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BEST PRACTICES FOR USING SOCIAL MEDIA FOR ENGAGING CITIZENS IN MUNICIPALITIES

Andrew Rinaldi

A Major Project Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Education

December 2013 Committee: Dr. Paul Cesarini, Advisor Dr. Kathryn Hoff Dr. Steven Cady

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2013 Andrew Rinaldi All Rights Reserved

iii ABSTRACT

Dr. Paul Cesarini, Advisor

Municipalities today are faced with many challenges and one of those challenges is engaging more with the community. Social media is one area many municipalities have not tapped into to connect with the community. Municipalities that have branched out into social media are using Facebook and Twitter are their main engagement tools. The purpose of this study is to look at the municipalities out there that are best practices when it comes to using social media to engage and connect with the community. The problem of this study was to look at three best practice municipalities and compare them to the base municipality of Toledo, Ohio. The objectives of this study is to help provide recommendations to the City of Toledo of things they should focus on with using social media for engagement. Results from this study show common and unique things the City of Toledo could utilize as they start to use social media to engage with the community. Common platforms they should use are Facebook and Twitter with YouTube being a newer platform some municipalities have started to use. All municipalities used social media to provide information that drove people back to the municipalitys website.

iv This is dedicated to my dad as proof that I did not give up and I set out to do my best. 12/14/1940 - 01/19/2004

v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge the following people. First of all God for giving me all the opportunities he has in my life and allowing me to meet the people I have met. My project committee, Dr. Paul Cesarini, Dr. Kathryn Hoff, and Dr. Steven Cady, for the knowledge and help they have given me throughout the entire process of creating this study. Last, to my family and friends who have put up with me through this process and for being there when I needed to talk.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Section I: Background & Goals ..........................................................................................1 Statement of the Project & Background Info .............................................................1 Objectives of the Study ..............................................................................................2 Definition of Terms....................................................................................................2 Literature Review.......................................................................................................2 Social Media for Community Engagement....................................................4 Social Network Tools ....................................................................................7 Facebook ............................................................................................7 Twitter ................................................................................................8 Google+ .............................................................................................8 Blogging Tools...............................................................................................10 Wordpress ..........................................................................................10 Tumblr................................................................................................11 Blogger ...............................................................................................11 Co-Creative Tools ..........................................................................................12 Huddle ................................................................................................12 Basecamp ...........................................................................................13 Google Docs.......................................................................................14 Video Sharing & Streaming ...........................................................................15 Youtube ..............................................................................................15

vii Vimeo.................................................................................................16 Ustream ..............................................................................................16 Livestream..........................................................................................16 BlogTV ..............................................................................................17 Social Media Challenges for Municipality ....................................................17 A Case for Social Media:: The 44th President of The United States..............18 Summary ........................................................................................................20 Section II: Procedures .........................................................................................................21 Investigation Procedure .............................................................................................21 Benchmarking Process ...............................................................................................22 Step 1: Project Conception.................................................................22 Step 2: Planning .................................................................................23 Step 3: Preliminary Data Collection ..................................................23 Step 4: Best-in-class Selection ...........................................................23 Step 5: Best-in-class Data Collection ................................................24 Step 6: Assessment ............................................................................24 Step 7: Implementation Planning .......................................................25 Section III: Description/Methodology/Development ........................................................26 Restatement of Projects & Outcomes ........................................................................26 Research Design.........................................................................................................27 Population Sample ....................................................................................................27

viii Participants ................................................................................................................28 Data Collection Instrument ........................................................................................30 Procedure of Data Analysis .......................................................................................31 Protection of Human Subjects ...................................................................................31 Timeline .....................................................................................................................32 Budget ........................................................................................................................34 Section IV: Results & Recommendations ..........................................................................35 Findings......................................................................................................................35 Quantitative Results ...................................................................................................35 Qualitative Results .....................................................................................................37 Making Social Media a Strategic Priority......................................................37 Need for Social Media .......................................................................37 Social Media Accomplishments ........................................................39 Engagement of Citizens .....................................................................41 Social media Strategy & Policies ...................................................................42 Overview of Social Media Strategy ...................................................42 Development of Social Media Strategy .............................................44 Approval Process o Social Media Strategy........................................45 Social Media Platform ...................................................................................47 Designing the Platform & Tools ........................................................47 Maintaining the Platform & Tools .....................................................48

ix Measuring Effectiveness ....................................................................49 Overcoming Challenges for Social Media ....................................................50 Lessons Learned.............................................................................................52 Do Differently in the Future ..........................................................................54 Future Issues and Use ....................................................................................55 Discussion & Conclusions .........................................................................................57 Implications for Practice ................................................................................57 Limitations of Study ......................................................................................58 Future Research and Projects to Consider .....................................................59 References ..............................................................................................................................61 Appendices .............................................................................................................................66 Appendix A Definition of Terms ............................................................................66 Appendix B Consent Letters ...................................................................................71 Appendix C Respondent Interview Transcriptions .................................................74 Appendix D Interview Script ..................................................................................106 Appendix E Interview Questions ............................................................................108 Appendix F HSRB Approval ..................................................................................110 Appendix F Quantitative Response Table ..............................................................111 Appendix F City of Toledo Recommendations Report ..........................................112

1 SECTION I: BACKGROUND & GOALS Statement of the Project & Background Information The purpose of this benchmark study was to learn what other municipalities are doing in relation to social media and engaging their community citizens and compare this to the base municipality of Toledo, Ohio. Municipalities are commonly known as a city, town, village, or a small grouping of them, and governed by a mayor and city council or municipal council (Wikipedia, April 24, 2012). The current economy has municipalities being asked to do more with less like many other businesses, organizations, and individuals. An article about Northville, Michigan supports this claim. In the article it was stated, Providing the same level of services and in some cases doing it better with less staff has become a normal thing at city hall in Northville (Huhman, 2012, p.1). A new communications and engagement outlet for municipalities that has emerged is the use of social media. The types of platforms looked at were social networks, blogs, video sharing and streaming, and internal co-creative tools. Municipalities that use social media tools were only using them at a fraction of their full potential. The best use for municipalities with social media is to connect to their citizens by providing them with information, updates on projects, and other news that is not normally shared through traditional media outlets. Along with providing citizens with information, municipalities could use social media to provide opportunities to get feedback and thoughts on a particular topic and allow citizens to engage in conversation.

2 A solution to the lack of social media used by a municipality would be to provide a place that showcases the best social media tools.

Objectives of the Study When the benchmarking study was conducted an evidence-based approach was taken. The evidence-based approach looked at the history, research, tools, and cases related to the topic that was being studied. The objectives of this study were: 1. to understand why a municipality should utilize social media. 2. to learn how municipalities integrate and utilize social media in an existing structure. 3. to understand the cost to approve, plan, design, and deliver social media to citizens. 4. to understand the challenges and lessons learned for utilizing social media. 5. learn about future issues a municipality will have to deal with for social media. Definition of Terms The full list of terms (identification and description of resources) used in this study can be found in Appendix A. Literature Review Historically people have associated social media as Facebook and Twitter, but social media is more than that. Social media is used to describe the activities, practices, and behaviors among communities of people who gather online to share information,

3 knowledge, and opinions using conversational media (Safko & Brake, 2009, p. 6). Social media can also be defined as a group of new online media, which shares most or all of the following characteristics: participation, openness, conversation, community, and connectedness (Mayfield, 2008). Pendergraft and Associates (2009) suggest three reasons why a municipality would want to use social media: 1. Social media allows new audiences to engage and connect. 2. Social media helps to increase participation in government. 3. Social media helps to inform citizens about what is going on and why. In addition, the rapid development and adoption of devices that enable people to connect anywhere is making social media an opportunity a citys government and its leaders can utilize to communicate to its citizens. According to the 2009 Horizon Report (Johnson, Levine & Smith, 2009), within one year or less, mobile devices will have the capability to support third party applications. This can be seen today as most new phones have the ability to support third party applications. The 2010 Horizon Report (Johnson, Levine, Smith, & Stone, 2010) took the idea of mobiles one step further by stating that the mobile computer would be common within one year or less. The 2010 Horizon Report not only mentions the ability of mobile smart phones, but also the ability of netbooks and laptops. This has all become possible through the advancement of cellularbased hot-spots, mobile broadband cards, and wi-fi hot-spots, which have become very common among places where people congregate or meet. The majority of cellular devices today can access the Internet in some capacity. Many netbooks come with the

4 ability to connect to cellular networks for Internet access and this allows people to connect on-the-go. With the invention of new mobile technologies, such as Apples iPad with cellular connectivity, it is only a matter of time before more people connect via distance versus in person. Social Media for Community Engagement Social media is all about engagement and involving the online user population. Before a conversation is started, and certainly to continue one, you have to engage your audience (Safko & Brake, 2009, p. 7). Sending an email invitation to users to read your newsletter, view an article, take a survey, or join an event, starts the engagement process. Platforms such as Facebook offer similar features that allow a person to share links, conduct polls, and send out event invitations. When looking at social media platforms and tools, there was a need to understand how they best worked for a municipality. To help understand the functional use of the platforms, each was placed into a two-by-two diagram based on two dimensions. The first dimension is based on the timing of the interaction. Synchronous means working together at the same time, and in the online world, chat rooms and online conferences are examples of this (WorldWideLearn, n.d.). Asynchronous is the relaying of information with a time lag. Discussion forums and email are two examples of how asynchronous communication is [used] (WorldWideLearn, n.d.). Synchronous is real time interaction, while asynchronous is on the participants own time. The second dimension focuses on the purpose of the interaction. Informing is the imparting of information to make aware

5 of something (The Free Dictionary, n.d.). Collaborating is a working practice whereby individuals work together with a common purpose to achieve business benefit (Aiim, n.d.). Informing focuses on disseminating information to ensure understanding, while collaborating focuses on interacting to come to a joint conclusion. The resulting four categories were then used to place each platform into a two-by-two diagram (see Figure 1). This diagram is an adapted version that can be found in the

Figure 1 City Social Media Engagement Model

6 Figure 1 above was Adapted from The Change Handbook: Causes, The Definitive Resource on Today's Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems (p. 636), by P. Holman, T. Devane, and S. Cady (Editors), 2007, San Francisco, CA:Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. Adapted with permission. Further, when determining which tool to use for a situation, the routine and complex nature of the tools features were an important determining factor. The more complex and less routine items require more synchronous and collaborative use of the tools. As can be seen in the Figure, one platform can be utilized in more than one quadrant; in other words, for more than one purpose. The first quadrant encompasses asynchronous and informing tools. These tools are used for providing information to the public and are accessible through a searchable archive. The second quadrant encompasses asynchronous and collaborating tools. These tools are used for collaborating with others, within the municipality with delayed timing of responses. The third quadrant encompasses synchronous and informing tools. These tools are used to provide live updates, breaking news, and alerts. The fourth quadrant encompasses synchronous and collaborating tools. These tools are used for collaboration among two or more people at the same time. Each person is able to provide feedback and make changes. All others involved are able to see the change instantly and contribute pending their permissions. A variety of social media resources were looked at regarding how a municipality could use them to engage citizens. The problem was that there were so many resources available that a municipality could not decide on which ones to use and where to begin.

7 Three areas were identified that a municipality should consider when engaging their citizens. These areas were social networks, blogging tools, and video sharing and streaming tools. For internal collaboration in a municipality co-creative tools were looked at. The platforms and tools listed below should be considered as concepts and ideas when a municipality develops their social media engagement strategy. Social Network Tools Social networks allow a person to create a personal profile page to post information about themselves or their business, invite people to join their network, join groups, blast messages and events, connect with other people and much more (Hay, 2009, p.137). Below are the top social networking tools that complimented and supported this study. Facebook. Connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep in touch with friends, post photos, share links and exchange other information (Webopedia, n.d., p.1). The features of Facebook best place it in Quadrants one and three of the model. Quadrant 1: Facebook offers the ability to share links, videos, and photos from third party applications or a municipality's website. For example, a municipality administrator can post an update on leaf pickup dates and have it link back to the website for specific details. Quadrant 3: Facebook offers the ability to post status updates. This ability can be used to provide updates as they happen at an event or as breaking

8 news happens. A good example would be if the mayor of a municipality attends a conference, the mayor could provide updates on what was happening at the conference. Twitter. Twitter is A free social messaging tool that lets people stay connected through brief text message updates up to 140 characters in length (Webopedia, n.d.). The features of Twitter, like Facebook best place it in quadrants one and three. Quadrant 1: Twitters search ability allows a person to search for specific terms. For example, a person wants to know what people were saying about the iPhone 4 launch at Apples World Wide Developers Conference in 2010. That person could search for WWDC 2010 and iPhone 4 and see all the tweets about the event. Quadrant 3: Twitter offers the ability to quickly post updates that allow for live updates from an event. A good example of this would be the mayor attends an event and can provide minute-by-minute updates on what was happening at the event to keep citizens informed. These types of updates are especially important if the conferences is related to something that will impact the municipality. Google + (plus). Google Plus is defined as Googles social networking project...sought to replicate the way people interact offline more closely than is the case in other social networking services, such as Facebook and Twitter. The projects slogan is Real-life sharing rethought for the web (Whatis.com, 2011). The features of Google

9 Plus best place it in quadrants one and four. Google Plus excels beyond the capabilities of Facebook with the ability of Hangouts and utilizes them for synchronous document collaboration with video, audio, and text chat. Quadrant 1: Google Plus offers the ability to share links, photos, and videos from third party tools and a municipalitys website. Just like the example given for Facebook, a staff member has the ability to post a quick reminder or update on the municipalitys Google Plus page and link back to the website for specific details. Quadrant 4: Google Pluss ability to offer synchronous collaboration of documents with chat and video sets it apart from other social networking sites. Google Plus Hangouts allows for multiple people to have a video or audio chat while screen sharing, reviewing and editing a document, or discussing ideas for a new project. Google Plus also offers a feature called Circles where only those groups are allowed to participate in the hangout. For example, a municipality has a document that has crossdepartmental uses. The person in charge of that document could invite an individual division or both divisions, based on the separate circles. For this study LinkedIn and MySpace were not considered. LinkedIn was not considered due to the professional business nature of networking. MySpace was not considered due to losing many users to new social networking platforms, such as Facebook. MySpace in the past year has lain off 47% of the workforce (Hudson, 2011).

