Winter Ops Webinars: Communicating with Social Media

NE LTAP Author

12/10/2020 Added

2 Plays

Description

Employees from two county road departments join us to discuss how they have used social media to reach the traveling public.

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[00:00:00.230]Well, welcome, everybody.
[00:00:01.440]My name is Mitch Doht, I'm with Nebraska LTAP.
[00:00:05.984]We welcome you to the back-end installment
[00:00:08.960]of our Winter Operations Webinar series.
[00:00:14.090]The first one we had a couple of weeks ago
[00:00:16.970]was a former Nebraska State climatologist.
[00:00:19.750]He was predicting the weather for Nebraska, for the winter.
[00:00:24.310]So if you missed it, I'm really sorry,
[00:00:25.900]it was a incredible forecast.
[00:00:30.570]Actually, he said we're in a La Nina kind of year,
[00:00:36.060]it's gonna be cold, it's gonna be dry,
[00:00:38.880]but he said highly variable.
[00:00:41.420]So it could be anything, right?
[00:00:43.510]He was 100% accurate on that, I'm pretty sure.
[00:00:47.780]We are gonna have a recording of that first webinar
[00:00:51.610]as well as a recording of this webinar.
[00:00:54.450]Like Megan said, we'll probably share on our website
[00:00:57.210]and then maybe also in our newsletter,
[00:00:59.620]our next upcoming newsletter.
[00:01:01.880]So you didn't miss anything
[00:01:04.200]if you didn't attend the first webinar,
[00:01:06.720]but I wanna encourage you to catch the next one.
[00:01:11.980]We have the third webinar here in a couple of weeks as well.
[00:01:15.200]So we'll talk more about that at the end here.
[00:01:20.044]This one is all about using social media
[00:01:23.710]to help us communicate with the public during
[00:01:26.200]our winter operations, and happy to have some of our friends
[00:01:31.310]from Iowa and South Dakota here today
[00:01:34.430]to kind of give us an overview of what they do.
[00:01:38.520]We have, first, Carol Cornelius, Black Hawk County, Iowa.
[00:01:44.930]She works in the Engineer's Office.
[00:01:48.690]So, welcome, Carol.
[00:01:51.580]Then we're gonna have Jerry Buum,
[00:01:53.520]Union County, South Dakota.
[00:01:56.120]He's the Highway Superintendent there.
[00:01:58.760]Then also he's going to have a little help
[00:02:00.450]from his executive assistant, Christie Harkins
[00:02:05.770]also Union County, South Dakota.
[00:02:08.010]So we'll turn it over to Carol
[00:02:11.400]and let her get going and let us know what they're doing
[00:02:15.260]in Iowa with their social media, thank you.
[00:02:21.881]Thank you and thank you for having me.
[00:02:24.940]Social media has been a big part
[00:02:27.440]of us communicating with our County.
[00:02:33.010]So I have a short presentation here
[00:02:35.440]that I wanna share with you, I'm gonna share the screen.
[00:02:41.350]While I get this set up, I just wanted to state that
[00:02:45.340]my role here is the Budget Administrator
[00:02:47.600]and I'm not the only one who posts on social media,
[00:02:51.410]but I do the majority of it.
[00:03:08.850]We'll just start out.
[00:03:09.730]This is our County's mission, probably similar
[00:03:15.130]to many other counties missions, just to maintain roads
[00:03:19.490]and keep a safe network for people to trans,
[00:03:31.290]one other big thing is to be financially responsible
[00:03:34.400]and we can do that with social media,
[00:03:37.310]it's a free way to contact our public
[00:03:41.450]and we utilize that to the full extent that we can.
[00:03:46.740]Our County has about 131,000 people, and of that,
[00:03:52.490]we've got about 15,000, roughly, that live in rural areas,
[00:03:56.380]and so they're driving daily, commuting on our County roads.
[00:04:01.390]We have a large metropolitan area,
[00:04:05.130]Waterloo & Cedar Falls that does travel
[00:04:09.390]to outlying counties as well.
[00:04:11.700]We also have a mix of interstate highways
[00:04:14.460]and secondary roads in our County.
[00:04:18.360]Just to give you an idea, we've got about 225 bridges,
[00:04:21.400]2500 culverts and about 522 miles
[00:04:26.350]of gravel roads, and 239 miles of paved roads.
