a few days to quash the rumour andrespond to a number of resident concerns aboutemergency communication, it gave the City ofGrande Prairie a good opportunity to reflect on itsprocesses and approach to emergencycommunications.

“This turned out to be a great learning opportunity,and thankfully one without serious impact to anyonein our community,” shares the Mayor. “It gave uspause to think about how to respond tomisinformation, how to better manage incidentsoutside of business hours, and how to proactivelyengage with our residents.”

Some of Mayor Given’s tips include:

• Work with service providers and encourage themto communicate openly and often about anyvisible work in your neighbourhoods;

• Ensure residents know how and where to accesscredible information about local events oremergencies;

• Be clear about your after-hours emergencyresponse and communications processes;

• Make use of all your social media tools duringemergencies (e.g.- people who followinformation about their favourite facilities orneighbourhoods may not be connected with theofficial community page);

• Remember that social media and traditionalmedia work hand in hand;

• Educate your elected officials on emergencyprotocols and how to access factual informationduring emergency scenarios; and

• Encourage your residents to share and re-tweetinformation directly from credible sources.

SOCIAL MEDIA RESOURCE GUIDE VIGNETTE GRANDE PRAIRIE

INPUT (Ask)To gather input from thepublic to test ideas orconcepts, clarify issues, andidentify possible solutions.

LISTEN & LEARN (Seek Ideas) To foster a conversation betweencitizens, stakeholders and thecommunity that explores perspectives,goals, plans, concerns, expectations,and possible solutions.

INFORM (Tell)

COLLABORATE (Work Together)To work directly with citizens andstakeholders in each aspect of the

tnem poleved eht gnidulcni ,noisicedsnoita dnemmocer ,sevitanretla fo

and preferred solutions.

INCREASING LEVEL OF ENGAGEMENT

Adapted from the International Association of Public Participation Spectrum and McGee, 2007.

SOCIAL MEDIA LEVELS OF ENGAGEMENT

The levels of engagement assists in selecting the degree of participation that defines the public's role and formulating the desired outcomes for the engagement process.

To build awareness of issues that affect citizens and stakeholders that will assist them in understanding the issues, alternatives, opportunities and/or solutions.

Use social media to post up-to-date information on the topic. Incorporate links to your municipal website where more information may be found. Provide contact information so people know where to direct comments and questions.

Use social media to conduct an opinion poll, post a question and request responses.

Use social media to create a real-time question and answer forum (e.g. - Tweetup), create a group (e.g. - Facebook Group) and invite participants to answer questions and share their ideas about municipal initiatives (e.g. - projects, policy considerations, plans).

Use social media to create a closed group (e.g. - Facebook Group) open to invited participants only to create recommendations or solutions collaboratively.

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Regardless of your knowledge and experience with social media, it is vital to invest in a planand ensure it aligns with your overarching communications and engagement plan. The purpose of a plan is to ensure that your social media activities are taking you closer toyour desired outcomes. Too often, social media is an afterthought or a standalone activity.In other instances, social media is given too much emphasis, such as when municipalitiesattempt to replicate or reproduce face-to-face interactions using a social media platform.Ultimately, every municipality has unique business priorities and every social media toolhas unique capabilities, users and functions. The purpose of a plan is to bring everythingthat affects your engagement results into alignment. This includes setting clear outcomes,knowing what separates you from your outcomes, knowing who you want to engage with,understanding the type of content that will make the biggest impact, choosing the toolthat best supports all of these elements and then staying one step ahead by evaluatingyour progress and adjusting course as necessary.

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S E C T I O N 2 : P L A N N I N G F O R S O C I A L M E D I A S U C C E S S

2Planning for Social Media Success

2.1 Creating an Effective Social Media PlanThere are eight basic elements that worktogether as part of three pillars to create asocial media plan. They include:

Getting Ready

• Setting desired outcomes (connectedwith business outcomes)

• Identifying the most likely barriers toachieving the outcomes

• Identifying the most meaningful andrealistic ways to overcome the barriers

Getting set

• Clearly identifying who you want toconnect with and knowing where theyparticipate

• Getting clear on the type of contentthat will resonate most effectively withyour citizens and stakeholders

• Selecting the tools with the bestcapacity to reach your citizens andstakeholders and carry your content

Go

• Developing an action plan to engageonline and start making connections

• Evaluating the effectiveness of youronline engagement via social media

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Created by Bob Perman - IgniteSocialMedia.com

SECTION 2Planning for Social Media Success

"There is no doubt that the City ofLeduc is benefiting from thetimely access and broad reach ofsocial media to engage with ourresidents and stakeholders.However, we know it's aboutmore than gaining theadvantages of the tools; it'sabout leveraging theseadvantages to support our corebusiness and priorities. Toachieve this, the City of Leduc hasinvested in a robust social mediapolicy and a comprehensivesocial media strategy, which wasdeveloped collaboratively toensure the full support of ourorganization and in context ofour overarching communicationsobjectives."

– Kenn Bur, Director,Information Support Services

2.2 Getting ready2.2.1 Setting desired outcomes

Desired outcomes are statements thatreflect an imagined and desirable future.Consider your plan a map to adestination, and the desired outcomes asa description of your final destination.Given that social media is about engagingpeople, the outcomes reflect what youwant people to either do (take action) orfeel (attach a feeling to the municipality).

While taking action is a clearer outcome,some municipalities do strive to create afeeling. This is particularly true if you areseeking to build relationships and youwant citizens or stakeholders to feel pridein the municipality or excitement aboutan upcoming possibility. The focus onemotion is what makes us human andtapping into these emotions is a powerfulway to create a very human andmeaningful connection to themunicipality.

Your outcomes should be SMARToutcomes. They should be Specific,Measureable, Achievable, Realistic andTimely.

2.2.2 Identifying barriers

Barriers are statements that reflect themost salient and impactful obstacles toachieving the desired outcomes.

It is important to identify barriers becausethey provide a valuable focus on theplaces you need to work on in order toachieve your outcomes. It is alsoimportant to prioritize your barriers sothat you can determine what is mostlikely to stand in your way and whatefforts will provide the greatest return onyour outcomes. Sometimes you will needthe help of colleagues to identify andprioritize legitimate barriers.

2.2.3 Selecting opportunities

While there may be dozens of opportunitiesavailable to you as a municipality, you willwant to identify opportunities that aremost likely to overcome your barriers.Sometimes thinking about things as anopportunity instead of a barrier will helpyou identify a barrier that you didn’tpreviously think about. In any case, youidentified the barriers as the reasons thatyou are not already achieving youroutcomes. If you look for opportunities toovercome the barriers then you should beworking deliberately to achieve thedesired outcomes.

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UNDERSTANDING SMART OUTCOMES

SPECIFIC –Outcomes that are exact and focus on the five W's.

Goals that are specific help to define expectations clearly and, typically,are written around verbs. Focus on answering WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE and WHY questions.

MEASURABLE –Concrete criteria for measuring progress.

When you measure your progress, you stay on track, reach your target dates,and experience the exhilaration of achievement that spurs you on tocontinued effort required to reach your goal.To determine if your goal is measurable, ask HOW questions:How much? How many? How will I know when it is accomplished?

ATTAINABLE – Outcomes that can be achieved through good planning.

Goals that may seem out of reach move closer and closer when you set attainable goals that encourage you to reach further.

REALISTIC –Outcomes that you are both willing and able to work on.

Be sure that every goal represents substantial progress. A high goal is frequently easier to reach than a low one because a low goalexerts low motivational force. Some of the hardest jobs you everaccomplished actually seem easy simply because they were a labour of love.

TIMELY –A goal should be grounded within a time frame.

Your time frame gives you a reason to stop and deliberately reflect on your progress and adapt your course, if necessary.

2.3 Getting set

2.3.1 Identifying the people most likelyto help you achieve your outcomes

In traditional communications planning,the people that are most likely to helpyou achieve your outcomes are calledtarget audiences. In engagement, theterm audience is a bit of a misnomer.While you will broadcast someinformation out via social media, it ismore likely that you will be pursuingfeedback or a conversation. In this case,your audience becomes a group ofparticipants.

Your primary participants are the peopleor groups of people who can have thegreatest impact on achieving your desiredoutcomes. The secondary participants arethe people or groups of people who canalso play important roles in achievingyour desired outcomes.

Again, with traditional communicationsplanning, you tend to focus on anaudience that passively receives content.With social media, your primaryparticipants may not be your intendedreceivers. You may in fact choose to makecredible people who are influencers oropinion leaders on a topic your primaryparticipants, and seek ways to have themreach out to your intended receivers. If your barriers tend to focus oncredibility, lack of relationships with thepeople that you want to engage, orchallenges connecting with yourintended participants, one of yourprimary opportunities may be to engagecredible people who can work on yourbehalf to connect with others to achieveyour desired outcomes.

2.3.2 Developing your content

Content development is also commonlyreferred to as tactics. Content can bewords, pictures, video, questions, etc.Perhaps the most important element ofcontent development is thinking aboutthe impact that it will have on theparticipants.

In any case, it is very important to thinkabout the nature of your municipality andwhat your citizens and stakeholders needin terms of knowledge/emotion todetermine how to approach your content.

Content and conversations on socialmedia should be professional, andintended to inform and engage. Contentcurated or shared by your municipalityshould be accurate, relevant andconsistent with municipal policies,procedures and guidelines. It shouldreflect the municipality’s official positionon any given topic, yet be presented in aformat and with content that willeffectively reach and engage participants.There will be occasions when pureinformation needs to be delivered, suchas during emergency management orproject updates, and there will be timeswhen highly creative storytelling or light-hearted imagery will be effective toinvoke a feeling or invite people into anopportunity. Strategic contentdevelopment is critical in effective use ofsocial media and will be a factor in toolselection.

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COREMESSAGING

STORYTELLINGThe human experience: Demonstrate progress through experiential shifts and learning.

CONTINUITYDemonstrating progress: Tie transitions and new developments together; evolution as opposed to change.


PARTNERSCredible and e!cient distribution of messaging: Connect with other communicators; bene"ts from their tools and relationships.

COMPELLING WHYDemonstrating progress: Take time to under-stand the value-based reasoning behind decisions and outcomes.

HUMANIZINGThe human experience: Put people – their faces and experiences – at centre stage.

COREMESSAGING

JOINCredible and e!cient distribution of messaging: Participate and connect where community is already formed and functioning.

CONTINUITYDemonstrating progress: Tie transitions and new developments together; evolution as opposed to change.

COMPELLING WHYDemonstrating progress: Take time to understand the value-based reasoning behind decisions and outcomes.


HUMANIZINGThe human experience: Put people – their faces and experiences – at centre stage.

