Week 8B

I believe that some form of visuals work for every business using social media, including water districts. The nature of posting on social media is that the posts are brief; pictures really add a depth of understanding to a post. For example, if a water district were to post about a community event, it’s difficult to convey the general feel of the event. By adding a few pictures it really helps the reader to understand what the event was like.

Water districts have large amounts of infrastructure, AKA waterworks. Trying to explain waterworks in a post is pretty much impossible. Add a few pictures, and people can understand much better about what you are talking about.

San Diego County Water Authority (SDCWA)

The SDCWA is a regional water wholesaler for San Diego County. They have an extensive online presence relatively speaking when compared to most water agencies. The visual social media that the SDCWA uses are Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and Twitter.

On Facebook, the SDCWA has about 8,000 followers. In general they post multiple times a day. They highlight education programs, infrastructure, and relevant news topics. On their posts, they are getting from 0-100 likes and rarely get comments, which is pretty typical for the industry as a whole.

Outside of pictures at events, news story photography, and pictures of their projects, the imagery they use is mostly stock images which tend to make their posts less engaging. Unfortunately, public agencies don’t have a budget for professional photography, but I think in some instances they could do a better job with the images they use. For example, they promote fixing leaks with stock photos of dripping faucets and showerheads. I think they could take photos showing of the leaks that they fix on their infrastructure and use those to promote fixing leaks.

They also post a few educational videos which they produce. I think the videos are well done and are effective in communicating a message to the public. Overall, I think the SDCWA does a good job with the limited resources that they have for imagery on their Facebook page

On Twitter the SDCWA has about 3,000 followers and gets about the same number of likes as their Facebook page. The use of visuals mirrors what is seen on their Facebook page.

Their YouTube channel has 250 subscribers and their different videos can get anywhere from about 20 views to over 35,000. The videos are well done and consist of educational videos, information on projects, and PSA’s. The videos that get the most views tend to be about the drought, which had captured the public’s interest at the time. I think that their YouTube channel has a lot of great information, but someone has to have the time to sit through the videos. I think that the SDCWA could post the videos on their Facebook and Twitter accounts to make them more accessible.

Their Flickr page has 11 followers. The photos they share depict the SDCWA’s public outreach events. I really liked the photos, but based on the number of followers it seems that the daily activities of government outreach staff are not that interesting. Really, I think their Flickr page is a way to share photos for the agency staff themselves rather than engaging the public.

Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD)

MWD is the largest water district in the United States. The visual media sites it uses are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. Like the SDCWA, MWD uses social media quite extensively compared to most water agencies.

MWD’s Facebook page has about 19,000 followers. They usually post a few times a week. The posts get anywhere from 0-100 likes and a handful of comments. MWD posts on educational events, PSA’s, and water supply information.

For an agency with the resources that MWD has, I am disappointed on the lack of visuals on their Facebook page. I think they could do a much better job collecting images from their service territory (all of southern California) to share. I did not find their page “engaging” more like a blog posting information. I do not feel their Facebook page is being used as effectively as it could be, and their visuals are sorely lacking.

Their Twitter page has about 3,300 followers and their posts get 0-100 likes. Their Twitter page has a lot more community outreach pictures than their Facebook page. It does a much better job of communicating the human element of their business than what is seen on their Facebook page.

 MWD’s YouTube page has 97 followers and a handful of videos. It’s obvious that they do not invest many resources in this platform. If it went away, no one would notice.

Their Instagram page has about 1,600 followers. MWD posts lots of community photos which seem to act as a repository rather than an effort to engage the public.

California Water Resources Control Board (State Board)

The State Board is a regulatory agency that deals with water quality, rights, and recently water supply issues within the state. The State Board has a Twitter account which has about 6,200 followers and depending on what’s going on in the state can post anywhere from a few times a week to a few time a day. They are lucky if anyone likes their posts. They do not use many visuals and when they do they are mostly infographics and maps.

I can’t think why anyone would follow this page unless they were in the water industry or the media. The information on their Twitter account does not lend itself to using a lot of visuals.  I would say that the maps and graphics they utilize are useful but hardly compelling.

Pure Water San Diego (Pure Water)

Pure Water is a City of San Diego program that aims to produce about 1/3 of the drinking water in San Diego by purifying wastewater.

Week 8

I linked an Instagram account to my business' Facebook page

https://instagram.com/socalwaterdistrict

 Visual Networks for Business

As a public agency, a few of the visual networks stand out as the most useful. Facebook serves as a kind of home base or hub for the different social media platforms. I can’t imagine a business not utilizing Facebook as part of its social media presence. It would be the first platform I would utilize.