[00:04:33.370]We started on Twitter in 2017
[00:04:37.920]and Facebook, were relatively new to, we began in 2019.
[00:04:44.860]There is a difference in our followers
[00:04:47.040]on Twitter and Facebook.
[00:04:50.190]Facebook has a more interactive followers.
[00:04:56.005]Twitter doesn't really interact much,
[00:04:59.490]we don't have a great following on Twitter
[00:05:01.390]but we still continue to post there
[00:05:03.130]because we do have followers.
[00:05:06.360]Facebook is largely interactive with what we post.
[00:05:09.430]They like our pictures.
[00:05:10.900]They comment from time to time and they share a lot.
[00:05:14.200]So we get a far greater reach on Facebook
[00:05:18.390]than we do on Twitter.
[00:05:21.110]We're going to continue posting on Twitter.
[00:05:26.790]as long as we see interest there.
[00:05:30.140]Our goals of social media, first, to inform.
[00:05:36.240]One big problem we see is, first,
[00:05:39.570]not a lot of knowledge of what happens
[00:05:41.760]in the Engineer's Office & Secondary Roads in the community,
[00:05:47.760]or even where to get information about us.
[00:05:50.270]So we like to direct them to our website
[00:05:52.920]and to our Iowa County Engineers Bureau website.
[00:06:00.600]It's an effective way to direct traffic
[00:06:03.560]to the County website for permits and for information
[00:06:07.480]on dust control or any of our policies.
[00:06:13.440]We share a lot of information on our social media page
[00:06:17.110]from the Iowa Department of Transportation,
[00:06:20.680]from organizations such as Zero Fatalities.
[00:06:25.900]There's a lot of good content created that isn't created
[00:06:28.650]by us, and so, it's important, I think, to share it,
[00:06:32.550]and that also helps educate the public.
[00:06:35.460]Education and safety ethics go hand in hand
[00:06:38.440]and every opportunity we get to ask the traveling public
[00:06:42.460]to be safety conscious in our work zones,
[00:06:46.730]we take that opportunity.
[00:06:50.610]How do we meet our goals?
[00:06:54.370]So including social media in processes within our office
[00:07:00.640]was kind of a big stepping stone for us.
[00:07:05.920]We've done that from the beginning
[00:07:07.670]when we post a road closure, we also post it to Twitter
[00:07:12.150]and we post it to Facebook.
[00:07:20.810]In our process of posting, social media is just included.
[00:07:27.070]We made our goals by asking for help,
[00:07:31.860]every maintenance person, every engineering technician
[00:07:37.610]is a possible idea for a post.
[00:07:41.620]They're always more than happy to help.
[00:07:43.320]They're the ones with the eyes on the roads
[00:07:45.770]and they might have ideas for what to post.
[00:07:52.300]I ask for a lot of help from them, and usually they're great
[00:07:56.780]for providing content, including the entire team
[00:08:03.110]and this is also even our maintenance mechanics,
[00:08:06.890]have great ideas for posting.
[00:08:08.880]There's times when they might have a truck in there,
[00:08:12.900]you know, I don't have any construction items
[00:08:15.410]to post or maintenance items to post,
[00:08:18.399]I said, send me a picture of what truck you're working on
[00:08:20.630]and we can just inform the public that sometimes,
[00:08:23.440]in slow times, we're working on maintenance
[00:08:25.470]of our vehicles that keeps our drivers safe
[00:08:29.800]and it keeps our traveling public safe.
[00:08:33.900]We meet our goals by always thinking.
[00:08:37.340]We have a Monday morning staff meeting in our office
[00:08:40.340]and we all discussed what projects
[00:08:45.480]or what we will be working on during the week,
[00:08:47.530]and that's a great time to say,
[00:08:50.640]hey, when you're out on the road,
[00:08:53.170]can you take a picture for me and send me an update,
[00:08:57.230]any information can be shared in any meeting.
[00:09:05.200]We like to keep ourselves informed.
[00:09:09.770]The best ways to do that is to follow other counties.
[00:09:12.770]We make sure that every county in Iowa that has a Facebook
[00:09:17.340]or Twitter page, we try and follow it.
[00:09:19.620]If we know about it, we're following it.
