Americans are spending more time on social media than ever–making it a powerful touchpoint for reaching, engaging, educating, and inspiring citizens. In fact, social media can be an incredibly useful and powerful tool for advancing public sector entities and their communications efforts. But where, exactly, should those charged with government social media accounts focus their efforts? Which channels make sense when it comes to where your government agency or office should have a social media presence? Should you be on Facebook? Instagram? Twitter (X)? All of them? None of them? And what about new and emerging social media platforms? Here we break down social media by channel, outlining the pros and cons of maintaining a regular presence on each.
Key Advantages of Social Media
Social media offers a number of unique advantages. First, it keeps your work in front of community members on platforms they frequent. It’s also a great place to share informative and community-focused content that can otherwise be difficult to get the word out about. It can also help humanize the work your office does, showing citizens the hand-working people behind both the day-to-day and the high-impact moments. More specifically, social media content gives government agencies and offices large and small and serving a range of areas and needs a way to capture interest and attention.
Similarly, while we hope community members will see the information we put on our website by visiting it directly, the fact of the matter is that most people aren’t regularly visiting the websites of government offices or agencies without being prompted. But, alternatively, how often does a headline capture your interest while scrolling through social media, so much so that you click and read it? The same is true for your audience on social media.
Government Social Media Risks & Challenges
While benefits abound, there are concerns. As a government agency, your social media content needs to be informative without sparking irrelevant (and, let’s face it, sometimes scathing) criticism. You also have to be conscientious about how you manage and moderate commentary, ensuring archival and record-keeping is comprehensive and that hiding, deleting, or blocking comments and users doesn’t infringe on First Amendment rights. There are also risks when it comes to access and control. Who has admin access to your account and who doesn’t? Is there a way to recover accounts should a user separate? Are passwords being shared in a way that opens up additional exposure? All of this typically rolls up under legal, risk, and compliance, making it absolutely critical to have a content and compliance solution built for the unique regulatory needs of governments for managing social media content and channels.
Which Channels Make Sense
When it comes to channels, there are certainly pros and cons to each. Below, we’ve outlined considerations for each key social media platform, as well as new and emerging networks.
- Facebook
Facebook remains a dominant force in social media, offering a versatile platform for content sharing and community building. It supports various content types such as written posts, videos, events, and ads, making it essential for maintaining a presence and engaging community members. In short, a Facebook presence is incredibly important, and can be an ideal way to reach citizens. If your government office or agency is not yet on Facebook, it’s time to take a serious look at launching a business page.
- Instagram
Instagram, renowned for visual storytelling, is ideal for government offices and agencies looking to showcase initiatives, campaigns, and behind-the-scenes content through photos and videos. Public sector entities can also reach Instagram users through video via reels and stories. With a predominantly younger audience demographic, Instagram is an important part of your communications strategy insofar as it can help you reach and capture the hearts and minds of community members. It’s a great place to build goodwill and humanize field workers, officers, emergency response personnel, city government staff, and other behind-the-scenes members of your organization.
- X (Twitter)
X (Twitter) focuses on real-time updates, news dissemination, and direct interactions through short messages, known as tweets. It attracts professionals, influencers, and news seekers, making it a useful platform for the public sector. However, the change in ownership and operational principles over the last year have created some instability for the platform. For government offices and agencies, a risk-reward analysis is in order when considering a presence on X (Twitter).
- LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a professional networking platform tailored for business-related content, networking, and job searching/recruiting. Through articles, news updates, and job postings, public sector entities can leverage LinkedIn to reach local business leaders, put out educational content, publish timely and important updates, and certainly for recruiting and retention efforts. Governments evaluating LinkedIn opportunities should consider both how they will gather information for posting on LinkedIn, and how they will plan and schedule updates. Technology can help here (Social Assurance for Government is designed to make it easier to plan, schedule, and moderate content across all major social media channels, including LinkedIn).
- Other Platforms
Of course, there are emerging and less-commonly utilized platforms for government offices and agencies to consider. Their popularity can ebb and flow, making them important to keep an eye on, but not necessarily important to act on near-term. Threads, integrated with Instagram, sprung up in 2023 as a competitor to X (Twitter), offering short-form updates called threads tied to but also independent of users’ Instagram accounts. Channels like Pinterest and YouTube have established audiences, but aren’t necessarily ideal for government offices and agencies due to the types of content sharing they’re built for. What’s more, these platforms are less centered on building a presence, and more about facilitating the delivery of videos or products. Snapchat and TikTok can help governments reach a younger demographic and, for some offices and agencies, they make sense. However, it’s important to be practical about what your communications team takes on–especially when it comes to channels like these that will need to be actively managed and supplied with content on an ongoing basis.
In short, what’s right for your organization depends on your short- and long-term goals. However, for government offices and agencies, the opportunity to reach community members in a time when so much of their attention is focused on one or more social channels simply cannot be overlooked. When it comes to keeping your audience informed and providing timely and useful updates on the important work you do, these mainstream social media channels are undoubtedly crucial. That means public sector entities should, at very least, be taking a hard look at the most ubiquitous platforms: Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), and LinkedIn. It’s no longer a matter of whether government offices and agencies should be utilizing these channels, but how.
Next Steps
Launching onto a new social media platform, maintaining a consistent and professional presence, and actively managing policies and compliance around them can feel like a lot. Social Assurance for Government is here to help. We’re experts when it comes to helping government offices and agencies, schools, and other public sector entities streamline social media content, management, and compliance. Use the link below to get in touch and learn more.