YouTube enables public agencies to distribute educational video content to its constituents easily. Videos can keep the community informed on projects, or education programs. A water district can use YouTube to promote water awareness educational videos, such as landscape training, and explain capital improvement projects. I won’t be using YouTube as part of this class, because I have no ability to create any worthwhile content. However, if the Southern California Water District was a real agency I would definitely create a channel on YouTube.

Twitter can support an agency’s other online platforms. In addition, Twitter would be very useful in case of an emergency situation such as a large earthquake or fire. Public agencies would be able to push out up to date information via Twitter regarding hazards or in the case of water districts, water quality issues during an emergency (boil water alerts).

Instagram could be useful for an agency. The problem is creating content. Inherently, water agencies in general are pretty boring. Some of the most interesting content, such as water treatment facilities, are subject to Homeland Security regulations, very little imagery could be posted of those types of facilities. If an agency does a lot of events, or is involved in new capital improvement projects I can see how Instagram would be useful.

I view the rest of the listed visual networks as being less useful to public water agencies as part of a social media presence. I’m sure water agencies with a different customer base (large regional agencies) might be able to use Google+ but I don’t see much use in Tumblr, Pinterest, or particularly Snapchat. The temporary nature of Snapchat does not lend itself to water agency business.

Week 7B

I chose to use the scheduling tool for these posts because they each of them are items that will be relevant in the near future. It looks like rain next week so I scheduled a post reminding people of the state laws restricting irrigation during rainy periods. Also, next week is Fix a Leak Week, so I scheduled a post about that. Lastly, each week on Thursday, the US drought monitor publishes a map depicting the drought conditions across the state. People seem to have an interest in that info, so I posted a link to appear on Thursday afternoon.

I hope people will find these posts of interest because they are providing timely information.

Week 7A

Metropolitan Water District of Southern California

San Diego County Water Authority

Pure Water San Diego

State of California Water Resources Control Board

State of California Department of Water Resources

Municipal Water District of Orange County

Eastern Municipal Water District

The primary reason I chose these agencies is that they are all government agencies. My “business” is a public water agency and therefore cannot promote or provide a forum for private businesses. Each of these agencies is either in the water industry or regulates water in the state of California.

I hope to gather relevant articles and content from each of these agencies to provide information to my customer base.

Water agencies would not use this feature to grow its business, rather to raise awareness in the general public about water related issues, programs, or possibly status updates on public works projects.

Week 6

The term post reach refers at anyone who has seen your post, while post engagement signifies that someone has clicked, responded, liked, etc. your post. When I think about these two terms it reminds me of the early days of the internet and chat rooms. Anyone could enter or “reach” a chat room but that did not mean that they participated in the conversation they could just “lurk”. That’s what I did for the most part in chat rooms back in the day. However, every now and again someone would say something in one of these chat rooms that would get my attention and I would participate or “engage” in the conversation.

I think the whole point of having an online presence for businesses is to engage existing and hopefully new customers. Post engagement seems critical to that goal. Meanwhile, post reach alone is better than nothing but probably means little to a successful social media campaign for a business. I cannot count how many times messaging reaches me each day on the internet. It all tends to be background noise, part of the experience of being online.

Going back to my chat room analogy, I would enter chat rooms just to have something in the background while I did other things on the computer. It would take something of real interest to get me to engage in the chat room conversation and it’s the same way today on social media. Someone (or entity) really has to post something of personal interest to get me to stop what I am doing and engage. Additionally, there is also a timeliness factor involved when trying to bridge the gap from just reaching someone to getting engagement. In general, I do not always need a product or service but when I do if your business has a relevant message and I have a good experience, I’ll likely come back.

Being able to distinguish what messages work and when they work is important for understanding how to communicate with customers via social media. Facebook Insights is a tool that can provide a business with the data to understand how their messaging is being consumed. Facebook Insights provides you with the days and times your customers are online, which is important for a business to know. Additionally, Facebook Insights provides demographic, location, and numbers for people who liked your page. Using this data a business can begin to craft timely messages for the customers who have engaged with their Facebook page. If I know that I have a following of customers who is online after work, I can focus my messaging during that timeframe. Additionally, if I find most of my customers are under 30, I’ll refine my message for that age group. By using the tools available in Facebook Insights, a business can learn to produce that timely message that catches customers’ attention and hopefully results in engagement.