10 The new plan for MySpace could be a network for musicians. In June of 2011, new CEO of MySpace, Tim Vanderhook, announced that Justin Timberlake would be part owner in the company (Bruno, 2011). The idea was to have a community where artists could be discovered and share their talents (Bruno, 2011). Blogging Tools There are a wide variety of blogging platforms. Blogging has become a more and more sought out media to be used as a communication tool for informing the citizens among municipalities. A blog is an online diary with articles, photos, Web links, or other entries made by the blogs' creators, or "bloggers" (What is Blogging, 2006, p.1). Below are the best blogging tools to consider when building a social media strategy for a municipality. WordPress. WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and a dynamic content management system (CMS) based on PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) and My Structured Query Language (MySQL) (Wikipedia, 2012). The features of WordPress best place it in quadrants one and three. Quadrant 1: WordPresss blogging feature allows a person to provide updates and other news for all to see. For example, a municipality could provide an update from an event and provide links to pictures or a video from the event. Quadrant 3: WordPress offers the feature of adding additional pages that provide custom content. With a custom content page a live broadcast

11 video stream could be added. Live broadcasting will be discussed later in the video sharing and streaming section. A good example would be a virtual town hall meeting page. A municipality could create a landing page for live town hall meetings with the video player embedded and provide a link to the page on social networks. Tumblr. Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, email, or wherever you happen to be (Tumblr, n.d.). The features of Tumblr best place it in quadrants one and three. Quadrant 1: Very similar to WordPresss blogging feature, Tumblr provides the ability to provide updates through text, photos, videos, and links. Just how a municipality would use WordPress to provide a news or event update, they could do the same in Tumblr. Quadrant 3: Where Tumblr differs from other blogs is the hybrid design of the tool. Tumblr allows people to post quick, status-like updates similar to Twitter. For this ability Tumblr is great for a municipality to provide updates similar to how they would through Twitter. Blogger. Blogger is A web site, where you write stuff on an ongoing basis. New stuff shows up at the top, so your visitors can read what's new (Blogger, n.d.). The features of Blogger, similar to WordPress and Tumblr best place it in quadrants one and three.

12 Quadrant 1: Blogger, just like WordPress and Tumblr offers the ability for municipalities to post updates with links, photos, and videos for citizens to view. Quadrant 3: Blogger allows a person to create custom pages similar to WordPress. These custom pages allow for embedded video players. A municipality could add their live broadcasting player to the page and navigate citizens to that page when they are conducting a town hall meeting. Co-Creative Tools Co-creative tools allow multiple people to work together and co-edit a document, presentation, report, etc. For this study the definition of co-creativity from Laberge and Svendsen (2007) will be used. The definition provided states, Co-creativity, is the ability of members of different groups, organizations or networks to harness co-creative power in order to act together on common issues, needs and goals (p.1). Co-creative tools can be any tools that allow collaboration with one or more persons. Below are some of the co-creative tools to consider when building a social media strategy for a municipality. Huddle. Huddle is the number one SharePoint alternative for Enterprise Collaboration and Content Management in the cloud and is used by more than 100,000 government organizations and businesses globally (Huddle.com, n.d.). SharePoint is a software platform and a family of software products developed by Microsoft for collaboration, file sharing and web publishing (Wikipedia, n.d., p.1).

13 There is a drawback to Huddle of cost; on the website they state to contact us for pricing. Huddle does offer a free version, but is limited to the number of features and other abilities. The features of Huddle best place it in quadrants two and four. Quadrant 2: Huddle provides tools for multiple people to collaborate asynchronously. Huddle helps people collaborate asynchronously through tasks assignment and document editing. A task can be assigned to a person and he or she will be notified via email about that task. Asynchronous document editing is where a person edits a document and another person can view that document at a later time and see those edits and remove those edits or add additional edits. A municipalitys staff could use Huddle to ensure tasks are accomplished for key projects and collaboratively work with other employees on key documents. Quadrant 4: Huddle provides synchronous collaboration between multiple people for document editing. A municipality could use Huddles document collaboration feature to work together with others on creating key documents and policies. Basecamp. Basecamp is a web-based project-management tool developed by 37signals and was launched in 2004 (Wikipedia, 2012). Just as Huddle has a drawback of cost so does Basecamp. Pending the number of projects that will be worked on at any one time the costs range from $20 a month to $150 a month. They do offer a free 45-day trial. The features of Basecamp, similar to Huddle, best place it in quadrants two and four.

14 Quadrant 2: Basecamp offers many of the same features of Huddle. Basecamp offers asynchronous features such as task tracking, document creation, and a one-stop shop for all items related to key projects. As with Huddle a municipality could use Basecamp to track and collaborate on key projects. Quadrant 4: Basecamp offers the ability to collaborate with others for document creation. According to Basecamps website, you can collaborate real-time with others on documents. Google Docs. Google Docs is a family of Web-based applications from Google that includes word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, forms creation and online storage (PCMag.com, n.d.). Google Docs allows for multiple people to edit a document, spreadsheet, presentation, etc. at the same time. Each person is able to see what the other person is editing and add to those changes or improve them. Google Docs is a free service for all to use, which makes it the ideal tool to use for a municipality. The features of Google Docs place it best in quadrants two and four. Quadrant two: Google Docs allows for asynchronous editing of documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. A person can edit a document when he or she has time and others can view the document later and view the revision history to see the changes that were made. Quadrant four: Google Docs, along with asynchronous editing of documents, offers synchronous editing of documents. For example, two

15 municipal employees can have the same document open and editing it at the same time. Each employee would see what the other is doing and each employee could work on separate portions of the document. Video Sharing & Streaming For this study video sharing sites and video streaming were both looked at separately, but grouped together. A video sharing site is a Web site that lets people upload and share their video clips with the public at large or to invited guests (PC Magazine, n.d.). For video streaming the definition of streaming was used. Streaming is a technique for transferring data so that it can be processed as a steady and continuous stream (Webopedia, n.d.). Below are some of the video sharing sites and streaming tools to consider when building a social media strategy for a municipality. YouTube. YouTube is A popular free video-sharing Web site that lets registered users upload and share video clips online at the YouTube.com Web site (Webopedia, n.d.). The features of YouTube best place it in quadrants one and three. Quadrant 1: YouTube, as mentioned above allows a person to upload and share video clips, as long as it does not violate copyright laws. The staff of a municipality could use YouTube to share video updates of projects or share videos about the functions or activities of specific departments. Quadrant 3: Youtube offers the ability to post video responses for videos along with the traditional text responses. A municipality could use this feature by asking citizens to post video responses to a question proposed

16 in a video or by asking citizens to post a feedback video reacting to a video the municipality staff posted. Posting video responses is a unique way to get thoughts, reactions, and other comments from citizens. The video responses allow the staff of the municipality to see the expression of the citizen as text responses can be taken out of context. Vimeo. Vimeo is a friendly place where people who take and love videos can share, watch, discover, and be inspired (Vimeo.com, n.d.). The features of Vimeo best place it in quadrant one for video updates. A municipality could use it to provide news and project updates, much like Youtube. Vimeo however, does not allow video responses. Vimeo does have a feature that allows a person to download videos. UStream. Ustream is the leading live interactive broadcast platform. Anyone with an Internet connection and a camera can start engaging with their family, friends or fans anytime, anywhere (Ustream.tv, n.d.). The features of Ustream best place it in quadrant four. Ustream is a great tool for the administrators of a municipality to use for virtual town hall meetings and with the chat integration allows for interaction, as if the people are there in the room. Using Ustream will help to minimize the understanding citizens have of how town hall meetings are conducted by allowing everyone an equal chance to ask questions and voice concerns. Livestream. Livestream lets you stream live events over the Internet, expand your community and engage your audience when they cannot physically attend your event (Livestream.com, n.d.). The features of Livestream best place it in quadrant four.

17 Just as Ustream allows for live broadcasting, Livestream allows for the same ability with chat integration. Livestream has developed a mobile decoder box that allows for a person to use a camera and broadcast from anywhere with a 3G or 4G connection. Livestream also offers a mobile application for smart phones that allows a person to broadcast from the camera built into the mobile phone. BlogTV. BlogTV is a leading live, interactive, Internet broadcasting platform that enables anyone with an Internet connection and a camera to connect to their audience in a evocative, direct way (BlogTV.com, n.d.). The features of BlogTV best place it into quadrant four. BlogTV offers all the features and abilities of Ustream and Livestream. The downside to BlogTV is the mobile application offered currently does not allow for broadcasting from the phone. Social Media Challenges for Municipalities Pendergraft and Associates (2009) suggest three challenges a municipality will need to overcome when implementing social media into their already existing structure. The first challenge a municipality has to deal with is their states Public Information Act. For example, are municipalities required to keep a record of the information that they post on Twitter, Facebook, etc.? If they need to keep a record of posts, comments, and other social media information, how would they track and keep a record of these? The second issue a municipality will have to address is security. Security for municipalities covers both hardware and network weaknesses. One security question to address is whether social media [sites] are inherently more dangerous than other types of websites.

18 A second security question to address is if a municipality creates a social media presence, some people will need to be given access. How can a municipality ensure this freedom will not be abused and who are those that are granted access? The final issue that needs to be addressed is to determine who should be involved in the planning process of social media and how it is used. A supporting question to the above issue is how knowledgeable do these people need to be? A Case for Social Media: The 44th President of the United States To get a sense of how much social media and other online tools could help a municipality the story of how the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, used social media to win the election was looked at. The first use of social media was traced back to Colin Powells endorsement of Barack Obama on NBCs Meet the Press in 2008 (Qualman, 2009, p. 61). It was posted on the Web so fast the west coast could see it before it aired on traditional television. Obama embraced social media from the beginning, knowing he had a chance to dominate [social media] over his opponents during the election (Qualman, 2009, p.62). To understand Obamas social media presence, social network statistics of Obama and John McCain at the time of the 2008 Presidential race were looked at. At the time of the election Obama had more than 3.1 million fans on his Facebook page compared to McCain who only had 614,000 (Qualman, 2009). This does not include the additional 2 million from the next top 20 groups for Obama, bringing the total to more than 5 million. A similar scenario was looked at for Twitter, as Obama had 113,000 followers to

19 McCains 4,650 on Election Day (Qualman, 2009, p.63). Given the numbers it clearly showed Obama had the edge when attracting voters through social media. The 2008 election race saw the highest turnout of voters since the 1908 election (Qualman, 2009, p.63). The 1908 election saw 66% of eligible voters turnout at the polls (Sperry, 2008). The 2008 election saw a 61.6 percent turnout of eligible voters at the polls (Associated Press, June 18, 2009). This can be attributed to social media as an additional outlet to engage the voters. Another aspect of social media that helped Obama in his run for President was in regards to transparency of his campaign and how it gave identity to the White House after he was elected. Obama gave Americans the ability, for five days, to make comments online on any non-emergency legislation before he signed it (Qualman, 2009, p.74). President Obama also resurrected Franklin D. Roosevelts fireside radio chats in the form of videos on YouTube. Posting these chats to YouTube allowed Americans to post comments, rebuttals, and a continuing dialog of conversation (Qualman, 2009, p.74). This gave the American population the ability to get updates on what was going on in the White House as well as having the ability to voice their thoughts and opinions on issues. The chats helped show that the top level of the government was becoming more transparent and engaging by using social media. Municipalities can follow the road Obama has laid by using social media tools to help make their administration more transparent by giving the citizens the ability to be heard and contribute.

20 Summary Municipalities have been scrambling to find new ways to get things done and identify better ways to provide services to citizens. Municipalities have a very knowledgeable and untapped group of people who they interact with everyday. This group of people is the citizens. Since President Obama has been in office, the number of opportunities and the ways to engage with the citizens has significantly increased. This study helps to identify why a municipality should use social media, what the challenges are when integrating social media, and understand what best-in-class municipalities are doing with their social media.

21 SECTION II: PROCEDURES The procedure used in this study was an adaptation of a standard benchmarking process. The sections below will provide you an outline of each step in the benchmarking process that was used for this study. This process entailed identifying municipalities, determining the questions to be asked, and collecting data compared to the base municipality of Toledo, Ohio. Investigation Procedure Benchmarking is the process of comparing and measuring an organizations business process against best-in-class operations to inspire improvement in the organizations performance (Global Environmental Management Initiative, 1994, p. 1). For this study, municipalities were the organizations. A benchmark study can help lay the foundation for an organization to build an action plan to meet and surpass its needs and promote awareness. A benchmarking study can be conducted for nearly any business activity or process and ranges from products and services offered to strategic plans. The purpose of this benchmarking study was to learn what municipalities were doing in relation to social media and engaging their community members. The study will help with understanding what a municipality should and should not do when developing and using social media. Conducting a benchmarking study means to focus on only one process or activity to ensure the best results. This study focused only on community engagement.

22 Generally, before a benchmarking study has been conducted, the organization has identified areas that need improvement and in some cases new areas that need to be created. For this benchmark the three most commonly used social media tools (Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube) were considered. The study helped determine how they were being used and where improvements could be made. To summarize, benchmarking helps to focus more closely on an area of improvement and identify critical elements in that area. Benchmarking Process Below is the modified outline of the nine-step benchmarking process used in this study (GEMI, 1994). For this study, seven of the original nine steps in the GEMI process were used. The implementation and recalibration steps were not utilized, as they were deemed outside the scope of this project. The seven steps utilized were: Step 1: Project Conception The project conception phase of the benchmarking process involved understanding the elements that are critical to the process. Elements include proper project identification, right people involved, and the project schedule. Project conception helped in gathering the data necessary to complete the project planning in step two. The key tasks associated with this step are listed below: Established an environment conducive to benchmarking Established the benchmarking project scope Estimated and commit the necessary project resources

23 Established a realistic and achievable project schedule Step 2: Planning The planning portion of the benchmarking phase involved creating the benchmarking plan. Those involved in the benchmarking process reviewed the draft plan and suggested changes. After the changes were made the benchmarking plan was approved. Those who were involved in the planning phase had to be educated in the overall process of benchmarking. The key tasks associated with this step are listed below: Developed the benchmarking project plan Shared it with project committee Step 3: Preliminary Data Collection During this phase the best-in-class selection criteria was developed by the project committee, the collection techniques were identified and how the data would be entered was determined. The best-in-class data criteria were then compared to the preliminary list of selected municipalities. Developed criteria for selecting best-in-class municipality Developed entry forms for data research Established data collection techniques and sources Collected preliminary data Step 4: Best-in-class Selection In the best-in-class selection phase of the benchmarking process, the best-in-class municipalities were chosen. The preliminary list of municipalities were compared to the

24 best-in-class criteria and tallied based on the criteria. The top three tallied municipalities were selected as the best-in-class municipalities. Selected benchmarking partners that have best-in-class process based on research to date Reviewed and refined the questions set for upcoming reviews of identified municipalities Step 5: Best-in-class Data Collection In the best-in-class data collection phase, the data from each best-in-class municipality was collected. During this phase the interview times were determined, the data collection method was revisited, and the script and other logistics were identified. Interviews were conducted with each participant to collect best-in-class data. Revisited the data collection approach Scheduled and prepared data collection sessions Step 6: Assessment In the assessment phase of the benchmarking process, the best-in-class data was reviewed and prepared to make comparisons to existing tools that could be improved. The best-in-class data was used to identify gaps between the existing structures to bestin-class structures. Areas with gaps that could be improved were identified and recommendations for improvements were suggested. Analyzed the data collected Defined elements of a best-in-class model

25 Identified gaps between the best-in-class model and current programs and processes Identified sources for improvement and associated recommendation Step 7: Implementation Planning The implementation planning phase of the benchmarking process involved those who were required to carry out the recommendations from step six. The members from implementation planning were charged with developing action plans to ensure the suggested recommendations were carried out. Members are selected from the leadership of the organization or in this case the municipality conducting the benchmark. The members are a diverse group from inside and outside the municipality in various roles. This ensures that the group is a good representation of the whole. Assessed municipalities change readiness Developed operational plans for program or process improvements Developed integration and implementation strategies

26 SECTION III: DESCRIPTION/METHODOLOGY/DEVELOPMENT For this study qualitative and quantitative research methods were utilized to understand how the top three best-in-class municipalities designed, developed and delivered social media to its citizens. The data was collected through phone interviews with each participant from each municipality. The participants were selected based on their involvement with social media in their municipality. Municipalities were selected based on criteria of similarities to the base city of Toledo, Ohio, unique aspects with engagement, and awards. Restatement of the Purpose & Objectives The purpose of this benchmark study was to learn what other municipalities are doing in relation to social media and engaging their community citizens and compare this to the base municipality of Toledo, Ohio. The objectives of this study were: 1. To understand why a municipality should utilize social media. 2. To learn how municipalities integrated and utilized social media in an existing structure. 3. To understand the cost to approve, plan, design, and deliver social media to citizens. 4. To understand the challenges and lessons learned for utilizing social media. 5. Learn of future issues a municipality will have to deal with for social media.

