IAMU Broadband Services Coordinator Curtis Dean, who will be leading the workshop, says the day-long event is designed to not only get utilities and cities started on using social media to communicate with citizens, but to help automate the process. "Many public agencies are reluctant to get started on social media because they don't know if they'll have time to keep the content fresh," says Dean. "We're going to provide some tools that can be used to allow cities to schedule their social media content ahead of time and make it easier to manage."
8:30am-9:30am Registration & Check-In
9:30am-10:30am Social Media-Need and Strategy
In this session, we’ll discuss some of the reasons that cities and utilities should have a presence on social media, and explore which social media outlets are most important. We’ll also discuss how your organization can develop its own social media strategy.
10:30am-10:45am Break
10:45am-11:45am Creating Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn Accounts
If your city does not have a Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn account, we will walk you through the steps to set those accounts up. At the end of this session, your accounts to these three important social media tools will be ready to go!
11:45am-12:45pm Lunch and Networking
12:45pm-1:45pm Automating Your Social Media Messaging
Setting up social media accounts is easy; ensuring that you are keeping content fresh on social media is not. In this session, we’ll show you how to use social media aggregation tool Hootsuite to “create once, distribute many” and to schedule social media posts.
1:45pm-2:00pm Break
2:00pm-3:00pm Introduction To Blogs and RSS Feeds
In this session, we’ll introduce you to blogs and show how the use of blogs and Really Simple Syndication (RSS) can provide you with another powerful way to communicate with your community.
3:00pm-3:30pm Q & A, Wrap Up, and Networking