[00:09:22.857]We've got a lot of creative posters in the State.
[00:09:28.610]They do a good job of informing their public
[00:09:34.830]about what they're doing, and I use that as inspiration,
[00:09:40.120]I know others in our office do as well.
[00:09:44.620]We meet our goals by being responsive
[00:09:47.330]and that's to either requests or responsive
[00:09:51.950]in getting information relayed to the public
[00:09:57.420]that we know about.
[00:10:01.840]For example, we had a utility company wanna close the road
[00:10:07.910]to work on their utilities in the right of way.
[00:10:13.610]So that was something we got on social media right away,
[00:10:16.980]and we had it posted and it was shared quite a bit.
[00:10:20.340]So we know that it was at least out in the community.
[00:10:26.580]What do we post?
[00:10:28.390]As much as we can.
[00:10:29.730]We post maintenance tasks,
[00:10:33.410]here's an example of a sub drain project we did on 2 miles
[00:10:37.110]of our gravel roads this year, also ditch cleaning,
[00:10:45.200]brush removal, anything that we can ask the public
[00:10:49.840]to watch out for us and ask for safety, we try.
[00:10:55.260]We know a lot of times people will see a County vehicle
[00:10:59.290]in the ditch or working on something and they'll call in
[00:11:02.590]and say, you know, what were they doing out there?
[00:11:04.850]Well, hopefully, this is the ways that people know
[00:11:07.810]in the future; this is what we're up to.
[00:11:13.840]Maintenance projects, such as paving or crack filling,
[00:11:17.610]other great things to post about.
[00:11:20.550]We incorporate maps of our projects as well,
[00:11:25.790]and so there are posts about the project,
[00:11:30.700]in advance of the project,
[00:11:32.250]and then also pictures showing the progress of the project.
[00:11:39.040]So here, on the crack ceiling portion,
[00:11:44.080]you see there's a link,
[00:11:45.030]and that would go also to a County map that shows
[00:11:50.200]where all of the crack sealing would be done.
[00:11:56.180]Construction projects,
[00:11:57.370]we have had a huge bridge project going on in our County
[00:12:00.860]this summer and it has been wonderful to be creating content
[00:12:06.710]for people are really interested in knowing what's going on
[00:12:10.690]out there and they want to see progress, and they have.
[00:12:15.010]As you can see, at the bottom picture on the left,
[00:12:17.720]you can see our new bridge and on the right,
[00:12:19.620]you can see our old bridge being removed.
[00:12:23.290]We have had a lot of commuters driving past on a daily basis
[00:12:28.080]that can't see what's going on,
[00:12:29.570]and I think they like to come here
[00:12:31.800]and be able to see a better picture
[00:12:35.650]or a different perspective of the construction.
[00:12:39.100]We've had lots of comments on this project.
[00:12:42.260]There's just really a great following of it on Facebook.
[00:12:49.870]County projects, we had solar put on some of our out shops,
[00:12:53.580]and this was another thing we posted about.
[00:12:56.067]If something's going on in the County,
[00:12:59.210]this is a great platform to share it.
[00:13:05.800]A picture's worth a thousand words,
[00:13:07.300]and if I can get a great picture, I'll gladly post on it.
[00:13:12.530]You may not see likes, or you may not see comments on it
[00:13:15.220]but you know people are seeing it.
[00:13:17.490]If it's being shared, it's being seen.
[00:13:22.930]One of my favorite things to post on is driving safety.
[00:13:27.504]I will share posts from the Waterloo Police Department,
[00:13:32.730]which is our local police department.
[00:13:38.970]I would deal a tip, like I said, posts great content
[00:13:42.260]and I'll create my own.
[00:13:46.280]The "Don't forget to turn on your lights
[00:13:47.987]"when driving in low light and snowy conditions"
[00:13:50.670]was a recommendation from one of our mechanics.
[00:13:54.290]He said, when I was driving truck,
[00:13:56.280]this was one of the biggest frustrations I had
[00:13:58.900]is that people didn't drive with their headlights on,
[00:14:01.270]so I've created several posts in regards to that.
[00:14:06.890]The flooding conditions, our Road Maintenance staff
[00:14:12.480]will frequently send pictures and I post those to Facebook.