27 Research Design A modified benchmarking primer was used for this study. As described above, the original primer called for a nine-step process. For this study, only seven of the steps were utilized. The two steps excluded were the last two steps of implementation and recalibration. That is, this study did not look at implementing the results and recommendations from the study. Since the recommendations were not implemented there was no need to recalibrate by looking at improvements made from implementation. Sample of Population The sample population of municipalities was determined from a search through the web on best practice municipalities. Municipalities that had multiple social media outlets through various departments or divisions were added to the list. The three municipalities the Department of Public Service for the City of Toledo used for their benchmark study were considered as well. Between the initial search and three municipalities already identified the list was quite large. For the sake of time and this study the list was kept to fifteen. The list of preselected municipalities was then compared to the preliminary data collection criteria to help narrow down to the three municipalities to be studied. The preliminary criteria was: How close were they to the size of the base municipality of Toledo, Ohio? What were their unique ways of engagement? What were the number and kinds of tools used for engagement?

28 What kind of recognition and awards have they received? Once the list of municipalities was compared to the preliminary criteria, the three best-in-class municipalities were selected in step four of the benchmarking primer. The municipalities that were placed into two or more of the preliminary data criteria were looked at in more detail. The three best-in-class municipalities, that were selected and why are listed below. Manor, Texas, was selected for being known for their innovative uses of technology. They also developed a platform that allows citizens to submit ideas, review and comment on other ideas that help improve and do things better in the municipality. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was selected because it is a municipality that is using social media across departments and other programs to communicate information to the community. The initiative to use social media was implemented in ninemonths. Portland, Oregon, was selected because they have very engaged mayors who deos most of his own posts. They conducted and from that developed social media engagement best practices guide and a complaint/issue reporting application for smart phones. Participants The participants interviewed worked in the three municipalities chosen for the study. Each participant was in charge or had a direct impact on the use social media for

29 their municipality. The participants from each municipality were asked to participate in a phone interview via email that, included an attached letter of support from the mayor of Toledo (Appendix B). The interviews began by asking for consent to participate in the interview. Each interview lasted between 30 and 60 minutes. The interviews were recorded and later transcribed (Appendix C). From the three municipalities, there were five participants, two each from Portland, Oregon and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and one from the Manor, Texas. The five respondents were introduced to the study and the same list of questions were used with each participant (Appendices D and E). The identity of each interviewee was kept anonymous. So each municipal employee was referred to as Respondent One and so on up to Respondent Five. Respondents two and five were from Portland, Oregon; respondents one and three were from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and respondent four was from Manor, Texas. Respondent one and three both work in the office for the mayor of Pittsburgh. Respondent one is the City Performance Manager. Respondent one provided the perspective of looking at the technologies that were in place and how an innovative approach was taken to improving those technologies to handle more volume. Respondent three is the Communications Specialist for the mayor and provided the perspective of being the main conduit for sending out communications to the community. Respondent two is a part of the Bureau of Technology Services with Portland and directly responsible for the balance of the municipality's overall use of social media and

30 websites. The perspective brought by respondent two was from city administration and the accomplishments and issues being faced as a whole municipality. Respondent four is the City Manager of Manor and was charged with understanding the social media platforms in place and determining the plan for those platforms. He or she provided the perspective of the things to avoid when developing social media. Respondent five is the Communications Director for the City of Portland and the direct communication link between the mayors administration and the community. Respondent five brought the perspective of the mayor and how he or she utilizes social media. Data Collection Instrument Participants of the study were asked the same set of questions via over the phone interviews. All participants were given the same set of questions in advance of the interview. They recieved the questions via a mailed packet from the mayor of Toledo sent to the mayor of their city and via an email from Andrew Rinaldi with the packet & questions attached. During the interview participants were asked to have the questions in front of them for quicker response. The interview protocol consisted of five quantitative questions; four that had multiple choice responses and one that required a quantitative open ended answer and eight qualitative questions. With each responded having the question in front of them it allowed for quick & accurate answers for the quantitative portion. Quantitative questions were asked to understand the start-up costs for approval,

31 designing, and launching social media, the budget to date for social media, and what measures are used to assess the effectiveness of social media (Appendix E) . Procedure of Data Analysis The interviewer, Andrew Rinaldi conducted this study to assist the City of Toledo in developing their social media plan. In order to limit the effect the interviewers bias, the same set of questions were created for all participants in the study. These questions were sent to them by the mayor of Toledo and also emailed to them by Andrew Rinaldi before interviews were conducted. Each interview used the questioning procedure and welcoming script to ensure all interview subjects were asked the same questions in he same way. Each interview subject also had the questions in front of them during their interviews to ensure accuracy of answers. Protection of Human Subjects All requirements established by the Humans Subjects Review Board (HSRB) at Bowling Green State University were complied with while conducting this study (Appendix F). The steps that where taken to meet HSRB requirements are as follows. Step 1: Creation and vetting of interview questions to memebers of major project committee. Step 2: Consolidated questions to 8 qualitative and 5 quantitative. Step 3: Created questioning procedure and welcome script to be used for each interview (Appendix D).

32 Step 4: Craft letter to be sent to each municipality's mayor from the mayor of City of Toledo and send to the mayor and have signed and approved. Step 6: Submit packet of questioning procedure, interview questions and welcome script to HSRB for approval. Step 7: Make any requested changes by HSRB and resubmit for approval. Step 8: Approved by HSRB. Timeline The timeline below was used to ensure completion of project, completed all tasks and stayed on task. The project spans over a thirty month period from May 2011 to November 3013. A variety of items caused the project timeline to be modified. The final timeline is presented in Table 1. Task Complete project plan Create a list of needed project resources Create a project schedule Develop research questions to be asked Submit research question to committee for feedback Develop criteria questions for preliminary selections three best Due Date May 2011 May 2011 May 2011 May 2011 May 2011 May 2011

33

practice municipalities Review HSRB application Receive feedback form committee Modify research questions based off of feedback Submit HSRB application for approval Collect site selection data Select three best practice cities Conduct interviews with cities Review interview data Develop a best findings report Submit final research paper to technical editor for review Generate a recommendations report to present to the City of Toledo (to be included in final document) Defend Submit Final Document Table 1 Project Timeline June 2011 June 2011 June 2011 June 2011 August 2011 August 2011 November 2011 December 2011 February 2012 March 2012 April 2012 May 2012 November 2013

34 Budget All expenses for this study are presented in Table 2. There were no expenses for phone calls made to interviewees as a free call software called Freeconferencecall.com. Expense Technical Editor Copies of Research Document Web Hosting for Final Documents Conference Calls Quantity x Cost 1x$150.00 4x$5.00 1x$75.00 5x$0.00 Total $150.00 $20.00 $75.00 $0.00 Total $245.00 Table 2 Budget

35

SECTION IV: RESULTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Findings The findings of this study are first presented with the quantitative results. The answers from the five respondents were compiled into a summary chart (See Figure 2). Next, the qualitative responses were themed into seven categories: strategic priority, strategic plan, social media, challenges overcome, lessons learned, do different in the future, and future issues. These categories were based on the qualitative provided during the interviews (Appendix E). Quantitative Results The quantitative questions were organized into three parts. The first portion of the interview consisted of the start-up costs for approving, designing, and launching social media. Part two consisted of the budget for social media. Part three consisted of the measures used to assess the effectiveness of social media. Part one revealed common responses from four of the five respondents for the start-up costs for the approval of social media. Four respondents stated the start-up costs were $0 - $1000. The fifth respondent stated start-up costs for approval of $5001 $10000. Part one also had common responses from the start-up costs for designing social media. Three of the five respondents stated a cost of $0 - $1000 and the other two respondents stated a cost of $1001 - $5000. Common responses were also found across the start-up costs for launching social media. Three of the five respondents stated a start-

36 up cost of $0 - $1000. The other two respondents had responses of $1001 - $5000 and $5001 - $10000. Figure 2 shows the responses for approval, designing, and launching social media.

Figure 2 Quantitative Costs Responses Part two of quantitative responses had two common responses to the current budget to date. Two of the five respondents stated the current budget to date was zero. One respondent stated a budget under $10,000, while another respondent stated a budget of $16000. The final respondent said the budget for social media was absorbed within existing employees job duties and salaries. Part three was comprised measures used to assess the effectiveness of social media. There was a common response from four of the five respondents. The four

37 respondents stated that verbal feedback was their main measure to assess effectiveness. The other respondent stated that a survey was conducted through a third party organization. The raw data of quantitative responses can be found in Appendix F). Qualitative Results As mentioned, qualitative data was collected in seven specific areas: strategic priority, strategic plan, social media, challenges, lessons learned, do differently, future issues and use. The interview responses were grouped into common themes and unique comments. Making Social Media a Strategic Priority The first series of questions examined why the municipalitys administration decided to make social media a priority. What have been some of their accomplishments with social media, and how has social media helped them engage with the community. Responses from each participant was analyzed and common themes and unique difference were pulled from responses. Below you will find the common themes and unique differences around the need for social media, social media accomplishments and engagement of citizens. Need for Social Media. The first common theme observed across the responses from each municipality was the need for a new outlet to share information with the community. Pittsburgh, for example, saw a decrease in print media and believed that the newspapers told the story in a different light due to political agendas (Personal Communication, Respondent 1, August 29, 2011). Respondent four from Portland also

38 stated political issues was a reason for them to utilize social media (personal communication, November 9, 2011). They felt that the media was only covering the negatives of the administration so they decided to develop a plan to get the good out to the community. Since Portland has started using social media to communicate the positive things the city is doing, media has started to cover more news that is positive about the city. Portland communicates to more than 50,000 Twitter followers and over 70,000 Facebook users. The potential combined 120,000 followers in turn leads to huge word of mouth to those not connected to the city on Facebook or Twitter. A second common theme observed across the interview responses was the size and popularity of the top two social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter. All of the interviewees stated they used Facebook and Twitter to connect with their citizens. Interviewees all mentioned the size of Facebook and Twitter as being factors in the decision to use. As of October 2011, Facebook had 800 million users and Twitter had approximately 200 million users which is to connect and communicate with. More than 50% of Facebook users and nearly 50 million Twitter users log in each day (Nielsen, 2011). These numbers are based on world numbers, but you can still see the size of the community to communicate with. Both of the respondents from Portland stated that the decision to make social media a strategic priority was to go where the people already are (Personal Communication, Respondent 2, November 4, 2011). Given the size of both Facebook and Twitter it is obvious why each respondent interviewed stated those were their main focus to communicate with the community.

39 The last common theme observed across the interview responses was the need to be more open or transparent with sharing information. Respondent three from Pittsburgh stated this was their reasoning for making social media a strategic priority. There were a couple of responses unique to each of the municipalities that are important to mention, as they are relevant to supporting this study. The first unique response was from respondent two with regards to feeling the constant pressure to improve delivery of services with lower cost (Personal Communication, Respondent 2, November 4, 2011). Portland also has a mayor who fully embraces technology and posts 90% of his or her own posts on Twitter and Facebook (Personal Communication, Respondent 2, November 4, 2011). The second unique response was from respondent three, who stated, we felt we had more control over [content] than relying on the media (Personal Communication, Respondent 3, November 9, 2011). The administrators of the municipality control social media and this provides them with the ability to post what and when they want. A third unique response came from respondent four. He or she said that recognition on a national and international level is what sparked them to make social media a strategic priority (Personal Communication, Respondent 4, November 15, 2011). They have received three awards for their innovative use of technology. Social Media Accomplishments. The next questions addressed what each municipality viewed and felt was accomplished in regards to social media. Each respondent indicated a variety of accomplishments, some unique and some similar. The

40 two common responses was that there was a social media policy in place or they were currently developing a policy. Each municipality had many accomplishments, but two cities stood out as having the biggest accomplishments. The first municipality, Manor, Texas, received three awards for their innovative use of technology and open leadership. The first award they received was in 2008 and it was from the Center for Digital Government (CDG) for Best of Most Innovative Use of Technology, Best of Texas. In 2010 they won two awards, one was the CDG Visionary Award, Best of Texas, and the second was the Altimeter Open Leadership Award for Excellence. Keep in mind that Manor, Texas is a much smaller municipality compared to the other two best practices cities and compared to other big cities in Texas who use social media. The CDG (n.d.) is a national research and advisory institute on information technology policies and best practices in state and local government. They offer a variety of awards that include Best of Texas, New York, and California. Second is Altimeter, also known as Altimeter Group (n.d.), a research-based advisory firm that offers pragmatic strategies to help companies thrive with distractive technologies. They give out open leadership awards in a variety of industries that include non-profit and government. The municipality of Portland has a mayor who was active and deeply engaged with social media. The mayor of Portland had close to 50,000 followers on Twitter, tweeted more than 5,000 times and over 70,000 likes on Facebook. The mayor does 90% of his own posts and takes the time to log-on to Twitter and answer questions real-time.

41 This is great as it allows 50,000 plus people to know the answer versus one when replying to an email. The City of Pittsburgh staff held a contest on their Facebook page that increased the amount of likes by over 2000. The winners of contest were to perform at the celebration for NFL player Hines Ward who won Dancing with the Stars. The contest allowed the top five to post their videos to the citys Facebook page and the top three that received the most likes and comments performed at the celebration. This is a unique and great way to use Facebook to engage a community in a unique way, instead of municipal staff pushing out information and watching comments and other feedback. It is citizens interacting with other citizens. Engagement of Citizens. This portion of the interview addressed how social media has helped municipalities engage with their citizens. Two of the three municipalities interviewed provided specific feedback. Respondent four from Pittsburgh (Personal Communication, Respondent 4, November 9, 2011) stated that [he or she uses social media to] share items not press release worthy, but information worth sharing and that people want to know. Many municipal pages had updates related to trash pick-up, community events, and other minor updates. The second municipality to provide a response was respondent four from Manor. They stated it allowed them to interact with the community real-time versus posting notices and waiting on public hearings (Personal Communication, Respondent 4, November 15, 2011).