PARTNERSCredible and e!cient distribution of messaging: Connect with other communicators; bene!ts from their tools and relationships.

Source: Town of Hinton Municipal Communications Plan 2014-2017

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MAKING YOUR CONTENT COUNT

As you develop your content, give some consideration to how you will package and disseminate it. These three things – content, packaging, dissemination – work together to have the most meaningfulimpact for the people that you are working to engage.

The following positioning model provides some helpful tips on making the most of your content.

Each of the six segments of the model introduces one way that you can leverage content for the greatestimpact. The model is colour-coded to show direct relationships that focus on credible and efficientdistribution of messaging (blue tones), the human experience (orange tones), and demonstrating progress(green tones).

For example, if one of your desired outcomes focuses on evoking an emotional response (i.e. pride orexcitement) then storytelling and humanizing (orange tones) is a valuable way to approach your content.Or, if for example, you are seeking input or ideas from your citizens or stakeholders then continuity and acompelling why (demonstrating progress) can be valuable tactics for your content.

APPENDIX RESOURCES:Guiding Principles forContent Curation

2.3.3 Selecting your tools

While it may feel counter-intuitive, picking your social media tool is your final element ofpreparation. This isn’t to say that you won’t have a tool in the back of your mind as youexplore your desired outcomes, barriers, opportunities, participants and content. It’s moreto say that it is important to explore all of these other areas first and think critically aboutthe tools that you have in mind.

Adapted from Johnson and Yan (2009); Quan-Hass and Young (2010).

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To assist your selection,consider the purpose ofeach tool and the primaryreasons why people use it.

Social Media Tool Purpose Why people use it

Brings people who know each other or have shared interests together.

Topical microblogging service that lets users send text-based posts of up to 140 characters.

Connects people to trusted contacts and helps exchange knowledge, ideas and opportunities with a broader network of professionals.

A video sharing website where users can upload, view, share and comment on videos.

FACEBOOK

TWITTER

LINKEDIN

YOUTUBE

• Maintain offlineconnections

• Keep in touch with oldacquaintances

• Learn about offlineconnections

• Information source• Keep in touch with many• Give and receive

information• Learn• Keep track of hot topics• Segment information

• Make new connections• Information sharing

(Groups)• Marketing/Sales• Recruitment• Maintain connections

• Information seeking• Entertainment• Interpersonal expression

Use Twitter to give timely information on municipal services. Source: Town of Strathmore Twitter Feed.

It is also important to do someinvestigation of what tools are being usedby your participants. Conduct searcheson some of the social media channelsusing key words that relate to yourmunicipality. As you explore the contentconsider these questions:

• What am I noticing?

• Who is participating?

• What content are they sharing and commenting on?

• Where could my municipality make an impact?

• Are there any credible and activeonline ambassadors and thought-leaders in a position to share contenton our municipality?

• Where will our municipality benefitmost from being more social?

Upon reflection you might identifyseveral tools that could work for you.However, in the process of workingthrough your plan, you might discoverthat your participants are highly active onone particular tool and less active onanother. At this stage, it is important thatyou prioritize your tools. You might findthat there are several tools that you wantto start using. However, it is always bestthat you start with one, or maybe twotools, and get comfortable with them. Do them really, really well before you startadding other tools. Quite oftenmunicipalities attempt to juggle multipletools with mediocre performance on all ofthem. It is better to do one thingexceptionally well than many thingssomewhat well.

Finally, try to keep the number ofaccounts per platform at a minimum. Themore accounts you have, the more yousegment your own community andminimize your reach. There are exceptionsto the rule; well-known programs, events,or places that are associated with themunicipality but have no immediatelogical affiliation with the municipality inthe minds of citizens can in fact have aseparate account.

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wronghands1.wordpress.com ©John Atkinson, Wrong Hands

In June 2013, when Calgary was hit by some of the worst flooding in Alberta history, information sharingwas imperative. People lives depended on it, and the City of Calgary responded.

In crisis communications, the answer is always as much information as quickly and as widely spread as possible. Whiletraditional communications mediums, including radio and television, are still a critical part of sharing emergencyinformation broadly and effectively, social media creates ways for residents to actively play an important role inemergency response. Residents, by the nature of their relationships, helped the City of Calgary disseminate accurateand timely information within their personal networks.

The City, which had accumulated six years experience in the social media sphere prior to the event, put anextraordinary emphasis on social media during the emergency. Leveraging social media was one element of itsextensive emergency communications planning, recognizing that each tool has its place. As an example, door-to-door visits to announce evacuations could not be replaced by social media use. However, updates on the situation,details about where to access support, and information about City services were available online. When the City calledits emergency plan into action, it included a strong emphasis on web communication - including use of its website,blogging and social media.

Throughout the flood response, the City of Calgary posted 1,483 tweets and received about 20,000 retweets. ItsTwitter followers shot up from 54,000 to 80,000. The City was lauded for its effective use of hashtags to help itsfollowers sort and find relevant information. It was also recognized, thanks in large parts to its strong planning andexperience with the tools, for making effective use of an assortment of tools. Outside of Twitter, the City of Calgarywebsite had 1.1 million visitors and its 272 YouTube posts were watched 460,000 times.

Source: Calgary Herald, February 2, 2014

SOCIAL MEDIA RESOURCE GUIDE VIGNETTE CITY OF CALGARY

CREATING AN EFFECTIVEACTION PLAN

Schedule time to planSet aside some time each weekto plan out your social media.

Build a content libraryBuild a library of ideas andresources (e.g. - questions,videos, themes, articles that canbe used to curate and createcontent.

Consider a themeContent can be generated fromover-arching themes that canbe broken down into morespecific topics (e.g. - communityservice, communityengagement, local heroes).

Choose dates and times foryour contentMap out when you plan to postcontent – make note of thebusiness goals that it supports.

Choose a leadDecide who will be responsiblefor posting the content,monitoring the activity, andengaging, as required.

Select or create the contentAs much as possible, beprepared with pre-generated,pre-approved content thataligns with your municipality’spolicies, processes and businesspriorities.

Schedule time to monitorSet aside time to monitor theresponse and engage withparticipants, as required.

Take notesNote any specific success,challenges or mis-steps so thatyou can learn from them andrefer to them at later dates.

APPENDIX RESOURCES: Social Media PlanTemplate

Social Media ActionPlan


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2.4 Taking action

2.4.1 Your plan

Your action plan will describe how andwhen you’re going to put your socialmedia tools to use. It will describe thecontent that you are going to post via atool and the steps that you will take to doit. Given that your plan is about theactions you will take, it is important toidentify when and who will take thoseactions. Your plan will identify how andwhen the work will get done.

2.4.2 Social media protocols

A successful implementation of socialmedia requires frequent and ongoingcurating and maintenance. Content mustbe fresh, relevant and meaningful toparticipants and should be updatedregularly. Ineffective monitoring and lack

of awareness of issues being discussedwill erode the confidence of participants.Failing to respond to questions fromcitizens in a timely manner can frustratefollowers and diminish the overall impactof your municipal organization’s use ofsocial media.

POSTING FREQUENCY

In order to develop an ongoing presenceworth visiting and to create a followingamong your participants, establish aroutine schedule of posts and tweets perweek to create consistency, maximizeawareness, and deliver timely responsesto comments and messages.

MONITORING

Engagement is a two-way process. To besuccessful, it involves an investment inthe art of listening. It is recommendedthat time is spent monitoring varioussocial media tools for topics important tokey participants.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/technology/Social+media+tools+proved+vital+2013+floods/9517574/story.html

DISTRACTORS ARE EVERYWHERE. HERE IS WHO YOU CAN EXPECT TO ENCOUNTER THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA:

Trolls/Thinkers: May disrupt conversation; may have something tocontribute but generally are against the issue ormunicipality.

Disrupters: Wants to engage to create havoc; sometimes bordering on slander.

Critics: Judgers who can sometimes be supportive.

Contributors: Active contributors.

Authorities: Influencers who are supportive of the municipality or topic.

TIPS FOR DEALING WITH COMMON ONLINE INTERACTIONS

1. Respond as quickly as possible or when you can and whereappropriate reference your Terms of Use.

2. Be honest and transparent, and share relevant information.

3. Maintain professionalism but don’t follow a script or keymessages, be human.

4. Provide an alternative means of communicating. Move theconversation offline as necessary and if possible.

5. Record negative content along with any official responses (e.g. - screen shot).


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It is also important to make relevantdepartments, programs and policy areasaware of any active conversations relatedto municipal services or the municipality’sreputation, and to seek their input andexpertise to support any planning andcontent creation in response to or relativeto these observations.

While it remains necessary that some ofthe monitoring work will be manual innature, use of analytic platforms (e.g. - Google Analytics, Hootsuite) helpautomate and streamline this monitoringprocess. These tools will allow yourmunicipality to use its resources in themost efficient manner possible.

Monitoring should take place duringregular business hours, with theexception of emergency communications.Emergency activity should follow yourmunicipality’s emergency preparednessor business disruption plan.

ONLINE INTERACTIONS

Central to the question of resourcing isthe potential need for timely interactionand responses to public questions andcomments, and the potential for highvolume citizen commentary. In someinstances a quick answer may beappropriate for a simple inquiry, whileother instances may involve working withvarious departments and the Mayor andmembers of Council to provideinformation about sensitive topics thatmay be controversial in the community.

Monitoring, interaction and response toquestions and comments should takeplace during regular business hours andthese hours should be posted on each ofthe municipal organization’s social media accounts.

ANTICIPATING RISK

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Avoid responding butlisten and monitor theinteraction for relevantinformation.

TROLLTHINKER

DISRUPTER:(Note: keep post forpossible legal use)

LET IT BE

Respond to fix facts,improve service, concurand/or share successes.

AUTHORITIES

CRITICS

CRITIC or CONTRIBUTOR

FACTS & SUCCESS

Someone has posted a comment, picture or video about your municipality. Is it...

Negative

Is the post slanderous?

Positive

Is the posting a rant,rage, incorrect

information, joke orsatirical in nature?

Is the post a result ofa bad experience?

Adapted from “Air Force Web Posting Response Assessment” US Air Force Public Affairs Agency

The post may be factual and well-cited although you don’t agree with it.

DO YOU WANT TO RESPOND?

YES

NO

NO

NO

NO

NO

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

NO

Given that some risk is inevitable in social media, the following decision tree diagram offers guidance innavigating online interactions. As the diagram suggests, it is not necessary to respond to every post,tweet, or comment. However, it is important to respond to fix facts, improve service, concur and/orshare municipal successes.

