If you use Facebook or Twitter, please share the City of Gastonia’s social media posts with your family and friends. Or at least click “like” on
City posts.
It’s simple math: The City’s 800+ employees have more followers on social media than the City does. The City has a total of about 5,000 followers on Facebook and Twitter. Let’s assume 400 City employees use social media and that each employee has an average of 250 social media connections. That means City employees could reach 100,000 people on their social media accounts!
This is not unique to the City of Gastonia. According to Adweek, employees nationwide have 5 times more social media followers than do corporate accounts. Every time an employee shares, retweets or "likes" a City message, that message gets out to more people.
Bigger is better when it comes to social media because the bigger the audience, the more effect each social media message has. Well-known businesses from Starbucks to Ford Motors encourage their employees to share or retweet the company’s social media messages.
Even though the City of Gastonia is not a for-profit business, we are considered to be a “brand.” We have customers, employees and revenue. The City’s brand or reputation is developed and shaped by our customers’ interactions with employees and the services we provide. Sharing positive news about the City of Gastonia encourages public engagement and improves our image.
Mayor Walker Reid has two Facebook accounts, one as mayor and the other as a regular citizen. He frequently shares the City’s Facebook posts on one or both of his Facebook feeds. Reid says it’s an easy way to keep his friends and followers informed. “Considering that a lot of people don’t subscribe to newspapers, Facebook and other social media is a great way to share information,” Reid says.
According to Brandwatch, a sizable share of Facebook users nationwide, 40 percent, do not follow any “brands.” That means they don’t follow the City of Gastonia. Or Starbucks. Or Ford Motors.
But they follow their friends. And they trust their friends. A Nielsen survey finds 83 percent of Americans trust recommendations from friends, family and colleagues rather than marketing done by a company.
Because people trust their friends, they are more likely to share social media posts from their friends rather than messages posted by brands such as the City of Gastonia. The business magazine Fast Company reports that social media content shared by employees gets re-shared 25 times more frequently than content posted by a company or a brand.
Mayor Reid believes you don’t have to be the mayor or a high-ranking official to share the City’s posts with your friends. “I get very positive feedback by keeping my followers informed about what’s going on in our great city,” he says.
If you don’t want to share a City post, please click “like.” When a post gets more “likes,” Facebook automatically considers that post to be more engaging and will make it appear more prominently in others’ Facebook feeds.
In his book All I Really Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten, Robert Fulghum stated that the first rule is to “Share everything.”
We’re not asking you to share everything on social media. We’d love for you to share or "like" the City’s posts that are most relevant to you. Maybe they show the accomplishments of your department. Or give helpful advice to residents. Or illustrate the ways we are making the City of Gastonia a Great Place with Great People and Great Promise.
Find the City on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CityofGastonia/
Follow the City on Twitter: @CityofGastonia