[00:14:16.653]We hope that that kind of eliminates people's desire
[00:14:20.880]to go out and drive into these conditions,
[00:14:23.370]and drive to be sightseers
[00:14:29.560]Road closures and openings,
[00:14:31.220]this is where we incorporated into our processes.
[00:14:37.260]The image on the right shows a road closure
[00:14:42.990]due to the need to replace a bridge.
[00:14:53.460]But it also includes a map to this location
[00:14:56.750]and a link to more information.
[00:15:01.010]We try and be consistent
[00:15:02.490]with our closures and make this the norm.
[00:15:06.540]There was another closure that I created
[00:15:09.870]for Cedar Wapsi Road.
[00:15:12.040]That was a big closure.
[00:15:13.300]That's a heavily traveled road
[00:15:15.100]and we did several posts in days leading up to this closure,
[00:15:20.530]and this was just one of the posts.
[00:15:27.270]We do holiday posts.
[00:15:28.790]I create content for any religious-related holiday.
[00:15:37.750]I think it's important to thank the people
[00:15:41.420]and inform of closures of our office,
[00:15:48.610]and even have a little bit of fun with it.
[00:15:54.340]Road and bridge embargoes.
[00:15:55.990]This is a great place to post any embargo.
[00:16:02.640]We've had questions about embargoes asked on our websites
[00:16:06.830]or on our social media sites as well.
[00:16:12.810]Other ideas, work zone safety, like I said,
[00:16:15.770]any chance I get to ask people to please slow down
[00:16:19.870]and be safe in any of our work zones,
[00:16:22.370]I take that opportunity.
[00:16:25.170]We want all of our employees
[00:16:26.987]and all of our construction crews
[00:16:30.210]that are working on our projects to get home safely.
[00:16:35.400]We post about public information meetings.
[00:16:38.650]We had a bridge we closed last year
[00:16:42.170]and we posted quite a bit on social media about that.
[00:16:45.600]There was quite a few shares and, I think,
[00:16:48.660]we brought in a lot of people that way.
[00:16:53.410]Posting about employment.
[00:16:57.010]We had two positions open this spring, and this was right
[00:17:03.810]in the middle of the beginning of COVID in Iowa.
[00:17:08.580]I feel that posting on our social media site
[00:17:13.440]allowed us to bring in more applicants
[00:17:16.290]than we would have had, otherwise.
[00:17:19.690]We have a lot of, our maintenance staff
[00:17:23.740]follows our social media pages, and so they also share
[00:17:29.014]the employment requests that we have.
[00:17:33.430]Weather information.
[00:17:34.510]Obviously, if we have snow forecasted or heavy rains
[00:17:40.600]this is a great platform.
[00:17:44.192]Again, sharing posts of others, like I said
[00:17:46.010]the Iowa DOT does a great job of creating content
[00:17:50.210]and we use those opportunities to share.
[00:17:55.860]Winter road conditions.
[00:17:56.920]Since this is your winter operations training,
[00:18:00.670]I thought I'd spend a little bit more time on this.
[00:18:06.590]This is one where a lot of my time on a personal level
[00:18:11.440]goes out because as soon as I wake up in the morning,
[00:18:14.030]I'm on the phone with our maintenance staff
[00:18:17.790]and I say, what are the roads like?
[00:18:19.430]I usually try and post right away in the morning.
[00:18:23.140]On weekends, sometimes, our on-call staff
[00:18:26.810]will send pictures of road conditions
[00:18:29.071]and those pictures make a big difference.
[00:18:32.330]A lot of times they're shared.
[00:18:34.710]One big discrepancy we have is between the condition
[00:18:40.150]of Iowa DOT maintained roads and the County roads.
[00:18:45.260]So social media is a great platform to share
[00:18:50.060]what the condition of our roads are.
[00:18:53.820]The Iowa Department of Transportation has a goal
[00:18:58.100]of returning roads to normal conditions
[00:19:00.900]as quickly as possible and they run 24/7,
[00:19:04.560]where our County policy is not to provide
[00:19:08.180]a dry pavement condition.
[00:19:09.780]We run from hours of 5:00 AM to 5:00 PM
[00:19:13.970]There are instances where we can run earlier or later
[00:19:18.180]but that's our normal policy.