SETTING MEANINGFUL METRICS

Meaningful performance metrics tell yousomething valuable about how you areprogressing toward your desiredoutcomes. If, as part of your engagement,you’re seeking to inform homeownersliving in a specific subdivision about anengagement opportunity then youchoose metrics that help you understandhow many people from the subdivisionhave been exposed to your content. Onthe other hand, if you want to enhancethese citizens’ pride in their subdivision oroverall community, then you need tochoose metrics that help you understandpeople’s sentiment.

While there are easily understandablecommon social media metrics, including:

1. Visitors and sources of traffic;

2. Network size (followers, fans,members); and

3. Quantity of commentary aboutproduct or service.

These broad metrics rarely tell youanything meaningful about your path toyour desired outcomes. The trick to goodevaluation is to identify specifically whatsocial data is relevant – and to be surethat it is data that can be analyzed so thatyou know exactly what it means. As ageneral rule, choose rates and morenuanced metrics and avoidoveremphasizing or giving too muchweight to simple counts and totals.

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2.4.3 Evaluating your progress

With your action plan in place, you’re set to publish content. The good news is that socialmedia curators like you have access to an unprecedented amount of information abouthow your content is received and acted upon. The other news – neither good nor bad – is that data about your content is irrelevant unless it tells you something about yourprogress toward your municipality’s desired outcomes and overall business priorities.

To conduct meaningful evaluation, you need to commit to four acts:

1. Set meaningful metrics.

2. Track your metrics at set frequencies.

3. Analyze the metrics relative to your desired outcomes and overarching municipal priorities.

4. Take action to improve your social media use and engagement practices relative to what you learn about the impact of your content.

1. REACh

Reach is a simple term to denote thenumber of people that you are reachingthrough your social media content. Thepotential benefit of tracking your reach isthat you know how many people willreceive your content – this is yourpotential # of participants.

A RELEvANT METRIC: Participant growthrate – a percent-change in audience overa set period of time, which helps to defineyour social media momentum.

HOW TO ANALYzE THIS METRIC: What events match up with your highestgrowth rate periods? This will tell youwhat your participants are interested in.

A vAGUE METRIC: # of followers – simplya statement of people with a potentialinterest in your content.

2. ENGAGEMENT

Engagement in social media metricsrefers to the amount of activity takingplace through your social mediaprofile/space.

A RELEvANT METRIC: Averageengagement rate – the amount ofactivity in your space relative to yourreach (your fans, followers or friends).

HOW TO ANALYzE THIS METRIC: What events match up with your highestpercentage of engagement? This will tellyou what sparks participation amongstyour participant base.

A vAGUE METRIC: # shares or likes – this is possibly a sea of silent followerswho are unwilling to be invest in anactive relationship.

3. ACqUISITION

Acquisitions refer to the traffic coming toyour profile or page. This traffic can bebroken down into visitors and repeatvisitors.

A RELEvANT METRIC: visitor frequencyrate – the number of times people viewyour content.

HOW TO ANALYzE THIS METRIC: This metric can be broken down intoreturn visitors and new visitors. Returnvisitors provide insight into the depth oftheir relationship to you or your municipalorganization. New visitors lend to yourmeasure of reach.

A vAGUE METRIC: # of visitors – this gives you a sense of how manypeople are arriving at your content butno insight into the nature of theirrelationship to your content.

4. CONvERSION

Conversions refer to people taking onlineaction – it measures the number ofpeople that come to your profile or pageand engage in a particular action.

A RELEvANT METRIC: Assisted socialconversions – the number of people thattake action online as a result of aninvitation through a social space.

HOW TO ANALYzE THIS METRIC: Where are your conversions coming from?These are the social media tools, contentand tactics that persuade yourparticipants to engage.

A vAGUE METRIC: # of click throughs –this gives you a sense of the number ofpeople who take an action but not whatpersuaded them to get involved.

5. ACTIvITy

Activity refers to connecting social mediaactivity with your desired outcomes in adirect way. It includes seeking outexamples of cost savings correlated withincreased public reach through socialmedia and fewer direct inquiries.

A RELEvANT METRIC: Customer servicesavings – the average time associatedwith customer service inquiries multipliedby the hourly cost of customer service.

HOW TO ANALYzE THIS METRIC:Is your investment in social media

communication and engagementresulting in fewer hours of customer service? What types of inquiries are being reduced as a result of social media use?

A LESS RELEvANT METRIC: # of socialmedia posts – there is a strongassumption here that increased onlineactivity is meeting the needs of yourcitizens and stakeholders.

Adapted from Chitwood, L. (2013), City of Leduc Social

Media Strategy and Eckerling, D. (2014).

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FIVE SOCIAL MEDIA METRICS TO CONSIDER

TRACK YOUR METRICS AT SET FREQUENCIES

It’s your trends and patterns - not yourindividual numbers - that hold value forevaluating your success with social media.While it may be tempting to makedecisions based on a particularly high rateof engagement in response to postingcontent, it is more realistic and truthful tomeasure your progress over time.

You’re not on your own to do this. Thereare as many social media analysis toolsavailable as there are social media tools.The majority of them offer highly visualdashboards that allow you to track anynumber or combination of metrics acrossone or a number of social media tools.Google Analytics is a very robust andcommonly used social media analysis toolthat provides easy to read charts andgraphs – a sure way to seek out trendsand patterns if you go looking for them.Google always offers a vast array ofinstructional videos to help new usersbecome acquainted with its format andthe value of its data.

Again, it’s critical to be clear about whichmetrics you want to monitor and analyze.Not all of them are relevant to yourdesired outcomes and municipalpriorities. Not all of them are simplemetrics to track or understand. There aresome metrics that require custom toolsand custom reports. By choosing yourmetrics wisely and reviewing them on aset frequency, and after any significantevents, you will get the best picture ofdata to analyze in context of yourmunicipal outcomes.

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FOUR METRICS WHICHCOME WITH A LOT OFHYPE AND OFFER LITTLE VALUE

Bounce rate – Social media users tend to haveshort attention spans, and shortvisits aren’t necessarily anegative.

Direct click-through rates – Yes, you want your fans,followers and friends to click onlinks to your websites and othercontent. However, clickingthrough doesn’t necessarilyresult in any benefits.

Potential reach – Your potential reach is a verymisleading metric. Potentialhas to be achieved – yourparticipant growth andengagement rate will tell you ifyou’re achieving reach.

Influence – Beyond identifying potentialinfluencers in your area, thismetric is so limited (and theequation so complicated) that itcan’t be used to informmeaningful decisions.

APPENDIX RESOURCE: Analytic Tool Options

“Guide us, oh Webmaster.”


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ANALYZE THE METRICS RELATIVE TOYOUR DESIRED OUTCOMES ANDOVERARCHING MUNICIPAL PRIORITIES

Analysis is interpretation or makingmeaning of the data once it has beenmeasured and quantified. This isapplication of the data to decision-making processes for how to managesocial media efforts.

Properly focused analysis creates acomprehensive narrative for themunicipality’s social media progress overtime, to show where actions have beensuccessful (or not), why and how actionsmake a difference, and what the impactmeans for future planning and theimplementation of your strategy as awhole. It also reveals where attention andresources may be required.

There are three main elements thatshould be reviewed regularly - content,relevance and impact.

Content – The content should align withdesired social media and overarchingcommunications goals. It should meetthe content management and protocoloutlined in your strategy. Evaluationshould include performance measures todetermine how well the content iscontributing to the desired outcomes.

Relevance – Participation is at the centreof relevance. We often focus on the toolsrelated to social media and less on thesocial – relational – focus of theinteractions. Both the social media tooland content must be relevant to theparticipants and meet a need.

Impact – The foundation ofcommunication is to make an impact –either to invite a behaviour or invoke afeeling in participants. Impact considershow effective social media use is ininviting the desired behaviours orinvoking a desirable emotional response.

With respect to the balance betweenquantitative and qualitative measures:

• quantitative results will help providean overarching picture of themunicipality’s achievements, help toidentify trends and patterns inparticipant interactions, and supportthe municipality’s efforts to maximizecommunication and engagementefforts; and

• qualitative results can help to providea deep dive into what people arefeeling, noticing, experiencing andperceiving, as well as provide means tounderstand the overarching narrative,system and patterns at work.

It is important to measure success ofparticular initiatives and not just focus oncompilations of analytics; analytics arejust one indicator of success thatcontribute to achieving goals. Based onthe results of analyzing metrics,adjustments should be made to yourstrategy accordingly. Given thecharacteristics and dynamics of socialmedia, it is important to consistentlymonitor progress and be flexible,allowing results and interactions to leadto re-evaluation and realignment of the plan.

Source: City of Leduc Social Media Strategy

TAKE ACTION TO IMPROVE YOURSOCIAL MEDIA USE AND ENGAGEMENTPRACTICES RELATIVE TO WHAT YOULEARN ABOUT THE IMPACT OF YOUR CONTENT

The entire focus of evaluation is to arriveat an evidence-based report card on yoursocial media performance. It is throughlinking your metrics (your onlinebehaviour) with your desired outcomesand municipal priorities (offline action)that you can determine whether yoursocial media effort is having a positiveimpact.

APPENDIX RESOURCES: Evaluation Guide


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Your analysis of your social media metricsrelative to what is taking place in youroffline environment should inform yournext steps. It is the perfect opportunity toconsider how your use of social media isaffecting your offline engagementactivities and the quality of decision-making that comes from it. Your metricsshould help you to determine whethersocial media has influenced attendance atengagement opportunities, projectsupport, customer service satisfaction,preliminary exploration of highly sensitivecommunity issues, and more.

It is beneficial for municipalities tocontinually analyze the available data to:

• identify and enhance winning actions;

• identify and eliminate unhelpfulactions;

• identify and adjust non‐optimumstrategies;

• continuously adapt to key messageand priority changes; and

• ensure effective steps are takentowards achieving the goals of your strategy.

2.5 Policy Development

Policies are essentially the bottom line foreffective, meaningful and ethical onlinecommunication. They set the boundariesto help the municipality move forward itscommunication practices - particularlywhen new technology is stretchingconventional approaches andexpectations surroundingcommunication.

2.5.1 Administrative Policy

By investing in an administrative policy,municipalities take steps to encourageand empower employees to engageeffectively using social media, and alsodemonstrate support to ensure that itsrepresentatives engage in ways that arehelpful, build relationships and, in turn,advance and help achieve municipality’sgoals.


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There are nine elements that should beconsidered in social media policydevelopment:

1. Employee Access

Increasingly social media sites areblurring the line between personal,professional, and municipal use, raisingnew questions of which employees mayaccess social media sites and what shouldbe the process for gaining access.

