A couple of weeks ago Miriam Schaffer and I got to give this talk to the CALED’s 32 Annual Conference… Social Media is a method of communication that works really well for cities and communities. The reason is communities are the original social media! Living or working in communities, people talk to their friends, they’re interested in what‘s going on around them, and what new things are happening.
What are the three essential pieces of a Social Media plan?
To use Social Media effectively you have to understand the brand of your community, you have to decide what Social Media tools you’re going to use and you have to have a clear idea of the message you want to communicate.
Let’s start with understanding your communities brand. What is a brand? According to Dave Dunn in his book “Branding, The 6 Easy Steps,” it’s owning a single idea, concept or feeling in the mind or heart if the customer. Sometimes it’s just a word. A phrase. An emotion. …you want to own it in the mind of the customer. A brand helps differentiate you from the competition.”
An important thing to remember is that the people living and working in your community have a good idea of the brand. So, you want to make sure that what you are saying in Social Media sounds right to the people reading or watching it.
To do a good job of understanding your brand you need to be clear about 4 things. The first is to really understand what differentiates you from the communities and cities near by. There is always something that differentiates you. When we worked with the City of Fairfield we found out that they had an excellent and substantial supply of water. Communicating that brought in additional food businesses that needed an abundant supply of high quality water. With Downtown Napa we found that there were as many Zagat rated restaurants per city block in Downtown Napa as there was in Downtown San Francisco. Once we started communicating that, people started to drive in to enjoy the restaurants and then shop at the stores nearby.
The other three things you should know are what are your community’s goals for the next five years, who is the target audience and what do they think of your community right now.
Once you have that clearly identified and you know what your brand message is, you start working in Social Media. Here’s the brand Message for Suisun City, “An affordable Bay Area business location, with Cape Cod charm, near San Francisco and Sacramento, with convenient freeway access and Amtrak’s Capitol Corridor.” The Social Media tools that we recommend include a search engine optimized website and blog, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. There is good opportunities with LinkedIn, Google+ and the new favorite Pinterest. You need to keep information flowing through social media on a regular basis, and you need to make sure that you keep your message clear and easy to understand.
Tags: brand message, City of Fairfield, City of Suisun City, Downtown Napa
I think this is such a great post. I am currently working on creating/ updating some social media apps for my internship and I think it is key to remember who you are and what you are all about. People won’t want to follow my or “Like” my facebook page if the information isn’t relevant to them. Additionally, it is important to remember who the audience is and build these social media sites around the audience to keep them interested.
Really insightful post! I think it is important to know that there is something about your company that differentiates you from others. It may not be apparent to you since you work internally within the company, but others might be able to see something significant and give you an outsider perspective that may help you in the near future.
This was really good refresher from what we learned in class! These tips will really help companies when they are doing a PR plan and I think they can really help students like me when looking for a job as people can brand themselves as well!
I really appreciate this post because as someone with little understanding of social media, I found it interesting to learn how social media can be used to your advantage. Too often Social Media is given a bad rap as a gossip channel or only for news. However, as it mentions in this article it can be used to promote a brand or an individual. With the right technique, like branding, social media can function as a tool for any type of public relations.
This is a great post. I feel as though social media is a platform that needs to be embraced by all companies. It is not just a way to post pictures and stalk people, but it is a way to grow your company’s publicity.
This is a great post! It is essential for companies to understand that to use Social Media effectively you have to understand the brand of your community, you have to decide what Social Media tools you’re going to use and you have to have a clear idea of the message you want to communicate. Without this your use of social media will not be effective, and you won’t effectively get your message across.
I am currently working on making a flyer for an event in my community. This post was very helpful given my current project. It helped me to differentiate between the community that would be interested in the event and those who would not.
This is a great post. It is informing to know that social media is a effective tool to express to the public what your brand is all about. Through our project our challenges have been to choose what social media tool/tools are appropriate for a “marriage proposal” company and what ones are not. The social media world is the future for all Ad/PR companies and all organizations need to take advantage of it.
This post was so helpful and insightful. I participate actively in social media and see professional businesses using them as well. In our project, we are trying to kickstart our clients social media websites and I realized how difficult it is to find the right things to post and promote. This post will help us get started and eventually create some effective social media profiles.
This is a great post. So helpful and informative.
As our generation becomes more and more reliable on social media as a news outlet, I think it is extremely important that all companies jump on the social media bandwagon to promote their own brand and create more awareness to online users.