[00:19:21.820]So a lot of times we're seeing, you know
[00:19:24.780]the highway conditions might be drastically different
[00:19:27.990]from our County roads and social media allows us
[00:19:31.212]to share that with the public.
[00:19:34.660]There's really no other platform at this time to do that.
[00:19:40.450]Humor on posts, I try and limit,
[00:19:42.710]but on Facebook it has always been received well.
[00:19:51.790]Humor can be taken in different ways
[00:19:53.810]and so, if there's an opportunity to use it wisely,
[00:20:01.000]it's done, but otherwise, factual information as is best,
[00:20:06.200]and pictures always work well.
[00:20:12.220]How much time do I spend on social media?
[00:20:19.500]That depends on the time of year.
[00:20:22.640]Winter can be time consuming depending on road conditions.
[00:20:27.470]There's a lot of time spent in communication
[00:20:30.450]with maintenance staff, and there is a lot of time posting,
[00:20:43.128]and that's not a bad thing.
[00:20:43.961]As long as we're getting information to the public,
[00:20:45.980]I feel like it's time spent.
[00:20:48.480]There's sometimes, during projects,
[00:20:50.020]where I have staff sending me pictures
[00:20:53.790]and I try and post as quickly as possible
[00:20:56.660]but sometimes it's not always easy to do
[00:21:00.260]but in an effort to keep people with timely information
[00:21:05.100]it's nice to be able to post quickly.
[00:21:07.140]There are some tools that you can use that make that easier.
[00:21:18.380]Communication.
[00:21:21.040]We do have, or we see criticisms, some complaints.
[00:21:24.320]We have praise and we have questions.
[00:21:28.360]Criticism and complaints aren't always fun to get.
[00:21:33.500]The nice thing about having this on social media
[00:21:37.360]is if it weren't on social media
[00:21:41.310]it would probably come through the telephone
[00:21:43.350]and you have a little bit of time to think of your response
[00:21:46.260]when it's on social media.
[00:21:48.900]When we receive criticism or complaints
[00:21:53.950]it's a great time to direct people to call our office
[00:21:57.796]and we could create work orders for these problems.
[00:22:02.990]I guess, one comment I had made earlier is with Megan
[00:22:06.280]is that we, when responding to somebody complaining
[00:22:13.040]about a road or something we've done,
[00:22:16.386]I always respond as if I'm talking to them on the phone.
[00:22:20.160]So I would use as much courtesy in my communication
[00:22:23.480]on social media as I would with them on the telephone.
[00:22:28.090]I think that's important because they're not the only ones
[00:22:31.480]who can see your response,
[00:22:33.650]but responding quickly and responding well,
[00:22:39.250]I think, represents the County well.
[00:22:43.570]It's always nice to get praise.
[00:22:46.270]It's great to hear people's reaction to our road projects.
[00:22:52.470]We've had a lot of compliments on our new bridge
[00:22:55.390]from traveling public, and that was fun to hear,
[00:22:58.160]and it's fun to share with our staff.
[00:23:02.360]Questions.
[00:23:03.193]We have a lot of questions come as a private message
[00:23:08.180]and that I wasn't expecting when we started
[00:23:10.250]with social media, but it's there.
[00:23:13.440]A lot of times we'll get them on weekends or on evenings
[00:23:17.100]and I try and respond to them as quickly as possible.
[00:23:22.580]People want information right away
[00:23:24.880]and I think that's something we can provide to them.
[00:23:28.290]We have, like I said, a couple people in our office
[00:23:30.870]kind of watch our social media pages,
[00:23:33.170]and so it's not like it's just me responding.
[00:23:42.510]Maybe you have questions for me.
[00:23:44.490]There's a lot of free applications
[00:23:48.340]or free tools online that you can use to make content
[00:23:53.010]for your social media pages
[00:23:54.660]and I'm more than happy to help you find
[00:23:58.130]or at least share information of what I've used in the past.
[00:24:01.080]So don't hesitate to contact me,
[00:24:06.930]but that's the end of my PowerPoint
[00:24:09.580]and I'll pass it back to Megan.
[00:24:16.730]Thank you, Carol.
[00:24:36.410]Does anybody have any questions for Carol,
[00:24:38.890]while we have her here?
[00:24:41.030]I think we have a little bit of time for questions.
[00:24:46.290]Not a question, but just to say, that was magnificent.