Municipalities are able to manage accessin two ways:

• allowing employee access to socialnetworking sites and designatedemployee access to corporate socialmedia accounts;

• by limiting the types of sites that areapproved for employee access;security, network infrastructure,workflow impact and businessrationale are key considerations whengranting employee access.

2. Account Management

Account management encompasses thecreation, maintenance, and destruction ofsocial media accounts. Establishing anaccount on a social media site provides anemployee with the full range of tools andcapabilities for that site, such as joiningnetworks or posting information. The lackof a clearly defined policy on accountmanagement may result in a situationwhere the municipal organization’sleadership does not have a handle onwhat types of corporate social mediaaccounts are being established,maintained, or closed by their employees.Therefore, an important element to asocial media policy is establishing whomay set up a municipal social mediaaccount, as well as a procedure for closinga municipal account.

3. Citizen Conduct

Social media sites, unlike more traditionalmedia such as newspaper or radio, allowfor instant two-way publiccommunication between governmentand citizens. Citizens are able to directlypost audio, video, and text to many socialmedia sites. Municipalities must decidehow to support two-way communicationand how to handle this engagement withcitizens. For municipalities that decide toelicit citizen feedback via their corporatesocial media channels, terms of use foracceptable conduct of citizens are oftendeveloped.

Terms of use statements provide atransparent means of sharing themunicipal organization’s expectations ofcitizen conduct while interacting with itthrough social media. The statementshould indicate that the municipalorganization reserves the right to not postor delete content without notification that:

• includes foul language, vulgarities orsexually explicit content;

• is offensive to an individual or anorganization, rude in tone,discriminatory or abusive;

• solicits, advertises, and/or promotesparticular services, products, orpolitical parties, advocacy groups ororganizations;

• infringes on copyrights or trademarks;

• is considered spam; and/or

• is off topic.

Terms of use statements should alsoconsider the implications of third-partycontent posted to the municipalorganization’s social media channels suchas community event information, andthat reference to any third-party business,event, service or product does notconstitute or imply endorsement,recommendation or favouring by themunicipal organization, its employeesand/or elected officials.

"As a village of nearly 700, we'rea close-knit community and werecognized Facebook as a toolthat we could use to amplify ourvoice with residents. We investedin a social media policy at theoutset; it was an effective way toassure we leverage the socialnature of the tools relative tohow we work as anorganization."

Joanne HortonChief Administrative Officer,village of Marwayne


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4. Acceptable Use

Acceptable use policies typically outline amunicipality’s position on how employeesare expected to use municipal socialmedia resources.

Use of social media accounts on behalf ofthe municipal organization should alignits strategic direction, corporate values,and branding or visual identity guidelines.

Efforts should be made to treat allbusinesses, organizations and individualsequally, and to refrain from endorsing orshowing favouritism to any of them. It isimportant that municipalities identify,monitor and review “follow”, “favourite”,“like” or, “share” criteria for municipalsocial media accounts in order to avoidperceived endorsement, surveillance, orimpartiality.

5. Employee Conduct

Typically, professional employee conductis already governed by policies such as anethical code of conduct that addresseswhat is “right” and “wrong” in terms ofemployees’ behaviour, and sets out theconsequences should a violation occur.

In addition to a standard conduct codethat addresses things such as raciallyoffensive language, it is important toaddress issues more specific to socialmedia, including respecting the socialmedia channel terms of service, strivingfor transparency and openness ininteractions, and being respectful in allonline interactions.

It is important that employees are awarethat information published on theinternet can impact and reflect back uponthe municipality, is not personal orprivate, and may be subject to discoveryproceedings in legal actions and AlbertaFreedom of Information and PrivacyProtection Act (FOIP) inquiries.

Outlining which aspects are simplyrecommendations for personal behaviourand which ones are potential grounds fordismissal is useful for employees andsupervisors trying to navigate and definethe parameters of the personal/professional divide.

6. Content Management

Content management identifies who isallowed to post content on municipalsocial media channels and who isresponsible for ensuring its accuracy.Content management can range frommunicipalities exerting minimal editorialcontrols over content by allowingemployees to write freely on varioustopics related to the municipalorganization to keeping responsibility forcontent creation and management solelywith the communications department.Clarifying who is responsible for curating,posting, and responding to content onbehalf of the municipal organizationsupports consistent, accurate and timelyengagement. It is equally important toidentify if this responsibility is reassignedwhen the municipality's disaster serviceplan is activated.

7. Security

In light of the new uses, users, andtechnologies related to social media use,it is important for municipalities to ensuresecurity of municipal data and technicalinfrastructure. Two areas should beconsidered related to security – technicaland behavioural.

The technology concerns focus onpassword security, functionality,authentication of identity using publickey infrastructures, and virus scans. Themunicipality’s information technologyemployee(s) has a role in supportingthese elements.

The behavioural security concerns refer tothose threats that result from employees’intentional or inadvertent actions whenengaging with social media sites and


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tools. For example, employees mayinadvertently post information aboutthemselves or the municipal organizationon social media sites, which attackersthen use to manipulate users. A relatedconcern is the inadvertent posting ofcitizens’ personal and protectedinformation by municipal employees.While these concerns are not new, there isa need to consider how to protectconfidential information that is personallyidentifiable or could endanger themunicipality.

8. Legal Issues

The use of social media tools raises theissue for many municipal organizationsabout how to ensure that their employeesare abiding by all existing laws andregulations. Municipalities may choose totake a general approach to legal issues,using generic text that requires allemployees to adhere to all applicablelaws and regulations without actuallyspecifying which laws and regulations areapplicable. Others may choose to point tospecific areas of law such as freedom ofinformation and privacy protection,public records management, publicdisclosure, and accessibility.

It is advantageous to proactively addresspotential legal issues by endorsing theuse of various disclaimers on social mediasites. One example of a standarddisclaimer for use by employees engagingin social media activities is intended todetach the opinions and actions ofindividual employees from their employer– “Any opinions, views or commentsexpressed are personal and do not reflectthose of my employer.”

Other standard disclaimers concernpublic records, external links,endorsements, copyright, privacy, andoffensive behaviour.

9. Emergency Communications

The immediacy of social media enablesefficient and effective dissemination ofinformation in the event of an emergency.

The use of social media duringemergencies should align with themunicipality's emergency or disasterservices plan identifying responsibilitiesfor external communications, includingsocial media.

Adapted from Hrdinová, Helbig & Peters (2010).

2.5.2 Elected officials and social media policy

Elected officials have an opportunity toplay a very important role in the everydayconversations taking place online aboutthe municipal organization, as well as itsservice initiatives and policies.

Having a policy in place for electedofficials demonstrates leadership,integrity and accountability to membersof the public, as they know what toexpect from their public officials, andmodels the way for the municipalemployees.

A social media policy for elected officialsshould differ from the policy formunicipal employees, relative to roles,responsibilities and relationship to thecommunity; however, it should also alignwith the administrative policy bydemonstrating a united commitment torespectful, effective and ethicalcommunication practices.

A policy specific to elected officials helpsto address concerns related to complexissues such as:• how to represent personal versus

municipal views;• how and when to communicate

official decisions versus personalinput into decisions;

• who communicates and when duringcomplex issues or emergencyresponse;

• how to manage endorsements orcommunity relationships online;

• the relationship between municipalemployees using social media andelected officials; and

• the connection back to other relevantelected official policies.

3Making It happen

S E C T I O N 3 : M A K I N G I T h A P P E N

27

You’re interested in social media, you see the benefits, you understand the potential pitfalls,and you’ve given some strong consideration to how you’d make it work for yourmunicipality. Yet, you may still having a niggling question: How do we know if we, as amunicipal organization, are prepared and ready to be active in the social media sphere?

The answer isn’t automatically yes. There are certain conditions that will set you up forsuccess in the social realm, and they focus on a lot more than logging in and sharing out content.


28

SECTION 3Making It happen

3.1 Assessing social mediareadiness

Assessing your social media readinessanswers one overarching question – Are you ready to evolve from engaging insocial behaviour to engaging in socialbusiness?

What’s the difference? As a municipalrepresentative, whether an elected officialor member of administration, you work inan internal environment and an externalenvironment. If you’re emphasizing theexternal environment, which starts withan emphasis on your citizens andstakeholders, then you’re focused onengaging in social behaviour. If you’reemphasizing internal conversationsaround strategy, technology andgovernance initiatives in order to mosteffectively serve your citizens andstakeholders then you’re engaging insocial business.

In A Brief History of Social Media(Section 1.1), a paradigm shift wasdescribed. Broadcast media focused on a1:many capability that emphasized on acontrolled message to a mass audience.The intent was to deliver a message to anaudience. Social media focuses on amany:many capability that emphasizestransparency and exchange. The intent isto invoke participation and achieveengagement. For municipalorganizations to be effective social mediausers, they need to transform theirtechnologies, talent, processes andgovernance models.

This internal transformation isn’t going tohappen overnight, which is part of thereason that many social media users arecontent to focus on engaging in socialbehaviour. However, as municipalorganizations come to realize that socialbusiness is not a trend, they will benefitfrom evolving their cultures, internalcommunications, governance, training,technologies, and policies to supporteffective social business.

To assess a municipal organization’scurrent social media readiness, it is criticalto consider three pillars:

• People;

• Governance; and

• Technology.

Adapted from Brito, M. (2010)


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1. People

The first pillar focuses on yourmunicipality’s most important assets –your people. Your people are key to yoursuccess with social media. You need to beclear on who will be involved in yoursocial media use, what role they will play,and how they can be set up for success.

Some important questions to ask yourself:

• What do you want to achieve fromusing social media?

• Who is in the best position to help youachieve these outcomes?

• Who has the most credibility with yourcitizens and stakeholders?

• Is there a particular person or teamthat is equipped with the knowledgeof social networks and social mediatools to take the lead on this work?

• Does the person/team member haveexpertise with a particular set of tools?And are these the tools that make themost sense for your desired outcomesand the people you wish to engage?

• Does the person/team member haveplanning capabilities or will they simplybe in charge of implementation?

• Is there a group of people that couldwork together to form a social mediateam, focused on a strong strategyand content planning?

• If you’re using social media within themunicipality, are the sitescoordinated?

• Who is responsible for engagementwithin your municipality, and how willthey work with the social media leads?

• What internal human resources areavailable to support and implementsocial media use? (Consider contentcreation, network development,evaluation, connections to other teams.)

2. Governance

The second pillar focuses on the policies,processes and decision-making authoritythat, together, represents good socialmedia governance. You need to be clearon the boundaries for social media useand participation, the processes that youwill have in place to develop, share andrespond to content, as well as thedecision-making authority and approvalsrequired to curate and post content (see Section 2.5 Policy Development).


