TOPIC: Organizational Uses

I absolutely love the community of Cache Valley. I have lived here my entire life and have been able to rub shoulders with some amazing individuals. 

One such opportunity that I have had is to serve on the Logan Downtown Alliance Marketing Committee. It is such a fun environment be around successful business owners and other members of the community. Part of my job is to run the social media campaigns for the Alliance. It's a fun job that, for the most part, isn't hard to come up with content. Being on this committee made me wonder, how are other ways that we, and Logan City, can better benefit from using social media to interact with members of the community. 

I recently read an article by Tod Newcome titled: "The City that Incorporated Social Media." In it he talked about Roanoke, VA and their uses of social media. What I liked about this article was how simple it made social media for cities sound. 

"...accounts also act much like a 311 service. While citizens can still notify the city about a problem via a phone hotline, social media followers increasingly use the city’s Facebook and Twitter pages to query, complain or ask for help. “It’s become a highly effective way to contact us,” says Melinda Mayo, communications and media officer."

I think that Logan City does an excellent job at using social media to announce news, but could improve on answering inquiries made by members of the city and outlying neighborhoods.  Because so many more people are feeling more comfortable messaging rather than calling a city, (source) it's important for a city to have a structured communications network established. 

Another way I think cities can uses social media, is to relay important emergency information like road closures and power outages. Since people already post about that stuff on social media, if a city was actively looking for questions and could answer them quickly, it could help put the public's minds at ease. 

I also liked what this article from CivicPlus talked about: 

"Several Parks and Recreation departments use social media to remind the community of upcoming activities and classes to register for. Within the social media post they’re linking to an online registration form to boost participation by making it easy to sign up." 

If more cities, even smaller ones like Nibley and North Logan, did things like this, I think there would be more participation in city-wide events. This could lead to reduced crime (because everyone is banded together), more friendly communities, and better collaboration on future projects.

I think that all cities should have at least one person dedicated to the social media and online presence of their community to stay in touch with the members of the community and spread news and events quicker than traditional methods.