This post has many insightful tips. It is always good to hear that the field you want to go into is a great tool to express the public about your company or brand. Social media is a lot more than just pictures and music, it is a great way to show off what your company has. It is a great way to communicate to the public about the product you are trying to sell.
This is a great reminder that although social media is where many companies are having to go to stay in this tech-savy world not every one will work. It is important to tailor to the needs of the company in regards to a company. I think it is better to maybe only have a few social medias that are used constantly as well as to their full potential rather than having a whole bunch of social media and be barely used or not used in a way that is benefitting.
I thought that this was a great post. I believe that social media is a great tool and platform for different businesses and companies. I agree that looking at your community is the way to understand your brand, and your target audience. You have to decide what social media is right to use for you and you have to know who your going to communicate with, along with what your message is so your social media works.
This was such a helpful post, especially since we are using a local restaurant as our client for our project.Through social media such as Facebook and Twitter, we can tailor to our tech savvy community in order to reach out to old and new customers and spread brand awareness.
Important points. Social media offers endless opportunities for brand promotion, and knowing how to take advantage of it is key in todays technological society in order to promote is successfully. In order to do so it is definitely crucial that you have a clear and consistent understanding of your brand, its differentiation, current positioning and goals, as well as a clear picture of your target market and the most efficient way to reach them.
Social Media is clearly one of the most efficient ways to spread brand awareness more rapidly. It takes more effort then just having a website because it requires creativity that would pull clients and increase company success. That’s why we suggested a daily updated facebook page, pinterest, stumble upon, etc… By doing so, Metro will reach out to more people by posting their exquisite dishes online.
Social media is obviously a vital tool to utilize when doing PR or advertising work today. However, social media is often misused, so I think it is important for people to have a good grasp of how and when to use it.
This article is a great reminder that if social media i.e. facebook, twitter, linkedin companies and potential employees can market themselves effectively. Since we are moving towards an era where everyone is starting to embrace more technology it is essential that social media becomes the hub for brand awareness.
It’s good to see that some elements of PR go hand in hand with what I’m majoring in. Analyzing the cities you are going to be working on and figuring out what their goals are will put you a step ahead of the competition and give you a competitive advantage.
I believe that it is essential to utilize social media to get your message across, especially in PR. This post aided me in getting important tips to use in the future in my PR job.
I think this post is really informative for companies utilizing social media. This can really help them differentiate their company from another competitor.
This was a very interesting post! Brand identity is key in establishing a presence in social media. Because social media caters to wide audiences and can easily pin point key audiences it is essential that a business identifies what heir message is in the massive phenomenon of social media. I just accepted a job at Wildfire Interactive which has developed a software which helps businesses navigate social media specifically to their brand. This is a hot area right now and has really made marketing explode. If one thing is certain, it is that brand identity is key in standing out amongst the crowd in social media.
I think its a good idea to understand the community in which you are establishing a social media connection. I think its important to realize that not every social media outlet will be utilized to its full potential based on the demographic of the people. Also the idea of knowing the brand of the community will help better guide which social media to use.
This article does a few things very well. First it gives a brief summary or refresher on many major points in social media. It also shows just how important public relations is becoming, as itself, and even as a compliment to an already successful business. The more successful marketing a company can have, the better off they will be in relaying information to potential clients/consumers of what they have to offer. This was a great post altogether, as it helped me remember the major points of everything we have covered to date.
By having a brand for a city and creating a community within social media for the city seems to be of great importance. the way of the world is advancing towards more technology and with this access to technology there is insight. Insight on what the brand and brand goals are for the city will help increase knowledge of your environment.
This is a great post! This gives insight on what social media actually is, and how important PR is even in successful businesses. Learning how social media can bring brand awareness is key for any company.
very interesting approach to social media. The first and third point seem very similar to me, but either way an essential step. One thing that I might add is being flexible to adjust based on what the customer is asking for. The great thing about social media, and what makes customers feel like they have a personal connection to the company, is the fact that it is a two-way communication. This means that the customers are free to give feedback, as well as voice needs or wishes. Being open to the customers feedback and addressing it is a key part of using social media right. If the customer doesn’t feel like they are being heard, they will stop engaging.
Picking and properly (with an emphasis on properly) utilizing social networks is crucial. It is how the current generations receive the bulk of their information and where the make the majority of their purchasing decisions. I don’t think I could have said it any better.
I completely agree with this post that social media is a huge part of businesses today and how businesses really need to figure out who they are as a brand and what they want to portray to their customers. Social media networks today are so crucial to relate to the current generation and potential young clients/customers.
Great post. this is exactly what i was looking for…