Public Education
Let’s Be Social
With thorough planning, a municipal waste management service can successfully use any number of social media platforms to reach residents, foster participation and promote waste diversion.
John Watson
For many years, most municipal solid waste management services have used traditional print communication tools like calendars, flyers, brochures and advertisements, to reach residents. These traditional tools definitely help to raise awareness, motivate participation and increase waste diversion. However they are all “one way” tools: communication by a municipality to residents. Thanks to the Internet and mobile devices like smart phones and tablets, people are now communicating with each other through engaging social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Many waste management services are now exploring how they can add social media to their toolbox of communication tools. Why not reach residents using social media if that’s where the residents are? Social media, by its very nature, is social. Social media is “two way”: interactions and conversations occur back and forth between a municipality and residents. Social media is a new way of communicating, and municipalities must be properly prepared to use social media efficiently to maximize successes.
Before diving head-first into social media, it is important to thoroughly plan your program, including determining target audiences and their needs, which social media platforms are most appropriate to use, how to evaluate results and what resources will be allocated to manage your program.
Social Media Pilot Projects
In 2010, recognizing that social media could be an effective communication tool if used appropriately, the Regional Municipality of Halton (Ontario, Canada) formed a cross-department social media committee which conducted research, determined best practices, and set goals and objectives. This work led to the development of a formal social media policy under which all of Halton’s social media programs would function. That year, Halton started three social media pilot projects. Two of the pilots were very successful (and still continue) and best practices from them have informed any new social media initiative being launched at Halton Region.
In spring 2011, Halton’s Waste Management Services submitted a social media proposal to the committee for consideration. Just like a strategic communications plan, Halton Waste Management Services’ social media program included a clear goal and target audience, identified various objectives and evaluation tools. The proposal to launch Twitter and a blog was endorsed by three different management teams before being approved by the social media committee in May.
Choosing the program name was a bit of a challenge. Several options were tested with Waste Management Services staff, staff in other departments, and with friends and family. HaltonWaste was considered as it encompasses our various program areas, however there was a fear it would be viewed negatively. Halton3Rs and HaltonRRR were also considered, but many adults didn’t know what the 3Rs were without being prompted. Ultimately, HaltonRecycles was selected as it sounds positive, is memorable, and at 14 characters, would be short enough for inclusion in tweets.
Halton’s creative services team developed the HaltonRecycles visual look. In keeping with the personal tone of social media, it was decided to include photo headshots of the staff members involved with the program so that residents could put a face and name to who it was they were engaging with. On Twitter, staff end their tweets with their personal initials (for example ^jw). There are also first-person biographies of each staff person on the blog. YouTube videos about waste management topics feature the team members. The premise is that “real life” people are speaking and engaging with residents.
Social Media Platforms
There are a multitude of social media platforms available to use. Some platforms may be more appropriate than others, depending upon the needs of your target audience or your ability to regularly use and monitor the platform:
Facebook: This is the most popular social media platform. On their profiles, users can update their status, upload photos or videos, like organizations or causes, and respond to events. If you are going to use Facebook, a best practice is to update your profile once a day. HaltonRecycles has just begun to use Facebook for an events page to promote its community open house celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Halton Waste Management Site.
LinkedIn: A network in which professionals post their résumé and make connections with others.
Blogging: A type of “web log,” in which stories or articles are presented in reverse chronological order. Readers can comment on blog posts. Popular blog sites include WordPress and Blogger. HaltonRecyles uses WordPress and blogs at www.haltonrecycles.ca, with the aim to post a new story twice a week. The more frequently a blog is updated, the more likely readers will return.
Twitter: A “micro-blogging” site where users can post 140-character posts (called “tweets”) to their followers. Followers can “re-tweet,” thereby extending the reach of a post. Twitter users can incorporate hashtags (like #HaltonCompost) in their tweets—if a particular hashtag is used a lot during a relatively short period of time, it creates a “trend.” Using the handle @HaltonRecycles, Halton tweets about waste management eight to 10 times per weekday.
YouTube: The second most used search engine in the world (after Google). Users can view and upload videos, and make comments. An extremely popular video is said to go “viral,” but you can’t force a video to go viral. If you are going to post multiple videos to YouTube, it is recommended you have a “channel” so all your videos can be found in one place. Online video viewing habits are short—five minutes is considered a long video. HaltonRecyles has a YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/haltonrecycles) where it posts internally-produced and externally-produced videos.
Flickr: Similar to YouTube, but users primarily post photos instead of videos. Users can follow other users, who often create themes.
Pinterest: Relatively new, it is quickly becoming an extremely popular social media platform. Users “pin” images to “boards” and others can “repin” the images. The most popular boards have to do with wedding planning and home décor. HaltonRecycles has a number of boards, including interesting infographics, books about the environment and landfill technology (www.pinterest.com/haltonrecycles).
