I see a lot of Twitter and Instagram handles actively managed by IAS and state officers.

While social media engagement has become common among college students, some professors and government officials have been accused of using social media as a platform to promote themselves rather than to communicate with the public. Are these accusations legitimate? Is the use of Twitter and Instagram used as an effective platform by senior administrators to connect with others? Read on to find out!

The Twitter feed of any government agency

No one knows for sure whether or not senior administrators and government officials are measured on social media engagement. The question is valid, but there isn’t a good answer to it. That’s because, as many in government have claimed, it depends on your supervisor when it comes to allocating time to create social media pages, such as Facebook and Twitter feeds.

The Instagram account of any government agency

The good thing about Instagram is that it’s pretty popular, so a simple scan of your agency’s Instagram or Twitter feed will yield plenty of results. You can also search for keywords and hashtags related to your agency’s area of work. For example, you might find press releases or other online content on an agency’s website which mentions particular topics, activities, events or community members. To boost engagement—especially among younger audiences—include images of products or services used by teens/youth (i.e., sports drinks). To keep posts short and sweet, limit yourself to 4-5 hashtags per image (like #government hashtag #community hashtag #sports drink hashtag). Posting visuals with relevant text counts towards your 150 characters! As long as you post at least twice per day (which should take no more than 10 minutes), you have nothing to worry about! :) If you can't come up with enough content for 2 posts per day then try using templates like in picture below.

The Facebook page of any government agency

This is actually a pretty common way to measure your government agency's social media engagement. Nearly every city, county, or state agency I've worked with has a dedicated Facebook page that is monitored and updated by an appointed staff member. Public officials are measured by their social media engagement—but you shouldn't be discouraged if you don't fit into a certain mold. The beauty of IAS is that it allows you to truly develop your own brand that speaks to what you have to offer.

Consider why you are measuring social media engagement

If you’re measuring engagement because it is a stated goal of your administration, then it is worth considering how your online presence impacts that goal. What steps can you take to increase participation and further reach your objectives? If social media engagement is part of a larger campaign, what goals does it support, and how do you assess whether or not it was successful beyond numerical metrics like follower counts and likes/retweets? If social media engagement isn’t directly tied to an objective in your school district, then consider if your attention would be better directed elsewhere. For example, perhaps time spent engaging on social media could be better spent increasing professional development opportunities for staff members or ensuring that students have access to a well-rounded curriculum.

Examples for how to measure social media engagement (good example, bad example)

In order to answer that question, we need to figure out what KPI stands for. For our purposes, we’ll say it stands for Key Performance Indicator. KPI = key performance indicator. A key performance indicator is any statistic that a company or organization uses to measure success in relation to its mission statement, business plan or strategy. KPIs are usually specific and measurable; they often help managers quantify qualitative measures like morale and satisfaction so they can identify issues and improve performance.

Why it is good practice to measure social media engagement (any examples?)

Here’s a basic example. Say you have a goal of selling $1 million worth of widgets in a month, and your advertising budget is $200,000. Instead of running ads on various media channels that might bring in $300,000 in sales (while blowing through your entire budget), you can use analytics to see which ads and platforms are working best for other businesses in your industry. You can then measure each ad platform’s sales per engagement metric, as well as its cost per engagement. By only spending money on those platforms that return real sales at low costs, you save money while ensuring that your ads are actually having an impact.

How can we use this new data?

In order to be an effective leader, it is important that you know what your constituents are saying about you. Social media is a powerful tool and has become increasingly effective in helping government officials gauge opinions. It’s also possible to use social media as a way to communicate with constituents, but it’s important not to let personal political leanings come into play while doing so. At times, I have heard arguments that data from Twitter and Instagram should be discounted because they are filled with people trolling or purposely posting negative things about public officials just for kicks (you can see examples of these people from time to time on Facebook too). But those people make up a small percentage of what we can learn from social media.

Thank you very much!

For years, all we heard was that social media engagement wasn’t important and didn’t count toward anything. In fact, I’ve been given rankings and scores where social media engagement was literally zeroed out. There was no incentive to put thought into it at all. Now, however, it appears senior administrators (in some cases—but not others) are being held accountable for their handles in ways they never were before. Where there used to be a tone of just get on with it, officials now sometimes receive direct feedback from those holding them accountable for what they post.