• Do our senior leaders support the useof social media to engage our citizensand stakeholders?

• Does social media complement ourcurrent ways of informing andengaging with our citizens andstakeholders? In what ways?

• What is our tolerance for risk?

• How do we manage issues now? Howwould a transparent environment onsocial media change the way wemanage issues?

• How do our existing policies apply orrelate to social media?

• Do we require a specific policy to help our employees and affiliatesunderstand their responsibilities andaccountabilities regarding socialmedia use?

• How do the responsibilities andaccountabilities of elected officialsdiffer from those of administration?

• Who should have access to socialmedia sites and applications, and why?

• Who has the authority to post contenton behalf of the municipality?

• Does this authority change when themunicipality is faced with anemergency or crisis?

Social Media ReadinessAssessment Questionnaire


30

• What social media tools anddestination websites do we want touse to represent our municipality andwork?

• How long has the municipalityparticipated using social media, andwhich tools? What have been theresults?

• If using social media, have weconducted any evaluation? What doesit tell us about our approach todeveloping, sharing and responding toour citizens and stakeholders?

• Who needs to be involved in curatingcontent?

• What will our annual budget be to use,curate and monitor social mediaactivity?

• What unique value will social mediaoffer our citizens and stakeholders?

• Will we support user-generatedcontent being posted to our socialmedia spaces?

• How will we coordinate content withour other communications efforts?

• How will content support ourmunicipal priorities?

• Who creates content? Who approves it?

• Who has the authority to modify andremove content?

• What constitutes grounds to blockusers or modify/remove their content?How will this be communicated?

• How do employees and electedofficials navigate their personal viewsrelative to the municipality’s views?

• Do we know enough about ourcitizens and stakeholders’ needs toengage effectively using social media?

3. Technology

The third pillar focuses on yourinformation technology protocols andtool sections that make social media usepossible. You need to be clear on whohas access to social media and in whatcapacity, which tools are consideredacceptable for use, and what capacity themunicipality has to support social mediause and evaluation. Your informationtechnology team is an important ally formunicipal organizations that choose toadopt social media, as they are well-positioned to provide insight intothe technical implications of the sites and applications.


• Do we want to monitor employeeactivity? What are we looking for?

• Do we have the capacity to managesocial media traffic?

• Where we will keep copies of our log-in and password information?

• How will we retain necessary recordsto comply with legislation such asAlberta’s Freedom of Information andPrivacy Protection Act?

• Will we allow access on mobiledevices? What security issues doesthis present?

• What social media monitoring toolsare available to us? What is ourbudget to use monitoring tools in ourevaluation?

• What is the internal skill and capacityto set performance measures andconduct analysis?

• Will we use multiple social media sitesand applications? How will wecoordinate across these sites?

POSITIVE

EXTERNAL

INTERNAL

POTENTIALLY NEGATIVE


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3.1.1 SWOT Analysis

Still feeling unsure about whether you are ready to embrace social media as part of yourengagement activities? Consider a SWOT analysis.

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The SW makesreference to your internal preparedness; they examine your strengths and weaknesses as amunicipality. Be realistic about these and don’t avoid looking at your weaknesses. The OTmakes reference to your external context; they examine what you should embrace andavoid in your external environment.

To guide your social media readiness SWOT analysis, review the questions on the followingpages. Answer those that are most applicable to your municipality.


32

Questions for internal elements(strengths and weaknesses)

Prior knowledge

1. What is the experience of yourmunicipality on social platforms?

2. What you are doing well, and whatare your challenges with them?

3. Do you already have a website orblog that creates valuable content?

4. Are you using social media to pursueany municipal organization goals?

5. What are the types of social mediathat you use, and how manyplatforms do you use?

6. How do you track activity in yourmunicipality?

7. How do you track success?

Capacity

8. Do you have the enough employeesfor building an online presence ofyour municipality?

9. What is the motivation of employeesfor building an online presence?

Technology

10. Do you have an appropriatetechnology for building a presence?

11. How you can use that technology?

12. What are the knowledge andcapability of employees to use thattechnology?

13. Do employees use different socialmedia in their private life?

14. If they use something different, canyou use it for work purposes?

Working relationships

15. What is the level of cooperationbetween employees in yourmunicipal organization?

16. What is the level of cooperationbetween elected officials andadministration?

Senior leadership support

17. Is management willing to use socialmedia?

18. Does management know how totrain employees to use this media?

19. Does your municipal organizationsupport creativity?

20. Can you use that creativity to build apresence?


33

Questions for external elements(opportunities and threats)

Level of risk

1. Is external engagement through socialmedia an opportunity or threat foryour municipality?

2. Are there security threats to yourmunicipality if you use third partytechnology?

3. Who presents the greatest risk to yourmunicipality via social media and why?

4. What actions can you take if you feelthe risk of maintaining a presence onsocial media is too high?

5. How will you manage negativecomments or interactions?

6. How will emergency events affect yourability to deliver using social media?

Audience

7. What do your citizens andstakeholders value about yourmunicipality?

8. What type of technology are theyusing to be present on social media?

9. What is the compatibility of youronline presence and your citizens andstakeholders presence on theseplatforms?

10. Who else is using social media in yourarea?

11. Are there other influencers that youcan collaborate with?

12. How much do you know about whatyour citizens and stakeholders aredoing online?

Their expectations

13. How much do you know about whatyour citizens and stakeholders areseeking from your municipalorganization?

14. What barriers exist within yourcommunity to people using socialmedia to engage with yourmunicipality (e.g. – high speedinternet)?

15. What expectations will your citizensand stakeholders have that will makesocial media a challenge for yourmunicipal organization?

Your expectations

16. How you want your citizens andstakeholders to communicate withyou?

17. How do you want them to engagewith you?

Business goals

18. What needs can your municipalitymeet by embracing social media?

19. What will social media achieve for youthat isn’t already being achieved?

20. What ongoing conversation do youwant to be having with your citizensand stakeholders?

3.1.2 Next Steps

Your readiness assessment and SWOTanalysis will determine whether yourmunicipality is positioned to supportcitizen engagement through socialmedia.

If you complete the Social MediaReadiness Assessment Questionnaire andscore below 10 then you should ensurethat you complete a thorough SWOTanalysis before proceeding. Once youhave completed the SWOT, you will havea sense of what decisions and resourcingneeds to be in place before you continue.You will want to ensure that you have thesupport of your organization, some senseof why social media has the potential tobenefit your organization, and strongcommunications processes and riskmanagement practices in place beforeyou embrace social media.

If you complete the Social MediaReadiness Assessment Questionnaire andscore between 10 and 18 then you have agood foundation in place to develop andimplement a social media plan. It isrecommended that one of your first stepsonce you've determined that you want toproceed with social media is to conductan audit. Your audit will provide usefulinformation as you work to develop ameaningful and effective social mediaplan.

To conduct your audit, it is recommendedthat you create a corporate social mediaaccount for one or more socialnetworking sites (i.e. Facebook, Twitter)and explore the online environmentusing key word searches with termsrelated to your municipal organizationand community.

There are some important questions toconsider to help you get a sense of thelandscape:

• What are you noticing?

• Who is participating?

• What tools are they using?

• What content are they sharing?

• Where can your municipality make animpact?

• Where will your municipality benefitmost from being more social andengaged?

It is good practice to spendapproximately six to eight weeksmonitoring the online environment. Thismay seem like a long period of time but itwill give you a sense of the differentdynamics present in the onlineenvironment. At the end of your listeningperiod, there is benefit in developing ashort report or briefing document toshare with your decision-makers. Yourlistening experience should also informthe creation of your social media strategy(see Section 2 – Planning for social mediasuccess) and include budget and staffimplications. There is also merit in sharingsuccess stories and lessons learnedrelated to municipal use of social media.This will demonstrate that you haveconsidered potential opportunities andchallenges external to your ownmunicipal context making for a strongerbusiness case.

The crux of determining your municipalorganization's readiness is being realisticabout what you can accomplish, andrecognizing that stepping into newterritory is bound to result in somemissteps. The best thing you can do is beprepared to learn, have the support ofyour municipality to learn together, andaddress any missteps head on. Everyaction and every result is feedback and anopportunity to identify what works andwhat doesn't for your municipalorganization. Learning is part of theprocess.

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35

A P P E N D I X R E S O U R C E S

Guiding Principles forContent Curation

1. Consider the desired outcome ofyour post.

Be clear about the behaviour or feelingyou want to elicit from yourparticipants.

2. Tell them who you are.

Be personal by sharing your name.

3. Draw on emotion.

Relate to your participants throughemotion. Everyone experiencesemotions. While the situation mightnot be familiar, the feeling will be.

Six primary emotions:

• Fear – danger or threat

• Shame/Guilt – wronging someone

• Anger – unfair event

• Excitement – good to come

• Content – safe

• Sad – loss of connection

4. Mix it up

There is an endless list of ways to sharecontent. Whatever you decide to use,make sure it complements yourmunicipal goals.

Examples of types of content:

• Text

• Pictures

• Video

• Surveys/polls

• Statistics

• Ads

5. Share resources and content fromcredible and relevant sources.

Not all of the content needs to beoriginal. Share information from othersources such as community groupsand people of influence in thecommunity. Ensure that whatevercontent you decide to share fromother sources is accurate, credible andrelates to your municipal goals.

6. Ensure content is accurate andconsistent.

Content curated by the municipalityneeds to be reliable and consistentwith municipal policies, proceduresand guidelines.

7. Reflect the municipality.

Any content curated or shared onbehalf of the municipality shouldreflect its official position on any giventopic, yet be presented in a format andwith content that will effectively reachand engage participants.

8. Be human.

Behind every post is a human being.Remind yourself and your participantsof this fact. You are not just amunicipality, employee or electedofficial, you are a person and that’show we connect with others.

By being and acting human, we takethe edge off. To be an exceptionalcontent curator, be as human aspossible. The best posters/writersshow courage, vulnerability and awillingness to make mistakes andlearn from them.

APPENDIX RESOURCES

36


Social Media Plan Template

Background Provide a brief description of the municipality and its purpose for using social media.

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

Desired Outcomes: reflect an imagined and desirable future for your municipality.

Describe your desired outcomes in one to two sentences.

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

Barriers: reflect the most salient and impactful obstacles to achieving the desired outcomes.

List and rank your barriers.

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

Participants:

Primary participants: is the person or group of people who can have thegreatest impact on achieving your desired outcomes.

Secondary participants: are the people or groups of people who can also playimportant roles in achieving your desired outcomes.

List and prioritize your primary and secondary participants.