42 Social Media Strategy & Policies The strategy portion of the interview addressed the development and approval process a municipality went through for creating their plan. When reviewing each of the responses, all respondents stated that they were currently working on a social media strategy or that they currently did not have a strategy specifically for social media. Please note that respondents two and five looked at social media two different ways. Respondent five discussed the approval process the staff went through for the mayor's office.Respondent two discussed the approval process the staff went through for using social media across all other departments. Overview of Social Media Strategy. The City of Portland is the only municipality that had a social media policy and guidelines in place. Respondent two (Personal Communication, Respondent 2, November 4, 2011) stated that they wanted to take better advantage of social media across the city. The mayor is using social media well, but they would like to use social media to engage all departments with the community. Another response from respondent two was looking at new technologies to integrate with social media and the website, such as Open ID (Personal Communication, Respondent 2, November 4, 2011). Respondent five from Portland discussed how they were posting to their Facebook page. The strategy called for them to feed items into their Facebook page via a blog or RSS feed. These posts had few views, interaction, or conversation around them. Respondent five (Personal Communication, November 18, 2011) discovered that if they

43 post original content with a link to the blog post they saw much more engagement and conversation. A second item brought up by respondent five was that they use social media to drive people back to their website (Personal Communication, November 18, 2011). Lastly, respondent five (Personal Communication, November 18, 2011) stated their social media strategy was to adopt new mediums as they become available like Google Plus. The Pittsburgh respondents stated they were currently working on their strategy for social media. Their current plan was based on the following from respondent three: The overall [strategy] for using social media is to post any type of press outreach that we think residents would be interested in (Personal Communication, Respondent 3, November 9, 2011). Respondent three provided two specific items they were looking to focus on. The first item mentioned was to view pages of community groups and non-profit groups and post comments, likes, and post things from their page that is relevant to the type of content they post on their page (personal communication, Respondent 3, November 9, 2011). All the elements were targeted to engage with others posts that in turn will help engagement with the municipalitys post. The second item mentioned was to update the plan to include on going fan engagement tactics that used did you know questions, interesting facts, etc. (Personal Communication, Respondent 3, November 9, 2011). These two items are good to keep in mind as both can help increase the engagement the page has with the community and other organizations in the municipality.

44 The respondent from Manor provided examples of what to avoid doing when utilizing social media for engagement. When respondent five was asked what their social media strategy was, they responded that their current strategy is to find out what platforms they have in place (Personal Communication, Respondent 4, November 15, 2011). The city of Manor at the time of the interview, was going through a rough technology transition as the original creators of the platforms in place left suddenly. They had only one or two people who handled all their social media platforms and tools. A municipality will benefit from addressing the issue of access early when creating their social media strategy. Municipalities will want to ensure there is a group log-in or main log-in that is shared with those who need access to the various social media platforms and tools. Development of Social Media Strategy. Each respondent was asked about the process they went through for developing their plan for social media. Each of the respondents from Portland provided information about their municipalitys social media strategy, including details from the decision makers involved to the creation of the document. Respondent two stated that the [strategy] started as a grassroots effort (Personal Communication, Respondent 2, November 4, 2011). Respondent two shared detailed steps that were taken to develop their social media plan. The plan started with the methods and practices that were presented to them from a best practice study. From there they moved into the policy making process that led to the development of a social media committee that reviewed and revised the policy. From the social media committee the

45 plan moved to the city attorneys and human resources department to review and create the actual policy and guidelines document. Respondent two provided details of the training plan Portland used to train content managers for each department. The plan called for training in two areas. Area one addressed etiquette when posting to social media sites and how to deal with comments appropriately. Area two addressed account setup and ensured more than one person had access to the social media being used. Respondent five, who is also from the same municipality, explained the development from the perspective of the mayor and his administration. Respondent five stated that the strategic plan sort of developed organically and that they learned as they went with what worked and did not work (Personal Communication, November 18, 2011). Approval Process of Social Media Strategy. Respondents were asked who in the administration and the municipality were involved in getting approval to use social media. One common theme observed across the municipalities of Pittsburgh and Portland was the communication department was involved with the approval process. Respondent five from Portland stated that the communications department staff were the decision makers and decided what the plan was for social media. Respondent five also mentioned that early on they involved the chief of staff (Personal Communication, November 18, 2011). One concern from the mayors administration was the communication department wanted a live Twitter feed on the website. This feed would be unfiltered and real-time. This was a concern to the administration because of the unfiltered nature and the worry of

46 profanity and other unprofessional things making it into the feed. The communication department was able to get approval from the administration to have the feed and it has become a very positive element to the website. The citizens really appreciated the openness and transparency of the mayor for having the unfiltered feed. Respondent two from Portland went into detail to who was involved in the approval process for the social media plan for the city. They stated that the plan started with best practices research, followed by a committee who reviewed those best practices. From the committee it went to the bureau of directors, from the directors it went to the second committee, the social media committee, and once the social media committee finished, the plan went to the city attorneys and human resources where those two departments determined the final plan (Personal Communication, Respondent 2, November 4, 2011). Respondent three stated (Personal Communication, Respondent 3, November 9, 2011) the original social media efforts for the City of Pittsburgh went through the approval process of the mayor to the chief of staff then to the law department. The current social media plan for Pittsburgh involved the communication department who worked with the chief of staff for the mayor and the support of information technology in the technology department. The communication department for Pittsburgh consisted of three people, the communications director, press secretary, and communications assistant (Personal Communication, Respondent 3, November 9, 2011).

47 Social Media Platform For the social media platform portion of the interview, the data was divided into three parts: design, maintaining, and measures. In quantitative question five, respondents were asked about what measures they use, but those were specific types of measures. When asked about measures again during the qualitative questions, respondents were free to state other measures used. Designing the Platform & Tools. The design for social media involved how a municipality developed, created, and implemented their social media platforms and tools. A common response observed across all respondents was that each municipality used platforms already in place with the exception of Manor, Texas; they had a custom Web platform they used. The platforms in place each municipality used were Facebook and Twitter. Respondent two (Personal Communication, November 4, 2011) stated that the design for social media consisted of platforms already in existence. Respondent one from Pittsburgh stated that they took the time to figure out how they wanted their Facebook page to look (Personal Communication, Respondent 1, August 29, 2011). Respondent one also said that determining who managed social media was a part of the design process. Additionally part of Pittsburghs process for designing social media was to involve those responsible for managing social media. While the plan for social media was provided, those involved had to get it done. One last item from Pittsburghs interview

48 was the staff and administration went from design to launch of social media in 9 months and this included involving key decision makers (Personal Communication, Respondent 1, August 29, 2011). Respondent five for Portland referred back to question two of the qualitative questions for how they designed social media. The design of Portlands social media for the mayor was covered in their plan. The plan called for the use the two social media platforms where the masses already were and those platforms being Facebook and Twitter. Maintaining the Platform & Tools. Interviewees were asked about the steps or things a municipality does to ensure they are continuing to engage their community members on a regular basis. Respondent two stated they made sure that social media remained active in terms of content and conversation and that the key was to make sure that the content was relevant and consistent (Personal Communication, Respondent 2, November 4, 2011). Respondent five deals directly with the mayor and assists him with maintaining social media for top level of administration. To help maintain social media for the mayor, respondent five ensures that they and other staff members are supporting the mayor by retweeting and helping share information through their social networks (Personal Communication, Respondent 5, November 18, 2011). The other element respondent five focused on was to ensure that when the mayor is attending an event, they know the

49 relevant hash tag for the event, twitter account to post to, and URL to use (Personal Communication, Respondent 5, November 18, 2011). Respondent one referred to respondent three when answering how social media was maintained. Respondent three commented on multiple things for maintaining social media. First, communications staff reviewed posts that were sent out from the press office for consistency. Second, communications staff reviewed other posts sent from other departments for relevancy and consistency. Third, communications staff reviewed posts that came from the mayors office staff (Personal Communication, Respondent 3, November 9, 2011). Respondent four had been given the task of determining the platforms they have in place and select the platforms to keep and not keep. Once that has been determined respondent four has the additional task of determining how to use them. Measuring Effectiveness. A municipalities ability to measure the effectiveness of social media helps them to understand how well the content they post works to inform and engage the community. Respondent two stated that they measured how effective their social media use was by the number of followers on Twitter, number of likes on Facebook, the growth rate of those numbers, and the number of participants (Personal Communication, Respondent 2, November 4, 2011). Respondent five (Personal Communication, November 18, 2011) stated similar measures for the use of social media for the mayor. They stated that they looked at how active, lively, and the quality of the

50 conversation was. Respondent five continued with that they looked at the engagement returned from the people (Personal Communication, Respondent 5, November 18. 2011). When asked about measures, respondent one referred back to their response for quantitative question five. In quantitative question five, respondent three stated that their main measure was to look at the number of likes on Facebook. They have 7,217 people who like them on Facebook and that is 7,217 people that did not have that interface with the city before (Personal Communication, Respondent 1, August 29, 2011). Respondent three gave two things they looked at to measure social media. The first measure used was Facebook insights that measured a variety of engagement measures. The other measure they used was word of mouth and what they heard on the streets from the community (Personal Communication, Respondent 3, November 9, 2011). Respondent four has been charged with determining a way their municipality can measure the return on investment (ROI) of social media to see its value. Overcoming Challenges for Social Media Municipalities have had many challenges when it comes to social media that range from government policies to staff learning curve. The five respondents from the three best practice municipalities provided responses on what they feel were the challenges they had to deal with in regards to social media. Portland had a few challenges they had to deal with or overcome. Respondent two stated some of the challenges Portland had to deal with were ensuring consistent use, account access, reliance on one or two people, and ensure city employees were not

51 posting to social media during off time (Personal Communication, Respondent 2, November 4, 2011). Off time refers to the time an employee was not on the clock being paid by the municipality, but is still conducting municipal business by posting updates to social media. Respondent two discussed the additional challenges of convincing administration the value of using social media and the constant of reminding others to post to social media on regular basis. The last challenge they dealt with was the increase in the volume of people on social media commenting and sharing content (Personal Communication, Respondent 5, November 18, 2011). Pittsburgh had a variety of challenges they had to overcome and deal with as well. Respondent one touched on two of the their challenges. Challenge one was finding the balance between the various departments social media tools and websites (Personal Communication, Respondent 1, August 29, 2011). The struggle with balance was what content should be posted on social media sites and what content should be posted on the website with social media being used to drive people back to the website. The second challenge was how to get some benefit from social media that helped day-to-day operations (Personal Communication, Respondent 1, August 29, 2011). Respondent three had the challenge of ensuring the conversations that occurred on Pittsburghs social media did not take a negative spin. There were a variety of small challenges in the overall process of monitoring social media posts for Pittsburgh. The first challenge was deterring people from being negative on posts (Personal Communication, Respondent 3, November 9, 2011). To help combat this challenge

52 Pittsburgh ensured the posting guidelines stated that posts and comments made have to remain relevant to the post topic (Personal Communication, Respondent 3, November 9, 2011). A second challenge was when a post was negative, but accurate, what qualified it as an appropriate post (Personal Communication, Respondent 3, November 9, 2011). Respondent four stated they saw two challenges once they had their social media back on track. Challenge one was keeping and retaining key employees that maintained information for social media (Personal Communication, Respondent 4, November 15, 2011). For Manor this was key as they are a smaller municipality and their talented people could easily be persuaded to work for a larger municipality. The second challenge was staying abreast of current technology (Personal Communication, Respondent 4, November 15, 2011). Staying abreast of current technology can be a challenge for all municipalities as technology changes at such a rapid rate. Lessons Learned This section of the interview addressed the things municipalities learned as they went through the approval, development, and design processes, and used social media. All respondents except respondent three provided responses. Respondent two stated two lessons learned from the perspective of the administrative use of social media for Portland. The first lesson learned was the power of social media (Personal Communication, Respondent 2, November 4, 2011). Social media platforms and tools have millions of people using them everyday. The second lesson learned was to keep the source of information on the main website (Personal

53 Communication, Respondent 2, November 4, 2011). Respondent five added two additional lessons learned from the perspective of the mayors administration for Portland. The first lesson learned was that social media was great to jump into (Personal Communication, Respondent 5, November 18, 2011). The second lesson learned was that the mayor was engaging in a way very few other mayors were (Personal Communication, Respondent 5, November 18, 2011). The mayor for Portland can be reached faster and easier through social media tools versus email or phone. Respondent three stated two lessons learned from Pittsburgh use of social media and development. The first lesson learned involved understanding what content interested people versus what was dry content (Personal Communication, Respondent 3, November 9, 2011). The second lesson learned was how to stay away from topics that could take on a negative spin (Personal Communication, Respondent 3, November 9, 2011). Respondent four had one big lesson learned that all municipalities should ensure they are more detailed when developing social media. That biggest lesson learned was to ensure there was more than one or two key personnel that knew how to operate and access social media (Personal Communication, Respondent 4, November 15, 2011). The suggested solution respondent four provided was to have a general login for social media and have it stored in a location that can easily be accessed (Personal Communication, Respondent 4, November 15, 2011).

54 Do Differently in the Future The three best practice municipalities selected were all at different levels with use of social media. One municipality had an established social media plan and well established social media presence. Another municipality has an established social media presence and currently developing their social media plan. The third municipality had a well-established social media presence and they had to start over. Respondent two stated one thing to do differently would be to move more of the conversation and content to where the people already were (Personal Communication, Respondent 2, November 4, 2011). Respondent five added that they would have adopted more outreach type of uses of social media and if they had a larger budget they would hire a new staff member at least halftime to focus on social media efforts. The additional staff member would ensure nothing fell through the cracks and that the administration was on top of things earlier (Personal Communication, Respondent five, November 18, 2011). Respondent one did not provide a response for what they would do differently, but respondent three, the other representative for Pittsburgh, did provide a response. The first suggestion to do different was to have ongoing posts that people could look forward to. The second suggestion to do different was to hold more contests (Personal Communication, Respondent 3, November 9, 2011). The one contest held gained them over 2,000 new likes on their Facebook page.

