Strategy to Engage on Social Media

The government entity may choose to engage with its audience on using the social media channel. Despite the fact that doing this requires a considerable amount of preparation and may require the intervention of third party professional services to be achieved, yet the following could be considered as high-level guidelines to achieve the same thing.

Every government entity could aim to perform the necessary preparation and creation of a social media strategy prior to the initiation of its engagement in any activity and any platform.

Having said the preceding and in our case should the government entity wish to engage with activities on the Social Media channel, the following must be considered prior to any engagement to ensure success:

The government entity must have finalized the work on its website and ensured that it is properly published and error-free prior to any engagement in any social media activity. After all the aim is to engage audiences on social media platforms yet directing back to the website for additional information and interactivity.

The government entity must aim to define the objectives and goals that it aims to achieve from any social media activity that it will aim to adopt.

The government entity must identify where its audience is available and what are they talking about in relation to them. This would ultimately dictate and assist in identifying what types of Social Media platforms/tools will be used.

The government entity must listen to the type of conversations that are being talked about on the various channels. This is important as it would provide insights on what are the dialogues that are taking place and provide an indication on how to be part of this dialogue either by the type of platforms that will be adopted as well as the content to be used.

The government entity must audit its resources to check on its readiness to engage in social media activities. This includes the following

• Identification of staff and resources that will be handling the activities
• Identification of the type of content that will be posted on the platforms
• Identification of the tools to be utilized

The government entity must assign roles and responsibilities in regards to any activities that will be performed on any of the Social Media tools/platforms it wishes to engage in. There is a need to ensure that any engagement that happens is handled properly and in a timely manner.

The government entity must define its measures of success as this would ultimately provide insights on how the activities that it has chosen to deploy are performing and suggest corrective measures if need be.

The government entity must establish a protocol. This includes and not restricted to the following:

• Acceptable usage policy for both internal and external audiences
• What is the content that will be shared per selected platform and its frequency
• What is the tone of voice that we will be using on the selected platforms
• How do we react to positive engagement versus negative engagement: Brand monitoring and action
• Document the response time

The entire preceding must be reviewed in a timely manner (monthly) in order to ensure compliance as well as make sure that additional recommendations are logged in a proper manner to be used.

The government entity must make sure that proper monitoring is established across all platforms ensuring that proper use of the platforms is requested as well as to gather insights and consequently recommend change where necessary.

To conclude, making use of the Social Media channel requires proper preparation as well as close monitoring and engagement. It is mainly about creating a strategy that will provide the detailed guidelines across the chosen platforms and tools.