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

APPENDIX RESOURCES

37


Content Provide two to three examples of the content you would use to connect with your participants and achieve your desired outcomes.

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

Tools List which social media platform(s)/tool(s) you will use and explain your choice(s).

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

Connect Explain when and how you will go about affecting your participants to achieve your desired outcomes.

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

Evaluation Explain what metrics you will use to evaluate your success and how you will analyze them in context of your business goals and operating environment.

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

APPENDIX RESOURCES

Theme and sub-themes for the week:

M: ________________________________

T: ________________________________

W: ________________________________

T: ________________________________

F: ________________________________

S: ________________________________

S: ________________________________

(Do not feel obligated to post content ona daily basis. Set a schedule that works for you.)

Who will be responsible for postingcontent and when:

M: Name/time ______________________

________________________________

T: Name/time ______________________

________________________________

W: Name/time ______________________

________________________________

T: Name/time ______________________

________________________________

F: Name/time ______________________

________________________________

S: Name/time ______________________

________________________________

S: Name/time ______________________

________________________________

Who will be responsible for monitoringand responding to content:

M: ________________________________

T: ________________________________

W: ________________________________

T: ________________________________

F: ________________________________

S: ________________________________

S: ________________________________

What will the content focus on:

M: ________________________________

T: ________________________________

W: ________________________________

T: ________________________________

F: ________________________________

S: ________________________________

S: ________________________________

What were this week’s results/lessons?

M: ________________________________

T: ________________________________

W: ________________________________

T: ________________________________

F: ________________________________

S: ________________________________

S: ________________________________

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APPENDIX RESOURCES

Social Media Action Plan Template

Social media analysis has become bigbusiness. With the billions ofexchanges taking place on the internet,there are as many analytics options asthere are social media tools. For largemunicipalities that are looking to scrubthe internet for information and filter itfor specific messages and sentimentsdirectly related to their needs, there arehigh cost, highly efficient services suchas Sysomos, Visible Technologies andOracle Social Cloud. These services aremore than just analytics tools, theyprovide social media:• monitoring;• analysis;• reports;• social engagement features; and

• support.

For smaller municipalities with moremodest budgets and social medianeeds, there are lighter options.Specifically, each social media tooloffers its own set of analytics. Thecompanies that create the tools are alsoexperts in what can be measured, andthey make basic measurementsavailable to organizations. However, itis the responsibility of the organizationto make use of the measurements,analyzing them in context of theirneeds and environments.

Facebook Insights

Insights provides Facebook Pageowners with metrics around theircontent. By understanding andanalyzing trends within user growthand demographics, consumption ofcontent, and creation of content, youare better equipped to improve yourengagement through Facebook.

LinkedIn Analytics

Gain insight into your network through

metrics and trends. Company pageadministrators can view rich data abouttheir page divided into specificsections: updates, followers, andvisitors.

Twitter Analytics

Measure engagement and learn how tomake your tweets more successful.Explore the interests, locations, anddemographics of your followers. Trackhow your tweets drive clicks, appinstalls, and retweets.

Smaller municipalities can also benefitfrom tools that offer a broader view ofand deeper dive into your onlineactivity. Two of the more popular androbust examples that come at a modestcost are Google Analytics andHootSuite.

Google Analytics

A free tool Google Analytics hasbecome a great resource for socialmedia analytics on your website. Itincludes a social reports feature thatyou can use to determine theconversion value of visitors from socialsites as well as see how visitors fromdifferent social sites behave on yoursite. It also has an “Activity Stream” thatshows in real-time how people aretalking about your site on socialnetworks.

Hootsuite

One of the most popular social mediaanalytics tools, Hootsuite offers a singleonline dashboard to manage yoursocial media accounts. This includesTwitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTubeand more.

In addition to helping you scheduleposts and manage your social mediacontent, Hootsuite also digs into whatyour social media activity means withits own set of analytics tools.

39


Analytic Tool Options

APPENDIX RESOURCES

https://hootsuite.com

http://www.google.com/analytics/

https://analytics.twitter.com/

https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4499/related/1

https://www.facebook.com/help/336893449723054

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Evaluation GuideAdapted from Blanchard, O. (2011), Chitwood, L. (2013),City of Leduc Social Media Strategy, Eckerling, D. (2014),Kaushik, A.(n.d.), and Wasserman, S. and Faust, K. (1994).

Content MetricsMeasure the amount of time,outcomes and context of users’ visits.

RESPONSIVENESS

• the number and quality ofinquiries or discussionsgenerated

• the average time it takes toreceive responses to posts

VOLUME

What is the most engagingcontent?

• number of fan mentions, ‘likes’and comments that illustrateengagements between usersand the content

• number of unique people ‘liking’,sharing or commenting on posts

Top-performing tweets (clicks,favourites, replies, retweets)

• number of unique mentions,including replies / retweets

• number of times users engagewith the municipality through‘thumbs up’, comments andshares

• number of times users engagewith the municipality through‘thumbs up’, comments andshares

Relevance MetricsMeasure the number of desiredactions users complete as a result ofthe social media strategy – whetherthat is engagement, access toinformation or requests for services.

CONVERSIONS

• number of completions ofdesired activities (e.g. - click-throughs, shares)

VIEWING

• number of total unique views forthe municipality’s channel

• number of minutes viewerswatched of content on themunicipality’s channel

• the most viewed videos on themunicipality’s channel

LOYALTY

• percentage of users who accessthe municipality via social media

SENTIMENTS

• positive, negative and neutralengagements about themunicipality or specificprograms, events or topics

• quality and relevance ofconversations

• number and quality/tone ofcomments on posts

• positive, negative or neutralkeywords most associated withposted social media content

Impact MetricsMeasure high-level information ontraffic to, and content usage of,social media activities.

SIZE

• the number of people who ‘like’the municipality’s page (fans)

• the number of unique users whohave seen content associatedwith the municipality’s page.

• the number of followers whosubscribe to the feed

• the number of subscribers to themunicipality’s channel

• the number of followers for themunicipality’s corporate page

SOURCE:

• the number of unique visitors ina given time period and wherethose visitors came from

• amount of web traffic generatedby the municipality’s socialmedia accounts

GROWTH:

• the difference between thenumber of fans, followers and subscribers from month-to-month

APPENDIX RESOURCES

41

Social Media Policy Template

RELEVANT LEGISLATION: List relevant legislation, for example: Alberta Freedom ofInformation and Privacy Protection Act (FOIP), Alberta Personal Information Protection Act.

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

POLICY OBJECTIVE: Identify your objective for the policy, for example: To define acceptableuse and implementation of social media on behalf of XXX.

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

1. Purpose Explain the intent of the policy.

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

2. Definitions Define social media and key terminology.

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

3. Responsibilities Identify relevant staff positions with accountability, administrative andimplementation responsibilities.

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________


APPENDIX RESOURCES

42


4. Employee Access Identify who has access to municipal corporate social media accountsand whether all employees have access to social media accounts.

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

5. Account Management Identify key elements in the management of your social mediaaccounts (e.g. – account creation and decommissioning and security requirements.)

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

6. Acceptable Use Identity criteria regarding profession use of social media (on behalf of themunicipal organization) and personal use of social media by employees.

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

7. Content Management Identify criteria and key considerations in the creation of socialmedia content, records management and retention, and emergency communications.

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________

APPENDIX RESOURCES

Social Media Readiness Assessment Questionnaire

What is our tolerance for risk (e.g. - launching bold corporate initiatives, initiating new engagement tactics)?

1 2 3 4 5Extremely Low Low Neutral High Extremely High

How does our municipality react to negative feedback?

1 2 3 4 5Defensively Slowly Slowly but Quickly Quickly and (e.g. - no comment) thoughtfully constructively

Describe internal communication

1 2 3 4 5Locked down Information moves Information moves Information moves Information is timely

slowly from the up and down throughout the moves easily to the top-down municipality people who need it

What is my personal knowledge of social media?

1 2 3 4 5I have no knowledge I have very little I have some I know a lot I am an expertof social media. knowledge of knowledge of about social media. in social media.

social media. social media.

How are decisions made in our municipality?

1 2 3 4 5I don’t understand My supervisor is There is a slow and I am able to make I am able to make how decisions responsible for relaying formal process in place decisions about what decisions about my work are made. decisions to me. for getting decisions. affects me. and get quick decisions

from decision-makers when I need them.

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APPENDIX RESOURCES

how did you do?Total your score for each answer.

Score of 5 – 10: There are some important conversationsthat you should have before engaging with social media.It is important to understand the risks and benefits ofsocial media, as well as to be as prepared as possible tomanage them.

Score of 10 – 18: You have the foundation to develop an effective social media strategy and put it into play.Your municipality recognizes the importance of socialbehaviour and, with some focus, has the potential toembrace social business practices that align with anddrive social media use.

Score 18 – 25: You have a strong internal focus on socialbusiness behaviours and, with a good plan to guide youractions, are ready to engage in and succeed using social media.

Social Media Glossary

Analytics

The science of examining raw data todraw conclusions. Analytics focus oninference from data. The goal of analystsis to examine this data, looking forpatterns in behaviour.

Big Data

Large sets of unstructured data; the datasets are massive and complex.

Block

A Twitter feature that enables you toprevent another user from:

• following you;

• adding you to their Twitter lists;

• having their mentions and repliesappear in your notifications ormentions tab; and

• tagging you in a photo.

Blog

A website or page upon which anindividual or organization recordsopinions, articles, links to other sites, etc.on a regular basis (Noun). The act ofadding new material to a blog (Verb).

Comments

User-generated feedback in response toan online post.

Community Management

Investing and developing relationshipswith other online users around a commoninterest.

Company Page

A place for businesses to includeinformation about their business andcreate updates about their business andtheir industry.

Connect

A tab in Twitter where all mentions,replies, retweets, and favourites can befound.

Connection

A link or relationship between two users.Each social network has its own uniqueterminology for connections (e.g. -Facebook refers to them as friends,LinkedIn refers to them as connectionsand Twitter refers to them as followers).

Content

Any kind of meaningful information (text,photos, videos, audio, etc.) on theInternet.

Content Curation

The process of sifting through the web tofind the best and most relevant contentfor participants and then presenting it tothem in a meaningful way.

Content Management System (CMS)

An online application that allows you todraft, share, edit, schedule, and indexyour content. Popular web contentmanagement systems make use of simpleeditors that allow you to create publishcontent without demanding a knowledgeof code.

Creative Commons

A public copyright license that providesthe rights to use and share otherwisecopyrighted material.

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APPENDIX RESOURCES

Crowdsourcing

The process of leveraging your onlinecommunity to assist in services, contentand ideas for your business.