55 Respondent four had multiple things he or she stated they would have done different given the technology transition they endured, but they focused on what would be done once their social media was restructured. One thing respondent four would do different with social media was to simplify the process for posting. The other thing they would do different would be to give each department more control over social media. Respondent four felt all posts did not need to come from one place (Personal Communication, Respondent 4, November 15, 2011). Future Issues and Use Future issues addressed what the municipality staff saw as something to keep an eye out for or issues other municipalities would run into when utilizing social media. Future uses are the things municipalities saw as something that was not common now, but would be in the future. Respondent two provided three pieces of information that were important for municipalities to keep in mind. The first was in the future municipalities would have to come up with more effective ways to have conversations via social media. Respondent two continued with the second issue of finding ways to increase participation and awareness of social media (Personal Communication, Respondent 2, November 4, 2011). A third issue respondent two mentioned was the need to understand data retention (Personal Communication, Respondent 2, November 4, 2011). Many municipalities have state laws to follow and some states may require data retention be conducted. The [data

56 retention] issue was knowing what to keep versus what not to keep (Personal Communication, Respondent 2, November 4, 2011). Respondent five provided future outlook for both future issues and use. The first issue respondent five saw, as an ongoing problem was the bureaucratic approval process. The process is not fast enough to stay with the speed of social media (Personal Communication, Respondent 5, November 18, 2011). The second issue addressed by respondent five was with people speaking on behalf of the municipality or elected official and being careful about what they said. The information posted has been sent out to thousands of people (Personal Communication, Respondent 5, November 18, 2011). Respondent five suggested that you will see more municipalities pushing elected officials to engage with people directly. Respondent two continued with you will also see increased engagement with social media through people talking back and forth (Personal Communication, Respondent 5, November 18, 2011). The second future use provided by respondent two was not so much a use, but what they saw with future policies. We will start to see more policies that guide social media, but allow trained employees to utilize fully (Personal Communication, Respondent 5, November 18, 2011). As mentioned previously, respondent one did not provide a response to future issues and use, but respondent three did provide a couple of issues they saw. The first issue respondent three saw was making sure the Facebook page stays at a quality level (Personal Communication, Respondent 3, November 9, 2011). This included content and conversation. The second issue supported the first issue and that was making sure people

57 were not posting things that were out of control, inappropriate, etc. (Personal Communication, Respondent 3, November 9, 2011). Respondent four saw one issue moving forward with social media. The one issue was Ensuring policy makers have enough input to where they feel they are making informed decisions. Respondent five went on to explain. [This is] to make sure they have real-time input from the community (Personal Communication, Respondent 4, November 15, 2011). Discussion & Conclusions The findings from this study and the interviews conducted were compiled into a recommendations report that was presented to the Administration (Appendix H). In the report, the purpose and outcomes of the benchmarking study, the project management approach used, who was selected and why, highlights from each municipality, and best practice recommendations were outlined. Implications for Practice The qualitative interviews conducted with each of the five participants highlighted two social media tools all municipalities should be using to be Facebook and Twitter. Each interviewed respondent identified that Facebook and Twitter were both key for his or her municipalities ability to engage with citizens. Why were these two the top tools to use? Respondents all echoed to go where the masses already are. After reviewing respondents answers there are untapped social media tools a municipality should consider using. Those tools are Ustream for live broadcasting of

58 virtual town hall meetings, Tumblr for news and project updates and Youtube for video updates. One municipality did mention they have a Youtube account, but it was rarely used (Personal Communication, Respondent 3, November 9, 2011). There are also areas a municipality could use social media for communications Examples of these tools are Google Docs, that allow for synchronous collaboration of documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, and Huddle for internal project management collaboration, that offers task tracking, project notifications and updates. Limitations of Study There were two main limitations in this study. First, the advancement of technology is lagging in municipalities. Each of the municipalities interviewed are levels of technology use and understanding. Some are well ahead of the curve and are innovators and others are just getting things started, but doing well. The reason is that some municipalities have limited technology. How and what social media platforms used by municipalities will be impacted due to limited technology. Second, citizens and employees have a general lack of understanding and misunderstanding of the technology used. This causes leaders of a municipality to limit the things they can do with technology in regards to social media. As the technology gaps becomes smaller more innovative things can be done for engaging the community. For this study these limitation were kept in mind as interviews were conducted.

59 Future Research and Projects to Consider Topics to consider for future research would be to gather more information and data on why municipalities do not utilize other social media tools for engagement. The questions designed for this study focused on what current social media tools were being used and the accomplishments and challenges for those tools. A suggestion for future research would be to design two to three additional questions that relate to those social media tools not utilized. An example of a social media tool that is not being utilized would be Ustream. Ustream can easily be implemented into an existing municipality's website and used as an additional outlet for citizens to attend town hall meetings and still have their voice heard. Ustream allows live broadcasting and attendee interaction through chat by connecting with third party social networks such has Facebook and Twitter. Another topic to consider for future research would be gather survey data from citizens for what social media tools they believe a municipality should consider to use to engage with citizens. Suggested questions to ask would be around what social media they currently use, what social media tools would they suggest to engage with citizens, would they attend a virtual town hall if offered and what other suggestions do they have. This survey would be good to conduct before interviewing best-in-class cities to design questions related to citizens suggestions and needs. In closing, the future of social media for municipalities is wide open. It can been seen as both an opportunity and threat. It is a threat as can be seen in such instances

60 as the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) anti-privacy bill. The SOPA protest saw not only people who used social media to protest their non-support of SOPA, but many of the social media sites that would be affected by SOPA. In one day the power of social media stopped congress from passing the SOPA anti-privacy. Ignoring the power of social media is no longer an options. For those that get started now, social media will become a media used to attract and keep citizens, businesses, and others in the region. Further, it will ensure that the citizens are more informed, more committed, and more likely to take action in supporting the municipalitys efforts to thrive in the 21st century.

61

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62 Retrieved April 29, 2012, from http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/industry/digitaland-mobile/exclusive-new-myspace-owner-tim-vanderhook-1005260472.story Center for Digital Government. (n.d.). Center for Digital Government. Retrieved February 22, 2012, from http://www.centerdigitalgov.com/ City. (n.d.). Wikipedia. Retrieved February 8, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City#United_States Global Environmental Management Initiative. (1994). Benchmarking the primer. Washington, DC: Global Environmental Management Initiative. Google Docs Definition. (n.d.). PCMag.com. Retrieved April 29, 2012, from http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,1233,t=Google+Docs&i=57240,00. asp Hay, D. (2009). A survival guide to social media and Web 2.0 optimization: strategies, tactics, and tools for succeeding in the social web. Austin, Tex.: Dalton Pub. Hudson, J. (2011, January 11). The Decay of MySpace. The Atlantic Wire. Retrieved April 29, 2012, from http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/01/thedecay-of-myspace/21532/ Huhman, L. (2012, April 25). City tries to do more with less. Observer & Eccentric. Retrieved April 26, 2012, from www.hometownlife.com/article/20120425/NEWS12/204260406 Informing. (n.d.). The Free Dictionary. Retrieved April 30, 2012, from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/informing

63 Johnson, L., Levine A., & Smith, R. (2009). The 2009 Horizon Report. Austin, TX: The New Media Consortium. Johnson, L., Levine A., Smith, R., & Stone, S. (2010). The 2010 Horizon Report. Austin, TX: The New Media Consortium. Laberge, M., & Svendsen, A. (n.d.). Co-Creative Power Definitions. Breakthroughs Unlimited Inc.. Retrieved April 28, 2012, from www.breakthroughsunlimited.com/co-creative-power.PDF Nielsen, A. (2011, October 11). Current State of Social Media: The Big Four. One Lily Web Solutions. Retrieved March 26, 2012, from http://www.onelily.com/2011/10/11/current-state-of-social-media-the-big-four/ One Lily. (2011, October 11). Current state of social media: The big four. Retrieved February 15, 2012, from http://www.onelily.com/2011/10/11/current-state-ofsocial-media-the-big-four/ Papers, O. S., & Businesses, R. f. (n.d.). What is Facebook? . Webopedia. Retrieved April 28, 2012, from http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/F/Facebook.html Pendergraft, C. (2009, November). Social media and municipalities: Challenges and possibilities. Presentation to Texas City Managers. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/carlapen/social-media-for-municipalities-challengesand-possibilities Pickett, J. (Ed.). (2002). The American Heritage college dictionary (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

64 Qualman, E. (2009). Socialnomics: how social media transforms the way we live and do business. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley. Rouse, M. (2011, July 8). What is Google+?. WhatIs.com. Retrieved April 29, 2012, from http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/google-.html Safko, L., & Brake, D. K. (2009). The social media bible: Tactics, tools, and strategies for business success. New York, NY: Wiley. Sperry, S. (2008, November 3). Highest Voter Turnout Since 1908 Predicted in U.S.. National Geographic News. Retrieved April 22, 2012, from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/11/081103-voter-turnout.html Ustream.TV: About Us. (n.d.). USTREAM.tv. Retrieved April 29, 2012, from http://www.ustream.tv/about Video sharing site Definition. (n.d.).PC Magazine. Retrieved April 28, 2012, from http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=video+sharing+site&i=5737 8,00.asp Vimeo FAQ. (n.d.). Vimeo.com. Retrieved April 29, 2012, from http://vimeo.com/help/faq Warren, G. (n.d.). Best Online Collaboration Tools. About.com. Retrieved April 28, 2012, from http://mobileoffice.about.com/od/conferencing-and-collaboration/a/bestonline-collaboration-tools.htm What is Blogging? (2006, January 7). ABC News. Retrieved February 7, 2012, from http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=889289#.TzHtJZhPfNk

65 What is Collaboration?. (n.d.). AIIM - The Global Community of Information Professional. Retrieved April 30, 2012, from http://www.aiim.org/What-isCollaboration What is Livestream?. (n.d.). Livestream. Retrieved April 29, 2012, from http://new.livestream.com/broadcast-live/what-is-livestream What is streaming. (n.d.). Webopedia. Retrieved April 28, 2012, from http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/S/streaming.html What is Twitter?. (n.d.). Webopedia. Retrieved April 28, 2012, from www.webopedia.com/TERM/T/Twitter.html What is YouTube? . (n.d.). Webopedia. Retrieved April 28, 2012, from http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/Y/YouTube.html Why Huddle?. (n.d.). Huddle.com. Retrieved April 29, 2012, from http://www.huddle.com/sharepoint/why-huddle/ WordPress. (2012, April 24). Wikipedia. Retrieved April 28, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress World's largest municipalities by population - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2012, April 3). Wikipedia. Retrieved April 24, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_largest_municipalities_by_population WorldWideLearn. (n.d.). What do synchronous and asynchronous mean? Retrieved from http://www.worldwidelearn.com/education-advisor/questions/synchronousasynchronous-learning.php

66 Appendices Appendix A - Definition of Terms The following definitions are to help understand the terms used when reading this study. Basecamp (tool) Basecamp is a web-based project-management tool developed by 37signals and was launched in 2004 (Wikipedia, 2012). Base Municipality For the purpose of this study is the base municipality that is compared to the best practices municipalities. Benchmarking (process) Benchmarking is a process of comparing and measuring an organizations business process against best-in-class operations to inspire improvement in the organizations performance (Global Environmental Management Initiative, 1994). Blogger (tool) A web site, where you write stuff on an ongoing basis. New stuff shows up at the top, so your visitors can read what's new (Blogger, n.d.). Blogging (platform) A blog is an online [diary] with articles, writings, photos, Web links, or other entries made by the blogs' creators, or "bloggers." (What is Blogging, 2006). BlogTV (tool) A leading live, interactive, Internet broadcasting platform that enables anyone with an Internet connection and a camera to connect to their audience in a evocative, direct way (BlogTV.com, n.d.). Co-Creative (platform) Co-creativity, is the ability of members of different groups, organizations or networks to harness co-creative power in order to act together on common issues, needs and goals (Laberge & Svendsen, 2007). Definition of co-creativity by Laberge & Svendsen was used for this study

67

Collaboration (process) Collaboration is a working practice whereby individuals work together to a common purpose to achieve business benefit (aiim, n.d.). Facebook (tool) Connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep in touch with friends, post photos, share links and exchange other information (Webopedia, n.d.). Google Docs (tool) A family of Web-based applications from Google that includes word processing, spreadsheet, presentations, forms creation and online storage (PCMag.com, n.d.). Google Hangouts Google+ Hangouts is a free video chat service from Google that enables both one-on-one chats and group chats with up to ten people at a time (Webpedia, n.d.). Google+ [Plus] (tool) Google social networking project...sought to replicate the way people interact offline more closely than is the case in other social networking services, such as Facebook and Twitter. The projects slogan is Real-life sharing rethought for the web (Whatis.com, 2011). Huddle (tool) Huddle is the number one SharePoint alternative for Enterprise Collaboration and Content Management in the cloud and is used by more than 100,000 government organizations and businesses globally (Huddle.com, n.d.). Livestream (tool) Livestream lets you stream live events over the Internet, expand your community and engage your audience when they cannot physically attend your event (Livestream.com, n.d.). Micro-blogging (platform)

68 Micro-blogging is a broadcast medium in the form of blogging. A micro-blog differs from a traditional blog in that its content is typically much smaller, in both actual size and aggregate file size (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2011). Municipality Sizes (Small, medium, large) A municipality size depends on what the states definition is for each level. In Ohio if a municipality has a population over 5,000 and is counted in the federal census, it is classified as a city and if it falls below that it is considered a village (Wikipedia, February 8,2012). In Nebraska if a municipality has a population of 5,000, that is the minimum for a first class city. If it has a population of 800, it is the minimum for a second-class city (Wikipedia, February 8,2012). Municipal vs. Municipality Municipal is a security issued by a state or local government or by an authority set up by such a government (Pickett, 2002). A municipality is a political unit, such as a city, town, or village, incorporated for local self-government (Pickett, 2002). OpenID A shared identity service that enables users of multiple OpenID-enabled Web sites to sign in under one single profile, or single user identity (Webpedia, n.d.). Social Media (process) The term social media refers to activities, practices, and behaviors among communities of people who gather online to share information, knowledge, and opinions using conversational media (Safko & Brake, 2009, p. 6). Social Network (platform) Social networks allow a person to create a personal profile page to post information about themselves or their business, invite people to join their network, join groups, blast messages and events, connect with other people and much more (Hay, 2009, p.137). Synchronous vs. Asynchronous Synchronous means working together at the same time, and in the online world, chat rooms and online conferences are examples of this (WorldWideLearn, n.d.).

69 Asynchronous is the relay of information with a time lag. Discussion forums and email are two examples of how asynchronous communication is employed in online learning (WorldWideLearn, n.d.). Tumblr (tool) Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, email, or wherever you happen to be (Tumblr, n.d.). Twitter (tool) A free social messaging tool that lets people stay connected through brief text message updates up to 140 characters in length (Webopedia, n.d.). Ustream (tool) The leading live interactive broadcast platform. Anyone with an Internet connection and a camera can start engaging with their family, friends or fans anytime, anywhere (Ustream.tv, n.d.). Video Sharing (platform) A Web site that lets people upload and share their video clips with the public at large or to invited guests (PC Magazine, n.d.). Video Streaming (platform) Streaming is a technique for transferring data so that it can be processed as a steady and continuous stream (Webopedia, n.d.). Definition for streaming was used for this study. Vimeo (tool) A friendly place where people who take and love videos can share, watch, discover, and be inspired (Vimeo.com, n.d.). Wordpress (tool) A free and open source blogging tool and a dynamic content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL (Wikipedia, 2012).

70 Youtube (tool) A popular free video-sharing Web site that lets registered users upload and share video clips online at the YouTube.com Web site (Webopedia, n.d.).

