Alison Hook - Coventry City Council
The Trigger for Growth
Coventry City Council's Facebook development has proved very popular with the local residents. With over 20,000 'Likes' it is the 'most liked' of any council led Facebook page within the UK.
The Coventry Facebook page was created in November 2009 after piloting pages for Coombe Country Park and development of a 'Walking and Cycling' information and support page. However, the trigger for the rapid growth in the Coventry Facebook page was the heavy snow experienced in January 2010.
For adverse weather conditions, the Council had historically used an automated system that enabled schools to login in to notify local communities of school closures. The onset of the heavy snow in January 2010 resulted in this system becoming rapidly overloaded by parents and children checking their school's status. There was a need for a rapid solution to provide the local community with updates on school closures and the state of the roads, so the Council decided to use Facebook and Twitter. This had a very positive impact on the situation and was supported and referenced by the local media enabling people to help each other through a difficult situation. This resulted in the number of Coventry Facebook fans growing over a period of three weeks from 527 in early January to over 11,000 by 18th January 2010.
The Coventry Facebook Strategy
Coventry City Council's approach to the use of Facebook has been driven by the desire to engage with its community, rather than one that specifically promotes the council brand. This is reflected by the decision to call the Facebook site 'Coventry' rather than the 'Coventry City Council' Facebook page. Outside of emergency situations such as heavy snow, the Coventry Facebook page is positioned as an additional communications channel to encourage conversations by and with residents, businesses and visitors.
The Coventry Facebook page has delivered many benefits to the Council. It is used to share news, updates, photos and videos and provides the environment to encourage conversation online and gain feedback on what people think about particular topics. No posts are automated, so all posts and responses to queries are added by a member of staff. The Coventry Facebook page is delivered at no cost outside of the cost of staff time to manage it.
The Results
The Coventry Facebook page now gets almost 100 new 'likes' per week and 4000 visitors a week and has been promoted to its users via a number of methods including - email signatures and press releases, the Council's Chief Executive's Blog, staff newsletter and a presence on the front page of the Council's web site. Interestingly 45% of new visitors to Coventry City Council's web site come via Facebook. Key hot topics for visitors are sport, employment news and road repairs with each visitor looking at an average of three web pages per visit with 75% of comments being from the over 50s and 50% of 'likes' from the under 24 age group.
The success of Coventry City Council's approach to social media has been recognised by a number of recent awards over the last year including:
- Digital and Social Media gold award 2010 at the LGComms Reputation Awards
- SomeComms Awards 2010- Best Use of Facebook - Highly commended
- SomeComms Awards 2010- Best In-House team for use of social media - winners
Next Steps
The Council aims to build on their success by continuing to offer an interesting and relevant service to residents, businesses and visitors. As a host city for London 2012, they will be using Facebook to involve residents and community groups in the build-up and highlighting to visitors the local attractions and events.
Follow this link to view Alison's slides from Experience Day 2011 http://www.slideshare.net/Jadux11/facebook-at-coventry-city-council