Digital Engagement

The use of electronic communication toexpand and strengthen relationships withthe public.

e-Government

Also known as Gov 2.0, e-gov is a digitalinteraction between government,citizens, businesses, governmentagencies, and non-governmentalorganizations. E-gov involvesbroadcasting information over theinternet (such as services, public hearingschedules, notification), communicatingbetween government and anotherorganization, conducting transactions,and improving governance (Wikipedia).

Embed

To integrate data into the body of a file ordocument, in the form of a code;embedding can be used to sharemultimedia, sounds, fonts, and(unfortunately) viruses.

Engage

Attract users’ attention and activelyinvolve them in a conversation.

Engagement

The acts of talking to, messaging orotherwise interacting with other people;any interaction you have with other users.

Engagement Rate

Engagement rate is the percentage ofpeople who saw your social media postand actively engaged with it (clicked thelink, expanded the image attached,replied, liked, favourited, shared,retweeted, etc).

Forum

An online site, also known as a messageboard, where people can holddiscussions.

Geolocation/Geotagging

The exact geographic location of anobject, person, etc. Geographicalcoordinates can be embedded in mediasuch as photos or videos, SMS messages,and websites to assist other users inaccessing precise location information.

Gov 2.0

Gov 2.0, or Open Government, is agoverning method that utilizes online,mobile and internet-enhanced face-to-face techniques to offer communicationbetween government, citizens andstakeholders. The intent is to increasetransparency of operations, improvepublic participation, and inspirecollaboration and innovation throughbetter government openness,accountability, and effectiveness

Handle

A synonym for “your account name”.

Listening

Monitoring how a specific organization,program, service, company, or person isbeing discussed and/or perceived on theinternet. Also referred to as social mediamonitoring.

Mash up

A web page or application that usescontent from more than one source tocreate a single new service displayed in asingle graphical interface. For example,you could combine the addresses andphotographs of your library brancheswith a Google map to create a map mash up.

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APPENDIX RESOURCES

Microblogging

Blogs that focus on smaller updates.Often facilitated by a social networkplatform, such as Twitter. Some focus onvideo or picture updates, while othersrestrict posts to a certain number ofcharacters.

Online Community

A group of people that interact in anonline environment. The people enablethe existence of the community byinteracting online and, in many cases,creating online norms and rituals for themembers.

Online Content

Text, visual or aural content contributedto and available to users via web-basedtools.

Open Data

Refers to providing online access to datain a standards-compliant manner.

Online Engagement

Active involvement with content and, ineffect, other people in a web-basedenvironment.

Open Government

Set of principles to increase governmenttransparency, accountability, and improvecitizen participation. This concept isrelated to e-Government and Open Data.Calgary and Edmonton have Open Datapolicies.

Organic Reach

The number of unique people who viewyour content without paid promotion.The distinction between organic and paidreach is that the former is free.

Posts

A display of content. Content is “posted”in an online environment.

Profile

A representation or description ofsomeone or something in an onlineenvironment.

Reach

A data metric that determines thepotential size of audience any givenmessage could reach. It does not meanthat that entire audience will see yoursocial media post, but rather tells you themaximum amount of people your postcould potentially reach. Reach isdetermined by a fairly complexcalculation, that includes number offollowers, shares and impressions as wellas net follower increase over time.

Response Rate

An engagement metric to assess howmuch you are interacting with your socialmedia participants. To calculate yourresponse rate, take the number ofmentions that you have replied to in agiven time period and divide it by thetotal number of mentions you havereceived (excluding retweets or shares).

RSS

RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format forsyndicating web content. Bloggers, newspublishers, and other content creators useRSS feeds to effectively broadcast content(or content summaries) to audiences.Readers can subscribe to RSS feedswithout providing personal information,and then automatically receive updatesthrough a news reader or aggregator.

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APPENDIX RESOURCES

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Strategies, techniques and tactics toincrease the number of visitors to awebsite by obtaining a high-rankingplacement in the results provided by anonline search engine.

Sentiment Analysis

An attempt to understand howparticipants feels about an organization,brand, company, or product based ondata collected from social media. Ittypically involves the use of naturallanguage processing or anothercomputational method to identify theattitude contained in a social mediamessage.

Social Media Marketing

The use of social media by marketers toincrease brand awareness, identify keyaudiences, generate leads, and buildmeaningful relationships with customers.

Social Media Monitoring

Listening and responding to brand andkeyword mentions on social media. Socialmedia monitoring is crucial to socialcustomer service, social selling, socialmedia marketing, and communitymanagement.

Social Media Platforms

A type of software or technology thatenables users to build, integrate orfacilitate community, interaction anduser-generated content

Social Media Site

Online service or software platform thatfocuses on building connections betweenpeople who share interest and/oractivities. Social media sites provide auser with a profile and means to connectwith friends, family, acquaintances,colleagues, organizations, companiesand/or institutions.

Social Media ROI

A measurement of the effectiveness of anorganization’s investment in social media.Like any metric for “return on investment”,social media ROI is calculated by dividingthe total benefits of an investment by thesum of its costs.

Social Networks

Personal pages that allow users toconnect and share content.

Spam

Unnecessary and repetitive social mediacontent that clogs up the feeds of socialmedia users.

Status Updates

A short, text-based entry describing whatis real to you. Status updates can reflectfeelings, ideas, facts or information.

Symmetrical Connection

A two-way connection between users.That is, for one user to connect with asecond, the second user must reciprocatethe connection with the first.

Synchronous Communications

Communication that happens in real-timelike audio, video, or face-to-faceconversations.

Thread

A strand of messages which represent aconversation or part of a conversation.

Timestamp

The date and time that a message isposted to a social network, usually visiblebelow the headline or username. Clickingon a timestamp will usually bring you tothe content’s permalink.

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APPENDIX RESOURCES

48


Trend or Trending

A topic or hashtag that is popular onsocial media at a given moment.

Troll

(root: trolling) A person who sows discordon the internet with the deliberate intentof provoking or otherwise disruptingnormal on-topic discussion.

URL

The location of a page or other resourceon the World Wide Web. The acronymstands for Uniform Resource Locator.

URL Shortener

A tool that condenses a URL into a shorter(and more social media friendly) format,known as a short link. Users who click ona short link are redirected to the originalURL.

User-generated Content (UGC)

Media that has been created andpublished online by the users of a socialor collaboration platform, typically fornon-commercial purposes. User-generated content is one of the definingcharacteristics of social media. It is oftenproduced collaboratively and in real-timeby multiple users

Viral

The rapid and widespread circulation ofInternet content from one user toanother.

Web 2.0

Web 1.0 is the online experience wherecontent is pushed out, or broadcast, tousers in a one-way communication (themajority of the internet prior toapproximately 2004). Web 2.0 engageswebsite visitors in a two-wayconversation via opportunities to uploadcontent, publicly respond to posts bywebsite authors, and shape individualuser experience through contentpersonalization. Collaboration andinteraction are the goals of Web 2.0.

Widget

Small application or code snippet thatcan be installed on a webpage. Commonwidgets include Twitter feeds, FacebookFan boxes, Amazon.com recommendations,real-time weather statistics, and chatboxes. Widgets are also referred to asbadges and gadgets.

Web Applications

Any software that runs in a web browser(an online environment).

Wikis

Collaborative content development thatallows users to add and edit information.Services include Pbworks, Wikia andWikipedia.

APPENDIX RESOURCES

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FACEBOOK:

Facebook

An online social networking site.

Cover Photo

The large, horizontal image at the topof your Facebook profile or page.Similar to a profile photo, a coverphoto is public and can be seen byanyone. This is a great place forindividuals, brands and organizationsto use a unique image to representwho they are, what their business is orwhat they care about.

Facebook Chat

Real-time chat with other Facebookusers.

Facebook Events

The opportunity to create an event bya page or profile. These are typicallyused for parties, business events, andplanned chats.

Facebook Fans

People who like your Facebook Page.

Facebook Group

A space on Facebook where you cancommunicate and share contentwithin a select group of people. Thereare three types of groups: public,closed, and secret.

Facebook Messenger

A forum to send private messages toother Facebook users.

Facebook Network

The web of people whom you arefriends with on Facebook.

Facebook NewsFeed

The feed that shows new posts frompages and profiles that you’ve “liked.”

Facebook Timeline

A profile that combines a user'sFacebook Wall and Profile into onepage. It includes reverse-chronological details, by year, of auser's Facebook history with key lifepoints, including birthdays, weddingsand other major events.

Facebook Reach

The number of unique people whohave seen content from your Facebook Page.

Facebook Share

A button to share the content youenjoy with personal Facebook friends.

Friend

A person that you connect with onFacebook or another social network.Unlike a fan or follower, a friend is atwo-way connection; both you andyour friend have to endorse therelationship.

Friendship Page

The story of a friendship between twopeople connected on Facebook. Thesepages display a variety of content,including photos that both people aretagged in, public messages that theyhave exchanged, and their mutualfriends and interests.

Like

A Facebook invention that’s evolvedinto an understood expression ofsupport for content. Along withshares, comments, and favourites, likescan be tracked as proof ofengagement.

APPENDIX RESOURCES

LINKEDIN:

LinkedIn

A business-oriented social networkingsite mainly used for professionalnetworking.

Connection

The people you invite or those whoinvite you. When you “accept” to forma connection with someone you forma first level relationship with them inyour LinkedIn network.

Degrees

A second degree connection means itis a friend of a friend, you areseparated by two degrees. Threedegrees away is someone you canread through a friend of a friend andone of their connections.

Endorsement

Recognition of another person’s skill.Endorsements boost your credibilityon LinkedIn by indicating that youactually have the skills you say youhave. You can only endorse the skills ofyour first-degree connections.

Inbox

This is where you can check personalmessages sent to you by otherLinkedIn members.

Introduction

Introductions are requests made toother LinkedIn members that you donot have a direct connection with. It isas it sounds, a way to introduceyourself to someone you do notnecessarily know. LinkedIn limits thenumber of introductions you can havepending at one time.

Invitation

This is what you send when you asksomeone to connect with you. Youinvite them to join your network.

Groups

Public or private forums for users tocome together and talk about aspecific subject on one page.

Network

Your network is the group of yourconnections and you are the center ofyour network. It can also include theconnections of your connections.

Profile

This is the page you control. It holdsyour picture and credentials. You havethe ability to post job history andupload a resume. This is what otherssee when they click on your link.

Recommendation

A written compliment from one ofyour connections that you can displayon your LinkedIn profile to impresshiring managers, potential customers,and that really interesting person youmet at TEDxToledo. There’s no limit tohow many recommendations you cangive or request, but remember thatthe most authentic recommendationscome from people that you’ve actuallyworked with.