71 Appendix B Consent Letters (3 one for each city) Portland, Oregon Letter

72 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Letter

73 Manor, Texas Letter

74 Appendix C Respondent Interview Transcription Respondent One Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Interview Transcription 08/29/2011 2:30pm EST

Quantitative Questions Answers are BOLD below. What was the initial startup cost for getting approval to use social media? $0 - $1000 $1001 - $5000 $5001 - $10000 Over $10000 What was the initial startup cost for designing the process used for social media? $0 - $1000 $1001 - $5000 $5001 - $10000 Over $10000 What was the initial startup cost for launching social media? $0 - $1000 $1001 - $5000 $5001 - $10000 Over $10000 Notes from Questions 1-3 We are a city government who does not do well with total cost of operations. Speaking in terms of cash outlay that would show up on a budget no the back office costs with personnel time. What is budget to date for maintaining social media? (Annual Budget Includes employee wages, premium subscriptions, and any other cost associated with.) Under 10,000 because I dont have within the city an ability to disaggregate premium subscriptions, employees wages, employees benefits, pension

75 contributions, payroll costs associated with this function called social media. So I am giving you a number I think is representative of our lack of specific attention to this as an itemized piece, it just becomes part of someones day job. What are the measures used to assess the effectiveness of social media? (Check all that apply) Survey There is an effectiveness survey, but has not been seen. It is through a 3rd party organization that has been used throughout this whole process of using social media. Questionnaire Verbal feedback (What you are hearing on the streets and from others) ROI measurement tools (Measure the cost to implement and use versus the impact it has with engaging the community) The city does not have return on investment activities, tools, that we would really look at that ever could get us that specific and if we have those tools one of the last places it would probably be applied to would be the social media category. None (Do not measure the effectiveness of social media) In terms of feedback we usually hear back from the Bees the people who complain, but we rarely dont hear positive comments; people say this is the best thing since sliced bread, but the real metric use in terms of a measure is that if we have 7,217 people who seem to like the Facebook site, then that means that 7,217 people who before we had it didnt have that sort of interface with the city. Other notes: from question 5: We see social media really as a positive thing to have, but it also could be a necessary evil of operating a government. Because we do not have a mechanism that really determines what is its value, what is its proposition, what does it allow us to do that we have been able to undo somewhere else. In my job one of the things I try to have everybody look at is if we do

76 something new, what are we no longer doing that we have done for 10 years, 30 years or whatever. Referred to Marissa Doyle to ask about access to the 3rd party survey that is conducted. Moved from quantitative questions to the qualitative questions. To begin we expanded upon the meaning of social media to include how the City of Pittsburgh defines it. Added effective two way communication. All responses are focused on how do we really have communications working more effectively between the citizens of the City of Pittsburgh (our 300,000) and the city government. We are trying to basically think about social media and two-way communication. Recognize that if we send out a press release or we have a posting on the city website, how do we know if anyone has turned the radio on and they are actually listening. We are trying to come up with a mechanism that allows for us to be interactive, which goes back a little more to your web 2.0 and social media definition, but it also means how do we get people to register and to sign-up and communicate with us. And we have a variety of mechanisms in place, which Ill tell you why we tried to expand into the social media , its because we have a 311 system. In our 311 system we wanted to increase the ability to enter information via way of the web and use electronic capabilities. This is where it crosses into my job title, which is city performance manager and that we were using a single email box and a static web forum for communication coming into the 311 system. So that information would go to one individual. We then increased that capability so that it could roll to a staff of ten and t hey could pick it up similar to a telephone call where the telephones ring through to the ten people, but we did not have t hat as a piece of technology. So the story I am telling you is that we recognize that we have to have a greater capacity to receive information inbound for people who want to communicate to us. We learned that through the 311 system and weve taken technological innovation approaches to improve on that so that we can now. (Starting next week we will be able to have somebody send us a photograph of a pothole, that will automatically get into the right person in the 311 area as well as the information related to that.) We have Google voice so that we dont have people having to when the phone is not being answered by a human, we actually have transcription of that information, so that the 311 staff can then more efficiently enter that into the database system to have it distributed out to the proper team member who does real work out in the city to get things

77 resolved. Again part of that is a response, a thank you, a follow-up that yes this is the status of what is going on with your request. So all of that is part of our two-way communication approach, which is sort of our definition in Pittsburgh of what social media is. We are not trying to have it just be Facebook or Twitter, because we still see that as very difficult to evaluate on the way back in to us about whether the message is getting received. So if we have the return back to someone by way of 311. Qualitative Questions Tell me the story of how you came to make social media a strategic priority? [So out of two-communication strategy] we decided we wanted to start a Facebook and move into twitter as well because we felt the nature of the communications beast, the fewer people reading the Pittsburgh Post Gazette and the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, as print media, either receiving it at their apartment or home or using it online, we know that the subscription numbers were decreasing and because the print media had been our primary means of putting press releases out we said that with diminishing publicity of city activities in the print just because it is not as much in demand by the consumer and also it is subject to the whims of the editor policy becomes political has nothing to do with where the decision came but we know that newspapers sometimes want to tell stories differently today and put things in the press, then going by what the definition of what news is, which is stuff that comes from north, east, west, and south. So with the change in the way the print media sees their response, the city saw that it needed to be a little more open with pushing things out in a different distribution channel therefore Facebook made sense, therefore Twitter (son or daughter, however you want to look at it of Facebook) also made sense. The city does not have a blog of its own that really is managed and I know I am getting into one of your other questions perhaps, but its part of the story that we looked at is that we knew if we wanted to maintain a blog we want to somehow audit and protect and look at the content that's coming back from Facebook interactions back as comments we would have to have an individual who would really take responsibility for take and that is Marissa Doyle who looks at that as part of her responsibility. Describe the approval process you went through with key decision makers? Primarily the communications department worked with the mayors chief of staff and they decided that some of the things that I described to you in the overview just a moment ago that we should go ahead and come up with a

78 Facebook page for the city have someone work in the technology department in the computer information area work with the communications department and then also bring a person on-board who could enrich and manage and work with that in addition to other print media and traditional PR stuff. So that was pretty much executive level decision within the mayors office to make that decision. Describe the process you went through from design to launch of social media? The design part really meant we had to figure out what we wanted the Facebook page to look like. That means we worked with the in house talent within the IT department to use them to help us figure out how we wanted the page to look how it would be managed itself in terms of procedural thing, the IT department needs to understand that whether they are doing it or the communications department doing it, balance of responsibilities there and this process was similar to every other function and decision we make in the City of Pittsburgh. You involve the individuals who become responsible for it and once you tell them what you want to get done, they have to get it done. The duration of number three was probably 9 months [this included talking with key decision makers]. Describe the process for maintaining keeping content that is shared relevant and current? Referred to an additional person. What is your current strategic plan for social media? Referred to an additional person for details. Stated with saying that a strategic plan for social media maybe in the same category as a strategic plan for other functions of city government, which tends to be more reactive than proactive. What have been your significant accomplishments with social media? One of the first things is we have a Facebook site, Twitter, So that is an accomplishment that it exists. As I said before we have 7,000 people agreeing or saying that they are friends of the city. We have had feedback from people that they have received information through Facebook. How do you measure the impact or effectiveness of social media?

79 Referred back to quantitative question 5. What has been frustrating with approval, design, launch and maintaining social media? How do we figure out the balance between the different departments who have their social media and websites? The information that we have available for people and how do we really make this into a tool that helps the day to day operations of the city and the day to day operations of the people we are serving. So going from a static form on a website to an interactive form that goes up whether on the website or through the Facebook page, the fact is then interactive or it then goes into the back office with 85% of the content that was filed out on the form into the database, thats sort of the whole piece of the frustration is how do we get some benefit that helps the day to day operations using these technologies. How to find the balance between?

80 Respondent Two Portland, Oregon City of Portland, Oregon Interview Transcription 11/04/2011 4:00pm Quantitative Questions Answers are BOLD below. What was the initial startup cost for getting approval to use social media? $0 - $1000 $1001 - $5000 $5001 - $10000 Over $10000 What was the initial startup cost for designing the process used for social media? $0 - $1000 $1001 - $5000 $5001 - $10000 Over $10000 What was the initial startup cost for launching social media? $0 - $1000 $1001 - $5000 $5001 - $10000 Over $10000 Notes from Questions 1-3 Due to the nature of Portlands government the above answers are estimates. It is hard to track financials given the style of government being a commissioner style with silos. What is budget to date for maintaining social media? (Annual Budget Includes employee wages, premium subscriptions, and any other cost associated with.) Unknown What are the measures used to assess the effectiveness of social media? (Check all that apply) Survey Questionnaire

81 Verbal feedback (What you are hearing on the streets and from others) ROI measurement tools (Measure the cost to implement and use versus the impact it has with engaging the community) None (Do not measure the effectiveness of social media) Qualitative Questions Tell me the story of how you came to make social media a strategic priority? We have a mayor who is very embracing of technology in general. He has almost 50,000 followers on Twitter. He has tweeted himself well over 5,000 times. Following his lead, he of course set expectation to the extent that he can with bureau of directors, his bureau portfolio and with others. Most people on the face of it see the value of social media. We in government are under constant pressure to improve delivery of services while attempting to drive the cost and social media certainly presents one of those opportunities. The mayor in fact one of the best methods to get a hold of him is to send him a tweet and hell respond. So he is very receptive and very responsive both to Twitter especially. Similarly other bureaus like the Portland Police Bureau they probably have more visits to their social media sites than to their city website. They use it as an effective channel to communicate to the community to allow them update on status, whats things are happening currently. I think most bureaus view it as an opportunity to go where the populous already is as apposed to trying to drive them to the city website. So the combination of all that is what I think made is a strategic priority for the city of Portland. What have been your most significant accomplishments with regard to social media? I would say the policy itself, the overall tackling of the issue, the city wide government making it a priority embracing the technology and the various means that bureaus have at their disposal for their outreach which is typically used for. That being Twitter or Facebook and similar forms video, flicker for photos and other for sharing content essentially. How is social media helping you engage with your citizens and community? Example of the police. They make very good use of Twitter and Facebook. Other examples the city pushes out through social media id

82 we advertise jobs. We also make known upcoming contract opportunities that are available. In many cases you reach a different demographic depending on the social media that you use. So if is a technology type contract for example we would send that out through Twitter typically cause a lot of more technology savvy people are already on Twitter. A lot of bureaus use social media to send out projects status as well to keep the public up to date in terms of projects related to events. What is your current strategic plan for social media? Current strategic plan for social media is to probably take better advantage of social media overall across the city. Depending on the bureau and the type of services they deliver to the public. We also have other accommodations that are being made within website for example other online services were looking to technology such as Open ID to allow people to use their social media account logins to preform the authentication and not rely on the city account or authentication process to the extent that we are now. So thats kind of the strategic plan overall is just spreading it out making it pervasive essentially. How did you develop your plan? A lot of bureaus were already using social media in various forms. They had very different styles, very different standards using it. A couple of them, the more prolific users had complied some training and had sets of best method recommendations that they shared among their bureaus and other bureaus learned of it and they asked for them to come talk to their groups and so forth. There was sort of a grass roots effort in terms of know methods or practices that was going on. That was used as input to the policy making process and that policy essentially developed a social media committee that was made of a number of different bureaus that included the technology bureau and city attorneys and others. The city attorneys worked with HR to come up with the actual two documents. The policy itself and also a guideline document and it was that they pushed throughout the city as part of the HR rules. From there we have constructed training for content managers, people who are active pushing content through their respective website and trying to get them more well versed on etiquette and the appropriate things to do and also how to setup accounts and make sure it is not setup under one persons name. For

83 example when their on vacation nobody can access the account and things like that. Describe the approval process you went through with key decision makers? The approval process was very similar in that it started with the best practices. The committee met, went through each and every one of those practices and explained the relative benefits of each. I think we started with the bureau of directors. Went up through the bureau of directors and onto the social media committee and from there the city attorneys and HR worked together primarily to refine it and codify it. Describe your social media design and maintenance process. Describe the process you went through from design to launch of social media? The design and maintenance process, essentially the design is fairly, well already taken care of through the turnkey solutions offered and provided by social media providers themselves. Not much you can do other than ensure that relevant information is consistently included within your Facebook page. The configuration is typically consistent. Describe the process for maintaining social media - keeping content relevant and current? The maintenance process is ensuring that the site remains active in terms of content and sustaining the conversation. Whatever that conversation may be. Because of the decentralized nature of the city that probably varies a lot. There are some bureau sites that have quite sophisticated widgets within their social media accounts. Custom Facebook apps for example. Other pretty much take the default. How do you measure the impact or effectiveness of social media? What other evidence do you use to evaluate the effectiveness of social media? The most common measure would be the number of follows if it is Twitter, the number of likes if it was Facebook for example. What the growth rate is overtime, how fast they are ramping up in terms of the number of participants, so the number of people have at least hit the like button once. Interesting example that comes to mind. Here in Portland he had an incident, I think it was

84 a Sunday afternoon a few months ago where a bomb went off. It was like a pipe bomb and it was a very loud explosion and no one really knew where the source of it was. The police and others were trying to find out where it was. The city of Portland has a lot of high-tech, pretty sharp technology wise folks as a part of our city and they were quick to use Twitter for example to setup a triangulation. They setup a website really quick and they asked people on Twitter to go to the website and essentially describe how loud it was that they experienced. Whether or not it was loud enough to shake your windows versus did it sound like a car back firing versus did it sound like firecrackers going off in the distance and so forth. The input that they received on that website was pretty accurate in terms of triangulating the actual location of the explosion and this did not go unnoticed by the Portland Police Bureau. That incident along with others probably was very, demonstrated very effectively the potential power of crowd sourcing information. The Portland Police Bureau, just to get back on them. I think they view it as a very effective tool for sort of on the ground notification system. People that are involved in an area or incident that they can get information from quickly. For example on all the Portland Police cars they have their Twitter handle, @portlandpolice as a part of the paint design. So Portland is pretty clear about wanting to get that information. What have been some of your challenges with utilizing social media? How have you been able to address or overcome these challenges? The challenges early on getting a consistent use of social media, making sure that the account access and setup was reasonable. That we werent relying on one or two people to have solo access to a bureaus social media account. We fixed that by using group email aliases, having more than one administrator to the page. There really been to many incidents of people acting on behalf of the city, although have been a few where actual city employees during off time they may weigh in on issues that its not clear to others that there not a city employee. So that has been a little bit of an issue. Other than that it has be fairly well managed. What have been your lessons learned with social media? The ongoing lesson we are learning is how powerful it is. Breaking the mold so to speak of the old model of relying on people to come to city website for information. We are actually going where they already are and making to the extent we can, at least making the awareness much greater by going to social media. The source of the information is typically still on our website. We drive

85 them back to there because of the data retention laws of the state. So a lot of the original content has to remain on the cities platform such that we dont have to devise some innovative way of tracking everything that goes on in a social media account, because it is typically not there very long. What will you do different in the future with social media? The city will continue to move the conversation relevant as it applies to pending projects, pending laws and such to where people already are. I think the city overall will adopt much more outreach type uses of social media. Well also look to new technologies to accommodate more people using the social media accounts such as Open ID. I think there are lots of opportunities to continue to grow the citys accommodation of social media. As you look into the future, what applications and issues do you see for cities utilizing social media? Cities in general are going to need to think about more effective ways to have a conversation via social media. How to drive up participation and awareness of the citys going ons with government. I think thats most of the issues other than the data retention issue, which is something that is going to very from state-tostate. Its not a very well understood policy. Cities, well I know employees/city workers dont have the same view as to what they should keep versus not keep in terms of records of and so I think that is going to continue to be a problem. Knowing what constitutes data retention versus not.

86 Respondent Three Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Interview Transcription 11/09/2011 10:30am EST Quantitative Questions Answers are BOLD below. What was the initial startup cost for getting approval to use social media? $0 - $1000 $1001 - $5000 $5001 - $10000 Over $10000 What was the initial startup cost for designing the process used for social media? $0 - $1000 $1001 - $5000 $5001 - $10000 Over $10000 What was the initial startup cost for launching social media? $0 - $1000 $1001 - $5000 $5001 - $10000 Over $10000 Notes from Questions 1-3 Tracking the cost for social media in Pittsburgh is currently no existent. It is something that is done and just added to staffs duties. All social media tools used are free and have no additional cost associated with them. What is budget to date for maintaining social media? (Annual Budget Includes employee wages, premium subscriptions, and any other cost associated with.) No, we still have not discussed any official budget. It is our job as the communications department. So we spend the time on it. Other than that we havent used any of our city government budget for this.