[00:24:51.550]I appreciate your input with that.
[00:24:55.950]Thank you.
[00:24:57.050]I agree.
[00:24:59.750]The social media aspect can be fun,
[00:25:01.900]so have some fun with it, be creative
[00:25:05.420]and show the traveling public that we're people
[00:25:09.337]and our maintenance staff are people too, and we're human.
[00:25:16.630]That's a really good point, I think,
[00:25:18.300]being able to highlight your employees,
[00:25:21.030]doing those action photos,
[00:25:23.260]kind of highlighting the work that they do,
[00:25:25.310]I think that's really valuable.
[00:25:27.640]I think you should use humor more, I love the pizza.
[00:25:31.970]Save your pizza, you know, the humor is great.
[00:25:39.740]How often do you try to post?
[00:25:47.220]If there's projects going on,
[00:25:49.090]I try and at least post daily.
[00:25:54.250]Sometimes, it's hard when our construction season is done,
[00:25:58.310]there's not a lot going on,
[00:25:59.700]and there's only so many pictures of brush cutting
[00:26:02.260]you can put up, and ditch cleaning,
[00:26:05.010]but that's a great opportunity to ask the maintenance staff.
[00:26:08.250]You know, what can you think of
[00:26:09.630]that you wanna tell the public?
[00:26:10.970]Is there anything you can think of that I can incorporate
[00:26:13.390]into a post where I can create custom content?
[00:26:17.630]I like to be able to incorporate ideas
[00:26:21.430]from the guys who are driving the trucks
[00:26:26.120]or driving the motor graders, their eyes on the roads,
[00:26:31.150]or even the engineering staff doing the inspections.
[00:26:35.900]They see a lot, they get great pictures.
[00:26:50.530]I think pictures are great,
[00:26:53.270]pictures are worth a thousand words, right?
[00:26:56.010]Well, we appreciate your time, Carol.
[00:26:58.440]Thanks a lot for the information.
[00:27:03.600]I think we'll go to Mr. Jerry Buum now,
[00:27:07.280]Union County, South Dakota,
[00:27:11.300]he is the Highway Superintendent.
[00:27:15.690]I'm not the one on the camera (laughs)
[00:27:19.790]The voice doesn't match your picture there, buddy.
[00:27:25.380]So I'm on a different laptop or a computer
[00:27:28.130]but main reason we started this was just to let people know
[00:27:36.340]what winter driving conditions were and stuff like that.
[00:27:48.403]2018, we went to a (indistinct) school in Minnehaha County,
[00:27:55.810]I think they actually have an app dedicated
[00:27:58.144]to (indistinct) social media,
[00:28:03.354]showing the public what's going on.
[00:28:10.933]Then we decided to start this Facebook page
[00:28:16.100]and we do a lot of things that Carol does.
[00:28:22.504]Jerry had put together a video of a big
[00:28:26.020]culvert replacement project that we had earlier this year
[00:28:30.900]and people really loved to view that,
[00:28:35.570]we got a lot of likes on that.
[00:28:38.020]Then the large part that we use,
[00:28:42.210]we are located in the southeastern corner of South Dakota,
[00:28:46.110]so we have the Missouri River on our south border
[00:28:49.470]and we have the Big Sioux River on our east border
[00:28:53.310]and we are continually fighting floodwaters.
[00:28:58.330]So, there's a lot of road closures and stuff
[00:29:04.650]throughout the different flooding events.
[00:29:08.669]People have really, really enjoyed that aspect of it,
[00:29:14.960]to know, you know, the road closures and things.
[00:29:25.810]We've had good response with this
[00:29:27.570]and we also have complaints too
[00:29:32.260]but I don't remember anybody putting any,
[00:29:34.700]really, a complaint on our Facebook page.
[00:29:38.650]There's a lot of people that really give kudos
[00:29:41.620]to our maintenance crew and that's nice feedback to have.
[00:29:47.960]Anything else, Jerry?
[00:29:52.762]We really thought it would be nice to be involved
[00:29:58.440]with this webinars so that we could have more ideas
[00:30:02.550]of how we could better serve our constituents in the County.
[00:30:06.260]So, again, Carol, I really appreciate everything
[00:30:10.220]that you presented to us,
[00:30:12.550]it gives a lot of food for thought.
