1. Taking It to the Streets: Social Media at Arlington County December 2010 Briefing for COG Trash & Recycling Committee Maureen DilgMaureen Dilg, Arlington County Office of Communications

2. 2 Across the County  Several Arlington County departments maintain a social media presence:  Office of Communications (Facebook: 4,683, Twitter: 1,962)- Enterprise level updates, emergency notices, local events, general announcements  Libraries (Facebook: 750, Twitter: 879)- Events, book suggestions, logistical information  Environmental Services: FreshAIRE (Facebook: 165, Twitter: 121) and Car-Free Diet (Facebook: 879, Twitter: 2,407)  Housing: Under One Roof cross-departmental housing blog and Twitter account  Others: Office of Emergency Management, Volunteer Arlington, Artisphere, Arlington Employment Center, ShopArlington

3. 3 Where Are We?

4. 4 Goals  Reach a new, different audience  Raise awareness of County programs  Start “conversations” with constituents  Provide customer service

5. 5 Strategies  Transparent, open government  Encourage honest engagement, welcome all comments, wall posts, etc.  Integrated Approach  Use multiple communications tools – print, TV and digital media  Push to County website for complete information  Multiple accounts, general & focused :  We have accounts for general County updates. In addition, we encourage divisions to enlist social media for their specific focused needs.  Creative cross-promotion  Create once – Use & promote many times  Promoting across multiple social media accounts  Advertise social media channels using traditional media  Creative staffing  Tweet Squad  Guest posters  Work with the experts

6. 6 Examples  Trash, recycling and leaf pick-up  FreshAIRE  Car-Free Diet  Snowmaggedon

7. 7 Trash, Recycling, Leaf Pickup

8. 8 FreshAIRE

9. 9 Car-Free Diet

10. 10 Connecting Through Snowmaggedon FB: 3,300+ Twitter: ~1,300 Flickr group/set Website: 110,000+ visits eNewsletter: 10,000+ Snowfighting video Arl. Alert: 32,300+

11. 11 Lessons Learned  We can’t do it alone  Replying with a phone number is often enough  Sometimes you have to “go analog”  Can’t always predict most popular topics  It’s OK to make mistakes  Lots of shades of gray in social media

12. 12 What’s Next?  Social Media workgroup for employee outreach and support  Continue to work with existing tools if they remain relevant  Keep eyes on horizon for changes in the social media space  Work on using technology to enable conversation and engagement with constituents