87 What are the measures used to assess the effectiveness of social media? (Check all that apply) Survey Questionnaire Verbal feedback (What you are hearing on the streets and from others) ROI measurement tools (Measure the cost to implement and use versus the impact it has with engaging the community) None (Do not measure the effectiveness of social media) Beyond that we use actually use insights that Facebook provides. That has been very helpful for us to see the percentage of our fans are commenting and interacting with our post, sharing, the amount of fans we add on each week, things like that is what we use to determine if what we are doing is working. We want to get people to not only follow our page, but actually look at what we are posting. Qualitative Questions Tell me the story of how you came to make social media a strategic priority? Well we decided to partake in social media, mainly Twitter and Facebook, the two main ones we use. We do have a YouTube page, but it has not been accessed in a while. It just did not become worth our time at this point. That may change in the future, but because we do have a cable channel and people who do create videos already in a different department. So Facebook and Twitter we decided to partake in because of the social trends, the popularity of them and they have been popular for a while now. We identified these as effective and cost-effective to communicate our message to our residences and visitors in a way that we felt we had more control over then by relying on the media. That is on of the major benefits to social media is that we can put out what we feel is important and not hope somebody else picks up on it and that they feel support. (Example - Just this week we have a special fall pickup, there is going to be a compost pickup from our refuse trucks for fall debris, tress, leaves, anything like that on the 12th. That is something that might get a little blurb in one of the papers somewhere small, but a lot of residences care about it. So this a way to rather then rely on them to read it in a newspaper that we put it out ourselves

88 and we reach over 7,000 fans and then they share it and tell their friends and things like that.) What have been your most significant accomplishments with regard to social media? I would say our most significant accomplishment was a contest that we held. I dont know if you are familiar with Hines Ward who plays for the Steelers. He was on Dancing with the Stars and actually won the whole competition. So we decided to partner with the Steelers organization and hold a rally for him to celebrate his victory. On top of that we held a contest with our social media where we asked residents to send in their dancing videos and we would pick the top 5. On Facebook the top three with the most votes would preform at the prep rally. So it was a great way to engage people by asking them to submit their videos and then we had a really positive reaction to the five videos that were posted. A lot of likes and we actually gained over 2000 fans just for that contest. That was very effective. I dont know the exact number of comments and likes we received on those videos, but I know it was substantial and to gain 1000s of fans because of it. That was probably the most effective one item that we have done or that one contest that we held. How is social media helping you engage with your citizens and community? Refer back to contest and how it received many comments and likes and 1000s of new fans. And also social media, and this could be an answer to quite a few of the questions. It benefits us because there are a lot of things we want to share with the residents thats not press release worthy, you know they are not that official, but there still interesting and something we want people to know and this is a great informal way to spread the word about things that we are hosting, collections that we are having for local food banks, anything like that. Maybe it isnt necessarily formal press release or maybe it is another way to get that word out. Its a great way to share things we just find interesting or we think residents might want to know. What is your current strategic plan for social media?

89

Our current strategic plan is actually being worked on. We have just added another staff member so we have must more time and resources to focus on our social media efforts. Currently our plan is to post any type of press out reach we have that we think residents would be interested in. Beyond that its just day by day accolades the city receives, mentions that we have, yesterday we just posted Regis and Kelly and Katie Homes talked about Pittsburgh because her husband is filming here and they all complemented the city, so things like that its timely and cant really predict it, but as soon as we hear about it we want to share it. It brings to the attention to our fans of the page that all the accolades the city is receiving is just not us that feel that way. Nationally we are receiving a lot of high praise. Other then sharing the things we are putting out there as a city communications department we are also sharing and posting things that we think our fans would be interested in and that are complementary to the city. Beyond that we do make an effort to view pages of community groups city and non-profits and we will comment or like or engage with their post that are relevant to our to our goals as well. Right now we are working on an updated plan which we will have on going fan engagement tactics that will be things like did you know questions, interesting facts, things like that. How did you develop your plan? Refer to the above comments. Describe the approval process you went through with key decision makers? For something like this it is just the communications department. There is myself the press secretary and we now have a communications assistant. So for something like that it will be just the three of us will work together on it. We are the experts in the city. When we feel that it is comfortable with the new plan and it will be effective we will move forward with it. The original social media efforts we did work with the mayor himself, the chief of staff, and beyond that the law department. Describe your social media design and maintenance process.

90 Describe the process you went through from design to launch of social media? Describe the process for maintaining social media - keeping content relevant and current? For our current process of maintaining the page is like I mentioned before a combination of reviewing the things we are sending out as a press office and adding that with things that are sent to us form other departments or from other mayors office staff that they think we would find interesting, pick up on whats going on whenever we have our group meetings with other staff members, what are the hot button topics, just basically always having an ear open to things we think would be interesting for social media and beyond that like I said reviewing and reaching out to other entities and organizations outside of the city that...visit Pittsburgh is out tourism group you know so they have a lot of great information so we want to share that as well. How do you measure the impact or effectiveness of social media? What other evidence do you use to evaluate the effectiveness of social media? Refer back to the quantitative example given. Basically like I said we use Facebook Insights and they do a great job at helping us measure how many people are viewing and interacting with our post and beyond that it is a word of month thing. Just talking to residents, talking to staff members and seeing how people are learning about, how people are sharing our information. It is surprising how many other departments whenever they have meetings and things like that they actually ask how people find out about it and a lot them are from social media, so that's encouraging. What have been some of your challenges with utilizing social media? How have you been able to address or overcome these challenges? One of the main challenges is making sure that our page doesnt become a sounding board for the new hot button topic to vent about in the city and also making sure that when people do post negative things that they are accurate. Were not asking everybody to post how much they love the city, that would be great, but we realize thats not always going to happen, but if your going to

91 bring to the attention something that maybe you dislike about the city as long as it is relevant to the post, because that is one of guidelines. Youd be surprised how often its not so we do make sure that we try to deter people from taking any post and turning it into something they dont like about the city by making sure that the guidelines state that the comments have to remain relevant to the post topic wise and then on top of that if they are inaccurate with their statements that we correct them. Whether as staff or the official city of Pittsburgh. What have been your lessons learned with social media? You learn what interest people and what is a little bit more dry for the general audience and also how to stay away from what topics may suddenly take on negative spin with comments, something we feels positive but it might turn negative whenever people start commenting. So you learn what to stay away from and what to share. What will you do different in the future with social media? One of our goals is to beyond things that are timely and relevant to have a plan in place for ongoing posts that people can look forward to and they know they are coming. Which would include like I mentioned before, where in the city photos and have people guess. You know contest of sorts and maybe even in an ideal world partner with different organizations in the city to offer a prize, because we obviously as a city cannot with our resources. Just to give fans something steady to expect from our page. Little contest that will be on going rather than just one contest and thats it. As you look into the future, what applications and issues do you see for cities utilizing social media? I think that it depends on the size of the city. We are at a point right now where our number of fans and interactivity is easy to contain, but looking at other cities particularly some of the cities that you are also studying; being able to make sure that the page stays at a quality level and you dont have people posting things out of control, inappropriate and things like that. Keeping a hold on the page and keeping it positive basically, not just positive I mean, but keeping it appropriate. Once you get, right now we have 7,000 but if we have 70,000 tat

92 would be a lot more of a task and maybe we would have to address how we handle it.

93 Respondent Four Manor, Texas City of Manor, Texas Interview Transcription 11/15/2011 4:40pm EST Manor, Texas at the time of this interview was going through major changes in the administration. Some of the questions below were unable to be answered due to current lack of knowing. Quantitative Questions Answers are BOLD below. What was the initial startup cost for getting approval to use social media? $0 - $1000 $1001 - $5000 $5001 - $10000 Over $10000 What was the initial startup cost for designing the process used for social media? $0 - $1000 $1001 - $5000 $5001 - $10000 Over $10000 What was the initial startup cost for launching social media? $0 - $1000 $1001 - $5000 $5001 - $10000 Over $10000 What is budget to date for maintaining social media? (Annual Budget Includes employee wages, premium subscriptions, and any other cost associated with.) Our current budget is very likely to change this next year. Our current budget is approximate $16,000. What are the measures used to assess the effectiveness of social media? (Check all that apply) Survey

94 Questionnaire Verbal feedback (What you are hearing on the streets and from others) ROI measurement tools (Measure the cost to implement and use versus the impact it has with engaging the community) None (Do not measure the effectiveness of social media) One of the deals we are working on right now, that I have been tasked with here coming in is some type of an ROI measurement. Were trying to get a quantitative measure on in and its kind of...social media is kind of a tuff thing to quantify as far how you are getting a return on investment. Its one of those more aesthetic returns. Qualitative Questions Tell me the story of how you came to make social media a strategic priority? We had employees here at the city that I guess had reached levels in this city where they had positions where they could kind of promote these things, social media and stuff. It was high on their agenda list. One of the things that occurred was that the city began to receive recognition and for a small city like us in Manor. A little bit of recognition on a national bases and later on an international bases, you know that stir up a lot of emotion and some backing to it and kind of gave it justification for their promoting. That was kind of what got the whole thing rolling and going if you will. What have been your most significant accomplishments with regard to social media? 2008: Center for Digital Government - Best of Most Innovative use of Technology (Best of Texas Award) 2010: Center for Digital Government - Visionary Award (Best of Texas) Those that are cutting edge. 2010: Altimeter - Open Leadership Award for Excellence How is social media helping you engage with your citizens and community? If we still had the operating infrastructure the advantage would be, being able on a real-time basis to interact with community. Instead of posting notices and waiting on public hearings, which we are still

95 gonna have to do by law, however itd be nice to get some real-time feedback on issues as they progress. Right now quite frankly as far as how is it helping, right now its not cause were down. What is your current strategic plan for social media? From right now our current strategic plan is to find out what platforms we have in place we are literally at that much of a lost right now. Technology wise the transition was awful. The person that was the key person in all of this actually went to work for one of the major companies that was supporting and spearheading a lot of this and that kind of set some of the city staff off and city council members off in the wrong direction when he accepted that position with the company. It almost looked... parts looked like the city was being used as a experiment point to help this company work out its R&D. I dont necessarily believe that was the case. I see where a lot of the people here you know got that opinion and things were not done to change it. Instead it was just left. We have got several pieces of software, we have several platforms in place that quite frankly we cant take advantage of. We dont even know how to log on to some of them to get any type of statistic reports out of. I have been there where I had to track down, to the best of my ability by contacting people who then forward me to other people, who send me to other people and eventually I finally get somewhere as far as where I can either make the decision we are never goign to salvage it, weve got to start it over to sometimes get lucky and the person gives me the information I need. Then I can reset it all to a default login where the information to login can be accessed by everyone if needed. Exactly! It wasnt setup like that originally. My deal right now is trying to get some of the council people and stuff to realize it wasnt done desirously, it was just...you know your never planning on leaving while your administrating stuff. I dont think it was anything vicious against the city or any big innate plan or anything like that. I think it was just the way that it happened. Unfortunately for the city it left us in this situation. How did you develop your plan? Unable to provide and answer at the time of the interview.

96 Describe the approval process you went through with key decision makers? Unable to provide and answer at the time of the interview. Describe your social media design and maintenance process. Describe the process you went through from design to launch of social media? At this point I would not have any type of intelligent answer for that entire question. Describe the process for maintaining social media - keeping content relevant and current? At this point I would not have any type of intelligent answer for that entire question. How do you measure the impact or effectiveness of social media? What other evidence do you use to evaluate the effectiveness of social media? The awards received. We are. What we are looking at right now is we are trying to determine a way, once we can figure out what the platforms are in place, is determining a way we can currently measure our ROI on it and see is it worth while to the city currently or can we see a way that it could be worth while or the return on investment in the very near future, because if it isn't..you know small cities like us with small budgets we simply dont have the funds to you know put into things that the return on investment is way out there and its speculative. What have been some of your challenges with utilizing social media? How have you been able to address or overcome these challenges? Our challenge... one of the biggest things I see as our challenge is once we do get the things figured out is if we...if the city of Manor decides to keep going forward with social media. That one of the challenges is gonna be in keeping and retaining key employees that maintain this information and that are able to take the information out and put it into reports and put it into practical information that we can use on a daily basis. Those type of employees with us being a small city the challenge that we face is once we can get somebody up to speed and trained in the system...some of the larger cities with larger budgets and a little

97 bit...they have viable funds to fund the thing, they can certainly attract them away from a small city. When it comes to IT and stuff like that. You have to stay abreast of current technology and thats just a fact of life and so a lot of these larger cities they can certainly make offers that to technology driven people and their whole career is based around or assumed around technology. The offers that they can make them are simply more attracting then what we can make. In both the technology they will put in front of them and give them access to as well as just simply a salary. What have been your lessons learned with social media? Our primary lessons is making sure we have more than one or two key personnel that know how to operate it and that have total access to it. That is one thing that I know that the company I work with in the past they were adamant that when I set up things and help them with things that there is a general login. For example we will put everything under this account name or something like that. Very much so. That way and try to keep everything the same you know. Similar password structures and so forth. Just so that way you can go back to a document or list of something and say heres how you get in. Right, and somewhere you have got to have a file thats kept active of that kind of information. You know a city has a great place to store it, the city secretary's office. The keep of records. Its just one of those things thats got to be implemented. What will you do different in the future with social media? I think that one of the biggest things if we go forth with the whole program is that we are going to be looking at a method to simplify it. To where everything doesnt have to come into a single PMO or something to be updated and put out at each department can maintain their section and they can update it. They could have it be more of a viable resource for them, instead of having everything come into a central POM, project maintenance, our management office and having everything go in and out like that. I think a PMO would still be in charge of the whole thing as far as standards are. Thats the biggest thing we would be

98 looking at. Each department having more control over and simplifying the process to the point where people dont have to be extreme specialist in order to get into it and actually administer the information going in and out. As you look into the future, what applications and issues do you see for cities utilizing social media? To me I think that the biggest issue with any city is for its policy makers to be able to have enough input to where they feel like they are making informed decisions. That is the biggest thing I see social media doing is it allows those persons that are setting the policy on a daily basis and council or anybody else setting budgets and setting the strategic goals for a city theyve got a real-time input from everybody out there. As an issue comes up they wont just have an input that staffs gives them or an input from a particular interest group shows up and gives them. Everybody will have more of a feeling of at least I got my voice in and on a citywide scale I think that input is still gonna be significant in the decision making process. I think it is kind of lost some on national scale. I have talk to people at different governors offices and stuff where they have it and yes everybody can voice their opinion, but they have software there that kind of sorts through the stuff and gives them a big conglomerate message. The little details and some of that stuff are to the policy makers they dont ever hear the smaller details. On a citywide basis they still can and I think thats really important. There is nothing more uncomfortable then nothing knowing your making a decision that effects several thousand people and feeling like your doing it and you feel like you dont