FourSquare: Used primarily on mobile devices, users can “check in” at physical locations like a landfill site, and leave comments about their experiences. Even if you don’t participate in FourSquare, it is recommended you monitor your locations (landfill, transfer stations, etc.) to see what is being said about your locations—are hours correct, are the “tips” accurate?
Once you’ve determined which social media platforms your program may want to use, you need to determine what resources you can allocate towards the program.
Staffing Requirements
In an era of fiscal restraint, one main advantage to using social media is that it’s essentially free. It doesn’t cost anything to use most social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. The costs to social media have to do with staffing requirements. In Halton, 10 staff members—representing Planning, Collections and Landfill—were selected to be part of the HaltonRecycles social media team. These were existing staff members, and social media was added to their regular job duties. Having ten staff members from different work groups enables HaltonRecycles to have a variety of subject matter experts, offer differing voices or opinions on topics, and enables the social media workload to be spread out.
Each team member works a half-day shift, once per week, in which they are required to use and monitor the HaltonRecycles social media platforms. The objective is to tweet four to five times a shift (so eight to 10 tweets per day), publish a new blog post twice a week and post a new video once a month.
Most of the team had personal experience using Facebook, but their knowledge and use of other social media platforms was quite limited. A seven hour training program, developed in-house, was delivered over three days. There were homework assignments to help familiarize staff with the new platforms including an online scavenger hunt, tweet writing and blog post writing. Follow up training has included photography, video (script development, filming, and editing) and tutorials about using new platforms.
Some think that social media is a “young person’s tool,” so they feel assigning social media use and monitoring to a student or intern is a good fit. You need to consider whether the student or intern has a complete understanding of your programs and services (including political nuances surrounding various topics), and has the authority to represent your municipality publicly.
Responding to Comments
The whole purpose of social media is to be “social”—to encourage dialogue and conversation with residents. If you tweet something or post a blog post, people will respond or comment. It may be scary, but it’s a good thing. Commenting indicates people are engaged with your program. If someone is extremely upset about a particular topic, take the conversation “offline.” Publicly invite the person to e-mail you or call you directly.
While others can comment on your social media platforms, you can also comment on their social media platforms. The most important thing to remember about commenting is that you need to be transparent. If a Facebook group is opposed to your waste management infrastructure project, you should identify yourself (including your job title) if you comment on their page. There’s nothing worse than being called out as a “plant.”
HaltonRecycles developed a “decision tree” to assist the team with knowing when, or if, to respond to particular comments. Originally, the decision tree was quite complicated, but has now been simplified to be a simple “red, yellow, green” chart. There’s also a Start of Shift Checklist to remind team members what they should be covering during their shift. Staff complete an End of Shift Log about their shift, enabling the next shift to know what had happened previously.
Evaluating and Promoting Your Program
It is extremely important to plan how you will evaluate your social media program. Most social media platforms can provide you with basic results like number of followers, number of page views, etc. Programs like Klout, Kred Story, PeerIndex, PinReach, Sysomos, TweetReach and TwentyFeet offer additional means of evaluating the reach of your program. For example, it can be demonstrated that over an eight month period, HaltonRecycles made 925,524 impressions from 1,572 Twitter mentions.
Once you launch your social media program, remember it needs to be promoted. Not all residents expect to find a municipal waste management service using a social media platform. In Halton, traditional communication tools like newsletter articles, inclusion in print advertisements, mobile signs, Halton’s Web site, media relations and vehicle wraps have helped to raise the profile of HaltonRecycles.
It must be remembered that social media is an “addition to” traditional communication tools and not an “instead of.” Research has continued to show that residents have various communication preferences and some will always continue to favour print materials over online and social media. In Halton Region, to most effectively reach residents, social media is used in conjunction with existing communication tools. We are simply engaging with some residents on a new platform that they prefer.
Social media is exciting—it is fresh, rewarding and ever-changing. With thorough planning, a municipal waste management service can successfully use any number of social media platforms to reach residents, foster participation and promote waste diversion.
John Watson is the Waste Diversion Education Coordinator at Halton Region, where over the past five years he’s delivered more than 1,000 workshops about the 3Rs to over 100,000 participants. He coordinates Halton Region’s waste management communications and outreach programs, including its social media program HaltonRecycles. John can be reached at (905) 825-6000, etc. 8238 or via e-mail at [email protected].
Sidebar
We invite you to check out HaltonRecycles—we’d love to hear from you!
Twitter: @HaltonRecycles www.twitter.com/haltonrecycles
Blog: www.haltonrecycles.ca
YouTube: www.youtube.com/haltonrecycles
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/haltonrecycles