[00:30:19.800]So Christie, do you have any idea
[00:30:22.410]how many followers you guys have like on Facebook?
[00:30:27.750]291, I think it said, yeah, 291 people follow.
[00:30:34.790]Our County has about a 10,000 population.
[00:30:46.540]Do you have an idea how many followers you have, Carol?
[00:30:49.550]So on our Facebook page, we have around 375, I believe.
[00:30:55.490]and then on Twitter, I think it's 172.
[00:31:01.150]And of course the point is those numbers
[00:31:03.150]get multiplied when people start sharing
[00:31:06.270]and, I mean, 375 people can turn into 500
[00:31:11.000]or 1000 pretty easily, I think.
[00:31:14.609]Absolutely. I think it's (indistinct)
[00:31:15.442]information out.
[00:31:18.155]Yeah, and we've had experience with that too.
[00:31:19.750]I mean, most of our followers share, also.
[00:31:28.870]I like the idea of sharing links to more detailed maps.
[00:31:33.560]I mean, if you have road closures that are going on,
[00:31:36.290]say you have a flood event, just getting a link out there,
[00:31:40.640]so people know where road closure map is at.
[00:31:43.960]Something that's always changing,
[00:31:45.910]just a good way to communicate when roads are open
[00:31:49.350]and when they're finally, when they're closed
[00:31:52.420]and when they're finally opened, I guess.
[00:31:55.531]I like that idea too, putting the links up.
[00:31:59.500]I agree that was something that I didn't do, Carol,
[00:32:04.300]and that's a great thing.
[00:32:09.740]We get a lot of shares on those as well.
[00:32:12.150]It's interesting, you know, different areas of the County
[00:32:16.400]and you kind of get to know the people that are,
[00:32:19.220]where they live in the County
[00:32:20.410]because they're the ones sharing in that area,
[00:32:22.860]and that's a great thing.
[00:32:24.620]I'm glad to have them sharing information.
[00:32:30.538]We appreciate our public that shares
[00:32:31.970]and that's on our Facebook page.
[00:32:36.860]One of the questions that's in the chat box is
[00:32:41.800]do you have an idea of about how many hours per week
[00:32:44.900]you spend, specifically, on social media things?
[00:32:56.170]I guess for me, it's maybe three to five, it's not a lot.
[00:33:01.110]There's times when I create custom content
[00:33:07.330]that I might spend a little bit more time
[00:33:09.350]but a lot of times I'll do a couple of custom pieces
[00:33:15.470]of artwork at a time and then set it to a public share site
[00:33:20.220]so I can schedule them.
[00:33:24.020]I schedule them to post at a certain time
[00:33:26.110]and then I'm not spending time on my nights and weekends.
[00:33:31.660]There's times when you want it posted at 6:00 PM or 6:00 AM,
[00:33:35.540]rather than in the middle of the day or even on a holiday.
[00:33:40.504]I schedule all my holiday posts just to save myself time.
[00:33:53.186]I think it's really important on Facebook and on Twitter
[00:33:55.864]to keep it fresh, I guess.
[00:34:00.520]We started one in the county that I worked for in Nebraska,
[00:34:04.530]and I think we started to gain some traction
[00:34:08.010]but then I think our biggest mistake was we didn't make it
[00:34:11.990]part of the process like you were talking about,
[00:34:14.740]so it kind of dropped off a little bit.
[00:34:18.820]I guess it's really important.
[00:34:20.309]I don't know about posting every day
[00:34:21.250]but maybe once a week just to get started.
[00:34:26.480]Like I said, when we don't have
[00:34:28.530]this big bridge construction project
[00:34:30.870]it will be a little more difficult,
[00:34:32.650]but we've had some great content
[00:34:34.100]just because there's so much going on out there with the,
[00:34:39.412]you know, building a whole new bridge
[00:34:40.350]and then taking on the old one.
[00:34:44.270]People love those pictures.
[00:34:48.100]We had a bridge project where LTAP actually put a camera.
[00:34:53.270]We had a construction camera on site.
[00:34:55.470]So there was a link to that feed, so they could watch,
[00:34:59.710]you know, watch it going on,
[00:35:01.660]and it's things that the public can't necessarily see.
[00:35:05.540]It's like you're working in an underpass or something
[00:35:07.950]and just giving them eyes down there is valuable, I think.
