Making the Most of Social Media: 7 Lessons From Successful Cities

March 4, 2010 | National News

The Fels Institute of Government of the University of Pennsylvania has released a report on their study of the use of social media by local government entities.

Ten of the 79 cities/towns surveyed for the study were from Virginia and three of the 21 follow-up interviews were done with representatives from Virginia cities — Alexandria, Richmond, and Virginia Beach. Particular attention was given to the Richmond Police Department's use of social media. This study is the third in a series of Fels "Promising Practices" publications.

Making the Most of Social Media: 7 Lessons from Successful Cities is written for local governments—cities, counties, townships and their affiliates—that are beginning to experiment with social media and would like to get more out of them. More than two dozen early adopters were interviewed for this report, and their experiences offer some lessons to local governments about what sorts of tools social media offer, how to integrate them into a busy office, and how to use them creatively to be more effective. The report includes a brief discussion of the growth of Social Media over the past several years, including the challenges associated with adopting them for public use - legal, practical and political. Despite these challenges, the public managers interviewed by Fels were bullish about their early experiments: in an environmental of shrinking news rooms and fractured audiences, applications like Facebook and Twitter provide a cheap, efficient way to spread the "Good News" of local government. In this report, Fels distills the experience of cities who have done this both more and less effectively into seven suggestions that cover the full cycle of adoption, from pre-planning to self-evaluation. The Fels Institute hopes that this report will help public managers to put social media squarely at the service of work they are already accountable for, as part of a job they already know very well — and perhaps to help them to do that job even better. Click here to read the full report: Making the Most of Social Media: 7 Lessons from Successful Cities. A number of the interviews conducted for this publication by the Fels Institute will be excerpted as part of an upcoming podcast.

Previous Reports from the "Promising Practices" Series:

• A Quick & Effective Way to Figure out What Works for Your Community, A Research Manual
  This manual was developed for people engaged in improving their communities, be it through government or civic efforts. Written in an engaging and concise manner, it outlines a six-step research process and includes a lengthy appendix of websites to use when researching plus tools to help evaluate promising practices.
• How Cities are Using GIS in PerformanceStat Programs
  Specifically, this report looks at PerformanceStat programs modeled after Baltimore’s CitiStat and New York City’s CompStat, which combine real-time data to drive and realize performance improvements in city services.

"Promising Practices" has only just begun, but overtime will grow in volumes, becoming a place to go to for solutions totough public sector challenges. The Fels Institute is always interesting in hearing from people in the field about what topics would be the most relevant for us to research. Please contact Catherine Lamb, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) to recommend potential topics and research questions. For information on this or other Fels Research & Consulting reports, please contact Allison Brummel at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

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