99 Respondent Five Portland, Oregon City of Portland, Oregon Interview Transcription 11/18/2011 6:30pm EST Quantitative Questions Answers are BOLD below. What was the initial startup cost for getting approval to use social media? $0 - $1000 $1001 - $5000 $5001 - $10000 Over $10000 What was the initial startup cost for designing the process used for social media? $0 - $1000 $1001 - $5000 $5001 - $10000 Over $10000 What was the initial startup cost for launching social media? $0 - $1000 $1001 - $5000 $5001 - $10000 Over $10000 Notes from Questions 1-3 Similar to the details state by Rick Nixon of Portland. The first interview. What is budget to date for maintaining social media? (Annual Budget Includes employee wages, premium subscriptions, and any other cost associated with.) It is a group effort and the cost is absorbed within existing employees duties. We use Tweetdeck for multiple user access. What are the measures used to assess the effectiveness of social media? (Check all that apply) Survey Questionnaire

100 Verbal feedback (What you are hearing on the streets and from others) ROI measurement tools (Measure the cost to implement and use versus the impact it has with engaging the community) None (Do not measure the effectiveness of social media) Look at quality of engagement, are we keeping up the conversation. Qualitative Questions Tell me the story of how you came to make social media a strategic priority? So early on in the Mayors first term was January 2009. We actually had a significant scandal in our office. The Mayor was under investigation for a relationship he had with an 18 year old, which caused constrictions in our local media and actually consequently lead a lot of our local media to stop covering the works that we were continuing to do. We do work in transportation, economic development, education, public safety, and planning. None of that work was being covered, everyone was either focusing on the investigation or ignoring us completely. So took a couple months but we finally reached our frustration breaking point and a small team of us in the office were brainstorming, What is it we can do to make sure the news of the good work that we were doing was getting out to the community. I think partially we had the broader issue of what the media was focused on, but I would also say its probably not uncommon for other politicians to experience the same thing, whether or not they are under investigation for something, because regular media these days has such attached resources they just cant cover everything. So we decided our best strategy in this office would be go straight to the people. Their all on Facebook and Twitter, a lot of Portlanders are tech savvy. We were having a conversation directly with constituents about accomplishing our goal of letting them know what it is we are doing and secondly we figured it might take a while, probably the local media would start to catch on that, folks are going to realize that were doing a lot of good work here and their not hearing about it in the newspaper and theyre going to start to wonder were the disconnect is and that might prompt media to start covering our work again. Which it has. What have been your most significant accomplishments with regard to social media? The mayor has well over 40,000 followers on Twitter. We have got a little over 10,000 people on our Facebook Page and we constantly

101 adding in the latest and newest tools and play around with them a little bit. Those are our two main ones. He (the mayor) is very well known for being personally engaged on social media, which is something I am quite proud of. He does I would say 90% of his own tweets and Facebook posts are his alone. When we have significant events in town. We had a big protest related to occupy Portland a couple days ago and there was a lot of people with questions about it. He jumped on Twitter for an hour and just sort of did Q & A with people directly. How is social media helping you engage with your citizens and community? Its really conversational. I keep close eye on anything mentioning the mayor cause a lot it is policy questions or just I agree with it this, I disagree with this, but a lot of it to is customer service issues. Like hey there is a storm drain clogged on my street, what can I do about that? We make sure that those get dispatched to the right city bureau to be dealt with as quickly as possible. What is your current strategic plan for social media? So our plan had to really developed organically. We had broader communications plan and one of those is constituent outreach and response. So we really want to curate our Facebook page, we want to make sure we are putting original content on there and not just feeding in things from out blog. We of course always want to increase the number of followers so we are reaching more people and we want to be doing high quality content that we are putting on there so people do engage with it and retweet it or post it to their own Facebook page. Also we are always using social media to drive people back to our website where we have a lot of video content. We are always pushing out our videos along our social media as well. How did you develop your plan? So in terms of development I would say it developed quite organically. We were all kind of learning as we were going seeing what did work what didnt work. I discovered when we post things on Facebook that just fed in from our blog, nobody was reading it. If we links to a blog post and did some original content describing what it was and then we would get a lot of conversation going on it. It now has sort of started

102 to take off. We get quite a lot of conversation going on the mayors Facebook page. Describe the approval process you went through with key decision makers? The approval process we went through with key decision makers. Again it was pretty organic. Within our office we are the decision makers. Early on I certainly had to get the approval of our chief of staff who is....the thing he was most concerned about was I wanted to put a live twitter feed onto our homepage, mayorsamadams.com where it is unfiltered everything that mentions the mayor feeds right into our website and he was really concerned. It was gonna be the good, the bad and ugly and the ugly might be pretty damn ugly, but I argued in favor of and well monitor it and well see and frankly it has been largely positive. I think the people really appreciate that they has such an acceptable and transparent mayor. Describe your social media design and maintenance process. Describe the process you went through from design to launch of social media? Covered in question number two. It really is organic. For example when a new medium comes along like Google+ we defiantly create an account for the mayor and he knows how to login to it. He is actually is our biggest social media champion, he loves it. Hes got the new iPhone, iPad and he is pretty plugged in. Describe the process for maintaining social media - keeping content relevant and current? A lot of it is...he is a busy guy so we certainly help him. We do want him to be the primary conduit for things. So if we do have something that has to go out on Twitter well see if he can do it, you know pass along the link. Whenever he goes to an event he knows the relevant hashtags, the relevant twitter account, the relevant url, those are all at the top of his talking point so that when he is done making a speech and he is back in the car heading to the next event he can tweet really quickly. We support him by the rest of the staff will retweet things or well tweet things to start with and then send him a quite note, hey can you retweet this thing I just did cause individually our staffers

103 really top out at about 2000 followers on Twitter and a couple hundred Facebook friends, but the mayor with his collective 50,000 people is defiantly the loudest megaphone. How do you measure the impact or effectiveness of social media? What other evidence do you use to evaluate the effectiveness of social media? We really look at how active and lively is it. Whats the conversation look like on Twitter. Frankly it has been a really difficult conversation because we got a lot people on both sides of the occupy conversation, who have strong opinions and letting use know what those are. We are still finding it to be an effective use cause we also for example when we have video of what exactly happened at the protest that people are upset about we are able to get it out to 2000 people instantaneously. Which then gets the facts out there which is really helpful. The mayor can ask...we likes to say when it comes to email with constituents he can answer somebody, but only one person knows the answer to that, but if he is able to answer somebody on social media suddenly 50,000 people know the answer. You know to who should I call about a pot hole or why is it that you decided to shut down the occupy Portland camp. So our effectiveness is really just measured in the effectiveness in the quality of the conversation and how much people are engaging back with us. What have been some of your challenges with utilizing social media? How have you been able to address or overcome these challenges? Initially we had quite a lot of challenge convincing, weve got about 30 people on our staff. Convincing our staff that it was a good use of their time. We had a lot of staff who were not elected officials and are not used to being in the spotlight were a little concerned about stepping out, having their own personal face, their picture on there, their name out there and really engaging with people directly. So that took a lot of convincing, a lot of reminding...dont forget to tweet that, dont forget to put that on Facebook Page. It now has become second nature, so I would say that no longer is a challenge it just some getting used to for a lot of people. One of our on going challenges now, that we have been doing this for almost 3 years is the volume. We have so many people responding to the mayor, I mean my Twitter feed is just constantly cycling...its a little hard to keep up with. We certainly have a lot of us who do keep up with it. You know I am doing a lot of emailing you know when I see a tweet about something transportation related. Im sending it to the transportation team. So its just a challenge, we

104 want to be as responsive as possible and doing that requires quite a bit of monitoring and dispatching and triaging things. What have been your lessons learned with social media? Our biggest lessoned learned is that great think to jump into and we are engaging...here in Portland our mayors engaging with constituents in a way that very few other mayors are doing. I would say Corey Booker is one who doing it really well. We are often noted as one of the most assessable, transparent mayors on the country. He is a busy guy, but he is able to with very small amounts of time and very little...very small time commitment be incredibly engaged. So I think we have no regrets in jumping in so fully into social media its been a great way to interact with people. That is one reason I selected your city for the online technology and engagement. Yeah it extends beyond your traditional social media tools where we have the pdx reporter app for iPhone and Android, where you can report potholes or burnt out street lights, things like that. We are always improving Portland online, our main webpage. Sams dream is to have there be little neighborhood hubs on that website. Maybe even down to the micro level of this is my house and who is my own personal webpage of everything going on in my neighborhood and how I can get permits. He describes it as the Facebook Page for your house. What will you do different in the future with social media? You I think if he had a larger budget. I would certainly at this point, weve got such a robust social media community, I think it would be really valuable for somebody on our staff to be at least half-time dedicated to social media. Right now it kind of comes to me and I cant quite devote half my time to it, but it certainly really needs to have people focusing on it and making sure nothings falling through the cracks and to be on top of things earlier. As you look into the future, what applications and issues do you see for cities utilizing social media? I think well see more cities pushing more elected officials doing one of things that we do which is really engage with people directly. A lot of people are using

105 social media around the country as far as just setting up press releases and things like that. The engagement piece, the talking back and forth with people is the thing, I think, more cities will begin to do. That tricky when you have people speaking on behalf of a city or on behalf of an elected official, you have to be very careful about what it is your saying when it is going out to thousands of people. Often things can get bogged down and bureaucratic, approval processes and things like that which is not done as fast as a timeline that social media is. So I think we will be seeing more policies that guide social media, but also allow the well-trained employees to be able to utilize it fully.

106 Appendix D - Interview Script HSRB Interview Questioning Procedure How the questions will be asked and informed consent Interview will be started with introduction of who I am, a brief overview of what my research study is, why I am conducting it, and my expected outcomes of the study. The question of 18 years of age or older will be asked before continuing with informed consent. Informed consent question will be asked of the subject before official interview begins. Official interview begins Warm up question, who are you, what do you do and why do you do it? Conduct interview starting with qualitative questioning followed by quantitative. The interview conversation will be recorded and later transcribed. (See Data Entering Procedure below for details.) Interview will be concluded with thanking them for their time. HSRB Interview Welcome Script My name is Andrew Rinaldi and I am currently a master's student in the Learning Design program at Bowling Green State University. I would like to gather information that will help in the completion of my major project. My major project is a best practice for using social media for engaging citizens in municipalities. This best practice study will offer the ability to help municipalities understand how best to implement and use social media to engage the community. Currently, I am using this study to complete three outcomes: To understand why a municipality should utilize social media. To learn how municipalities integrate and utilize social media in an existing structure. To understand the cost to approve, plan, design, and deliver social media to citizens. To understand the challenges and lessons learned for utilizing social media. Learn of future issues a municipality will have to deal with for social media. Are you of 18 years of age or older? If yes, ask if they would like to participate in the study? In no, ask to speak with someone who is 18 years of age or older.

107 Would you like to participate in a short interview survey? It should take no longer then 30 minutes. If yes, continue with asking each research question located on Appendix D. If no, thank them for their time.

108 Appendix E Interview Questions Social Media City Best Practices Interview Questions Qualitative Questions Tell me the story of how you came to make social media a strategic priority? a. What have been your most significant accomplishments with regard to social media? b. How is social media helping you engage with your citizens and community? What is your current strategic plan for social media? a. How did you develop your plan? b. Describe the approval process you went through with key decision makers? Describe your social media design and maintenance process. Describe the process you went through from design to launch of social media? Describe the process for maintaining social mediakeeping content relevant and current? How do you measure the impact or effectiveness of social media? What other evidence do you use to evaluate the effectiveness of social media? What have been some of your challenges with utilizing social media? How have you been able to address or overcome these challenges? What have been your lessons learned with social media? What will you do different in the future with social media? As you look into the future, what applications and issues do you see for cities utilizing social media? Quantitative Questions What was the initial startup cost for getting approval to use social media? $0 - $1000 $1001 - $5000 $5001 - $10000 Over $10000 What was the initial startup cost for designing the process used for social media? $0 - $1000 $1001 - $5000 $5001 - $10000 Over $10000 What was the initial startup cost for launching social media? $0 - $1000

109 $1001 - $5000 $5001 - $10000 Over $10000 What is budget to date for maintaining social media? (Annual Budget Includes employee wages, premium subscriptions, and any other cost associated with.) What are the measures used to assess the effectiveness of social media? (Check all that apply) Survey Questionnaire Verbal feedback (What you are hearing on the streets and from others) ROI measurement tools (Measure the cost to implement and use versus the impact it has with engaging the community) None (Do not measure the effectiveness of social media)

110 Appendix F HSRB Approval

111

Appendix G Quantitative Response Table

Table 3 Quantitative Raw Data Responses

112 Appendix H - Recommendations Report, City of Toledo

City of Toledo
Social Media in Benchmarking Study Recommendations Report April 19, 2012 What was the Purpose & Outcomes?
The purpose of this study was to conduct a benchmarking study of the top three cities that use social media to inform and engage the community with the City of Toledo being the base city for improvement. The outcomes of the benchmarking study are: Best findings report that summarizes the benchmarking study. A recommendations report for the City of Toledo. A web-based platform that provides a summary of the study and provides solutions for moving forward.

Who was Selected and why?

Manor, Texas, was selected for being known for their innovative uses of technology. They also developed a platform that allows citizens to submit ideas, review and comment on other ideas that help improve and do things better in the city. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was selected because they are a city that is using social media the most across departments and other programs to communicate information to the community. The initiative to use social media was also recommended from the top down as something they needed to do and was implemented in 9 months. Portland, Oregon,was selected because they have one of the most engaged mayors in the country in social media. They conducted and developed social media engagement best practices guide and developed a complaint/issue reporting application for smartphones.

Highlights & Examples

Manor, TX

6. National and international recognition 7. Won three awards for technological innovation and leadership 8. Partnered with third party software companies to develop custom platforms
Pittsburgh, PA

Use of Facebook insights to track engagement on Facebook page Added a staff member to handle social media efforts Held a contest that increased likes on Facebook page by over 2,000 Design to launch of social media 9 months

113
Portland, OR Mobile phone application to reports issues (e.g., potholes) Engaging mayor who posts 90% of own posts on social media Lots of video content on main website Portland police have Twitter handle on police cruisers

Best Practices Recommendations

Ref #
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

RECOMMENDATION
Mayor engage with citizens through social media Use social media as a means of communication Answer questions and concerns through social media Go where the masses are Hold contest through social media Use Facebook insights as a measure Post original content and drive people back to website Share items not press release worthy Community engagement tactics fun facts, questions Set policies to avoid topics going negative Adopt new technology mediums Measure posts by growth rate of likes and followers Data retention What to keep vs. what not to keep Use videos as form of information Account setup more than one person access Use sign in technology to integrate in website Stay abreast of current and new technology Mobile application to report issues Strive for national awards Add Twitter handles to public vehicles

SCALE
MAYOR MAYOR MAYOR CITY & MAYOR CITY & MAYOR CITY & MAYOR CITY & MAYOR CITY & MAYOR CITY & MAYOR CITY & MAYOR CITY & MAYOR CITY & MAYOR CITY & MAYOR CITY & MAYOR CITY CITY CITY CITY CITY CITY

TIMEFRAME
SHORT INTERMED INTERMED SHORT SHORT SHORT SHORT SHORT SHORT INTERMED INTERMED INTERMED LONG LONG SHORT INTERMED INTERMED LONG LONG LONG