Week 17

I took this class to get a better understanding of how social media works, and how public agencies, specifically water agencies, can utilize social media to enhance communication with their customers. Currently, the agency I work for does not utilize social media. However, our water wholesaler is very active on social media so we have some exposure on social media through them.

This class has made me much more aware of the philosophy associated with social media campaigns and how remedial most government social media campaigns are. I now realize the most important aspect of social media for an agency like mine is not to open social media accounts, create some content, and share and re-tweet as much as possible (which the water industry promotes as the best way to have a successful social media presence). But rather start out with a clear and defined plan and desired outcomes.

At our core, water agencies are all monopolies with defined service areas. There is no need to grow our business or to break into new market places by using social media. For my employer, I think having clearly defined goals for the use of social media, and in turn communicating that to our customers will in the end be the best way to utilize social media for both ours and our customers benefit.

Our main interests in social media are to use it to communicate during emergencies, such as a major earthquake, or situations like water main breaks and water service outages. We also want to use it to make customers aware of changes in local laws and available incentive or education programs. I think explaining to our customers the benefit to liking or following us on social media, rather than sharing or re-tweeting as much as possible will create a mutually beneficial line of communication. This is completely different from all of the water agency social media campaigns that I am familiar with. Most feeds are water industry data dumps. I don’t think your average water agency customer finds benefit to that. Through this class I learned that finding out how you can benefit your customers is a key facet of engagement in social media communication.  It’s clear to me now, that water agencies in general, are not properly prepared to engage their customers on social media

The social media platform I am most interested in utilizing at this time is Nextdoor. I feel that our agency and water agencies in general are able to get great results with very little work on Nextdoor. I think it’s the perfect “gateway” social media platform for local agencies to use to disseminate information to customers while not requiring the previously mentioned planning and engagement that other platforms need to be successful.

Going forward, I hope to bring the lessons learned in this class to the management of our district to craft an online presence that meets our needs and benefits our community.