Social media is a part of our daily routines and as a community, we need to recognize that it is another medium with which we can use to engage our residents as well as another avenue to communicate with them. Unlike other communication mediums (including traditional mail, phone and printed material), social media is a very budget friendly way to reach out to the community as well as being almost instantaneous. But there are challenges accompanied by communicating in this fashion, and we’ll take a look at them right now.
1. Reach
While traditional mailings and telephone calls reach nearly 100% of the people living in town, many people here don’t use social media on a daily basis. In Conquest, there is no real correlation between age and use of Facebook (for example) which means that any messages communicated through this medium may not reach everyone. Sure, there will potentially be some chatter through the grapevine, but there is no guarantee that everyone will get the message.
2. Intention and Actual Use
While the village of Conquest has setup their first Facebook page (feel free to signup here) with the intention of giving us the means to communicate to the residents, the way the page is actually used may end up being a different story. On the positive side of what the page might be actually used for would include such things as sharing stories of the village history, sharing photos from around town and in general celebrating our lovely community. On the negative side we might see complaints, arguments and other inappropriate behavior.
Ideally the page will be used constructively by the municipality and the residents to foster better communication and sense of community between us, but in the end, that just might not be the case. In our case, we will be doing the Facebook page as a test to see how our community engages with us online. If it doesn’t end up being used in that fashion, we will have to reevaluate how social media should be used within our village.
3. Marketing Message
While our initial goal of having a social media presence is to engage our community, we can’t overlook the fact that every item we post is an opportunity to announce to people outside of our community what is going on here. As a marketing vehicle our social media communications provide us with the opportunity to create interest for investment right here at home and we can’t overlook the opportunity. When you consider the number of villages in our area that are not actively marketing their community as the perfect place to live or to run a business you realize that we have a tremendous opportunity to grow our town.
By highlighting the positive changes in our community, we set the stage for someone to take a serious look at making Conquest their home. No one wants to live somewhere that has nothing going on, and by sharing the events going on in our community (no matter how small), we really have a chance to shine.
4. Time Commitment
Social media as a whole can be a big time commitment. If you are not only broadcasting messages but engaging with your readers and fans, you quickly find that time flies by faster than you had imagined. In Conquest, we only have a small amount of budgeted hours for the administrator which does not leave a lot of time for social media campaigns.
In order for our social media efforts to work, we will have clear boundaries with respect to time. Based on the fact that this will be one of many ways that we communicate from the village office we cannot afford to spend a large amount of time on it. Due to it also being a new thing for us, we will have to examine our actual time use at a future date to see how we are doing.
While these are certainly not all of the challenges that we will face when it comes to utilizing social media as a communication tool, they are certainly things that need to be considered. While we have clear goals for our Facebook page, we will not know how our residents will use it until we let them know it is there. Like many marketing and communication plans, we will have to evaluate how this process is working for our community as time goes on, make the required changes and work towards building a better community both online and offline.
Topics #conquest #facebook #social media