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APPENDIX RESOURCES

TWITTER:

Twitter

A social network and media platform thatenables users to publish 140-charactermessages along with photos, videos, andother content.

Direct Message (DM)

A private Twitter message sent to oneof your followers. Direct messages canonly be sent to a Twitter user who isalready following you, and you canonly receive direct messages fromusers you follow.

Discover

A feature on the Twitter platform thathas five functions: Tweets, Activity, Whoto Follow, Find Friends and Popularaccounts.

• The Tweets option shows the mostpopular Tweets across Twitter; someare tailored to you individually andsome are globally trending.

• The Activity tab shows notableengagements of the people youfollow, including the latest Retweets,replies and favourites of your friends.

• Who to Follow helps you find new andinteresting accounts.

• Find Friends allows you to importcontacts from your contact book andfind them on Twitter.

• Popular Accounts provides a list ofsome engaging and well-likedaccounts on Twitter and is delivered toyou based on your interests.

Favourite

An indication that someone likes yourTweet, given by clicking the star icon.

Follower

A Twitter user who has subscribed toyour Twitter account so they canreceive your Tweets in their Homefeed. If you want to send them a directmessage, you need to follow themback.

Following

The number of accounts that a Twitterhandle is following.

Follows

The number of accounts that arefollowing a Twitter handle.

Hashtag

A word or phrase preceded by the “#”sign. #Hashtags are a simple way tomark the topic (or topics) of socialmedia messages and make themdiscoverable to people with sharedinterests.

Header Image

The banner image at the top of a user’sTwitter profile.

List

A curated set of Twitter accounts thatyou can group together in their owntimeline. Lists are a convenient way toorganize other Twitter users, whetheryou follow them or not.

Live-tweeting

The same as “live blogging”, but usingtweets to tell the story in real-timeinstead of blog posts.

Mention

The act of tagging another user’shandle or account name in a socialmedia message.

Modified tweet (MT)

Same as a retweet, but with text that’sbeen slightly changed, hence the word“modified”.

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APPENDIX RESOURCES

APPENDIX RESOURCES

Mute

A feature available on Twitter thatallows you to remove select peoplefrom your feed without them everknowing. They still see that you followthem, and they can still favourite,retweet, and reply to you—you justdon’t see any of their activity in yourtimeline. Muting a user is not the sameas blocking them.

Reply

A response to someone’s Tweet thatbegins with their @username. UnlikeDirect Messages, replies are public.

Retweet (RT)

A Tweet that is re-shared to thefollowers of another user’s Twitteraccount.

Top Tweets

The most popular and engagingTweets for a given search query, asdetermined by a Twitter algorithm.

Tweet

A message that is 140 characters, orless, posted using the social mediaplatform Twitter.

Tweetup

An organized or impromptu gatheringof people who use Twitter.

Twitter Feed

The first thing you see when you log into Twitter. New posts from yourfollowers are placed in your feed.

Unfollow

The action of unsubscribing fromanother Twitter user’s account.

YOUTUBE:

YouTube

A video sharing website.

Avatar

The square image on your channelpage that represents your channelacross the site.

Bulletin

A message that channel owners cansend to their subscribers. Bulletinsshow up in subscribers’ feeds. Channelowners can attach videos to a bulletin.

Channel or Channel Page(YouTube.com/CHANNELNAME)

A channel is the public page for a useraccount on YouTube. It containsuploaded videos, playlists, likedvideos, favourited videos, channelcomments and general activity. Somecreators manage or create contentacross multiple channels.

Comments

These are written comments onvideos, channels, playlists or inresponse to other comments.Comments may be posted either onthe watch page or on a channel page.

Community Actions

Any actions taken by a viewer on oraround your channel and content.Includes likes, favourites, subscriptionsand comments.

End-card or End-slate

A graphic that creators include at theend of their videos. End-cards typicallyinclude specific Calls to Action tosubscribe, watch more content, or visita channel page. They may also containcredits for the video. Generally, end-cards prominently feature annotations.

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APPENDIX RESOURCES

Favourite(s)

A user action that adds a video to theirchannel’s Favourites playlist. Thisaction can also be broadcast tosubscribers.

Feed

A stream of activity either for onechannel (via the channel page feed) orfor multiple channels (the homepagefeed). Feed activities include uploads,updated playlists, video comments,channel comments, new subscriptions,bulletins, likes, favourites and sharing.Users control what feed activities theybroadcast and, by subscribing tochannels, what feed activities arebroadcasted to them in theirhomepage feed.

Hook

Content that is meant to keep viewersinterested in what happens next.Ideally, a video’s hook happens withinthe first 15 seconds.

Hosted Playlist

A collection of videos linked byadditional hosted videos. Hostedvideos can act as intros, outros and/orinterstitials. Hosted videos can containan actual host (person) or creativebranding that acts as a host.

Like(s)

A user action that shows appreciationfor a video. This action can bebroadcast to subscribers in the feed.

Metadata

The textual information that describesa video, channel or playlist. Videometadata includes title, tags anddescription. Playlist metadata includestitle and description. Channelmetadata includes a description.

Optimization

An action that increases the potentialsuccess of a video, channel, playlist orcontent strategy.

Other Channels Module

An optional module that allows thechannel owner to feature otherchannels on their channel page.

Packaging

Graphics and/or content that addscontext to a video. Packaging canbuild your brand, connect your hostwith the audience, add relevantcontext to archived content, or addscripted/annotated Calls to Action.

Playlist

A playlist is a collection of videos thatcan be viewed, shared and embeddedlike an individual video. You can createplaylists using any videos on YouTube.Videos can be in multiple playlists.Uploaded videos and favouritedvideos are default playlists on yourchannel.

Pre-buzz

Audience interest in a tent-pole eventoccurring in the days and weeksleading up to it.

Programming

The practice and strategy oforganizing videos, shows or channelcontent and activity into a daily,weekly or season-long schedule.

Recommendation Activity

A strategy in which a channel likes,favourites or comments on a video inorder to promote that video to theirsubscribers through the feed.

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Series Playlist

A playlist that locks the videos intoone specific playlist. Meant for serial orepisodic content that follows anarrative story arc, videos included in aseries playlist cannot be added toother playlists on the channel.

Share

Ability to distribute videos via socialmedia, email or direct links. This actioncan be broadcast to subscribers.

Suggested Videos

Video thumbnails that appear in theright-hand column of watch pagesand the homepage, or the tiledthumbnails that appear when a videohas finished playing.

Subscriber / Subscription

By subscribing to a channel, users willsee that channel’s activity in theirhomepage feed. Subscribers can alsoopt into email communication fromsubscribed channels on a per-uploadand weekly digest basis.

Subscriber Box

See Other Channels Module.

Tags

Words or phrases used to describe thecontent of your videos. Added tovideos at time of upload (seeMetadata).

Teaser

A short video that acts as a preview ortrailer for longer content. Can be usedto promote larger content initiatives orannouncements.

Templates

Different pre-set channel designs thatcan be used to highlight videos,playlists and other channels.

Tent-pole Programming and Publishing

Content creation and publishingstrategy that is meant to draft off ofthe popularity of large cultural events.Programming and publishing tent-pole content is meant tomaximize audience.

Thumbnails

The images selected to represent yourvideos or playlists on the site.

Traffic Source

The referral source of a video view. Thepage, module or site that drove aviewer to a video.

Vlog

A video-blog. A casual, conversationalvideo format or genre featuring aperson talking directly to the camera.

Watch Page

The page where the majority of videoviewing happens. URLs with theformat youtube.com/watch?v=[videoID Here] are watch pages.

Watch-time

The amount of time in aggregate thatyour viewers are watching your videos.Watch-time is estimated in Analytics.

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APPENDIX RESOURCES

55

Alberta Municipal Affairs Public Input Toolkit 2011

Blanchard, O. (2011). Social Media ROI: Managingand Measuring Social Media Efforts in YourOrganization. Pearson Education, Inc. Boston, MA.

Brito, M. (2010). The three pillars of social mediareadiness.

Chitwood, L. (2013). 5 social media metrics that yourbusiness should be tracking. Simply Measured.

Citizen Engagement Toolkit (AUMA/AAMDC)

Eckerling, D. (2014). 5 ways to use metrics to improveyour social media marketing.

Facebook

Hrdinová, J., Helbig, N. & Peters, C. (2010). Designingsocial media policy for government: Eight essentialelements. Center for Technology in Government.

International Association of Public Participation -Canada (IAP2).

Johnson, P & Yang, S. (2009). Uses and Gratificationsof Twitter: An Examination of User Motives andSatisfaction of Twitter Use. Presented at theCommunication Technology Division of the annualconvention of the Association for Education inJournalism and Mass Communication in Boston,Massachusetts.

Kaushik, A. (n.d.). Best Social Media Metrics:Conversation, Amplification, Applause, EconomicValue.

LinkedIn

Mayfield, A. (2008). What is social media? iCrossing.

McGee, R. (2007). Legal Frameworks for CitizenParticipation: A synthesis report. Logolink Report,Institute for Development Studies, University ofSussex, Brighton, United Kingdom. In Shah, A. (Eds).Participatory Budgeting, (pp.247).

Quan-Hasse, A. & Young, A. L. (2010). Uses andgratifications of social media: A comparison ofFacebook and instant messaging. Bulletin Science,Technology and Society, 30(5), 350-361.

Twitter

Wasserman, S. and Faust, K. (1994).Social NetworkAnalysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

YouTube

REFERENCES

R E F E R E N C E S

https://www.youtube.com

https://twitter.com

www.icrossing.co.uk/.../What_is_Social_Media_iCrossing_ebook.pdf

https://www.linkedin.com

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/best-social-media-metrics-conversation-amplification-applause-economic-value/



http://iap2canada.ca

http://iap2canada.ca

http://www.ctg.albany.edu/publications/guides/social media policy/socialmedia policy.pdf



https://www.facebook.com

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/metrics-improve-social-media-marketing/

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/metrics-improve-social-media-marketing/

http://www.aamdc.com/toolkits-initiatives-2/211-citizen-engagement-toolkit

http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2013/10/29/5-social-media-metrics-business-tracking/

http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2013/10/29/5-social-media-metrics-business-tracking/

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/the-3-pillars-of-social-media-readiness/

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/the-3-pillars-of-social-media-readiness/

http://www.municipalaffairs.alberta.ca/documents/MDRS/AMA_Public_Input_Toolkit_Sept2014.pdf

Documents

Social Media Resource Guide - AUMA.ca · PDF file2.1 Creating an effective social media plan 10 2.2 Getting ready 11 ... deemed to include social networking sites, blogs, wikis, folksonomies,