[00:35:15.220]Well, anybody else have questions,
[00:35:21.040]or maybe some things that you're doing on your social media?
[00:35:33.910]Well, we really appreciate your time, Carol,
[00:35:37.230]Jerry, Christie, Megan,
[00:35:40.740]Megan loves doing custom artwork too.
[00:35:42.860]She'd probably help you, you guys,
[00:35:45.480]if you want some fancy graphics done,
[00:35:48.130]she loves doing that stuff in her spare time.
[00:35:54.890]If we have more departments that would utilize it
[00:35:58.970]when we have, you know, special weeks
[00:36:06.108]like Traffic Incident Management Awareness Week,
[00:36:09.760]and some of those kinds of things,
[00:36:10.990]we can certainly help you find
[00:36:13.560]or put together some of those graphics
[00:36:16.420]of how they relate to our local.
[00:36:19.630]Sometimes when I pull graphics from national sites,
[00:36:22.750]I tweak them because I wanna use local information
[00:36:26.410]or put the Nebraska equivalent website instead of
[00:36:29.370]the national website, some of those kinds of things.
[00:36:32.960]But yeah, we'd love to collaborate with you
[00:36:36.430]on doing more social media marketing and awareness.
[00:36:42.120]A couple of general rules, like for Facebook,
[00:36:45.690]posts with pictures have a much higher see
[00:36:51.020]and share rate than posts that don't have pictures.
[00:36:54.200]So if you can snap a quick shot with your cell phone
[00:36:58.480]to add to the post, it's a lot more likely to be seen.
[00:37:04.820]But yeah, we we'd love to start some more conversations
[00:37:07.940]and have some more departments.
[00:37:10.130]I think that as we see a societal shift,
[00:37:16.100]we don't wait until the 10 o'clock news
[00:37:18.520]to find out what's going on anymore.
[00:37:20.230]If we have a question, we go to a device and we look it up.
[00:37:24.900]So, if we can put useful information out there
[00:37:30.140]for people to find, I think they'll find it.
[00:37:38.890]Oh yes, there was a mention in the chat box
[00:37:45.597]to make sure we're doing OSHA-compliant things.
[00:37:48.270]That's something we have sometimes
[00:37:49.910]in the past struggled with, too.
[00:37:52.500]It's a great picture, and then we would notice
[00:37:54.970]that one person doesn't have on a safety vest,
[00:37:57.920]and so we either have to crop them out or try again.
[00:38:05.415]So yeah, make sure that you put a close eye
[00:38:07.770]on those pictures that you are sharing
[00:38:11.220]and you're not causing more problems than you already have.
[00:38:17.040]Another question we have is how freedom
[00:38:21.640]of information requests have been handled.
[00:38:26.580]I don't know if either of you have any experience with that.
[00:38:35.620]No, there's not been any issues with that at Union County
[00:38:39.659]and actually it's not something that I had thought of.
[00:38:47.640]So, in Lancaster County, we had to put a special software
[00:38:53.750]on ours that goes in and captures every post so that
[00:38:58.560]no one from the public could allege that we were screening
[00:39:01.700]or deleting posts that weren't favorable to us,
[00:39:05.300]which was somewhat unfortunate.
[00:39:09.640]At one point the County Attorney's Office also wanted access
[00:39:13.530]to my personal Facebook site if I was sharing these items,
[00:39:18.860]which was a unfortunate situation
[00:39:22.710]that we were able to overcome,
[00:39:25.530]and come to an agreement that, you know,
[00:39:27.320]my personal Facebook is not public information,
[00:39:30.940]but there are people who've had trouble with it,
[00:39:34.950]and for whatever reason, Lancaster County got really
[00:39:38.120]concerned that there may be maybe some issues with it.
[00:39:41.300]So it's just one of those things
[00:39:44.000]because the Facebook site is not static,
[00:39:49.180]it's just one of those things that
[00:39:50.330]if someone does request all the comments were on a post,
[00:39:53.330]how do you prove that that is all the comments
[00:39:56.930]or not all the comments and so, anyway.
[00:39:59.840]I just wondered how other people were handling it
[00:40:02.000]because I find it to be mildly irritating
[00:40:05.360]and haven't maybe necessarily found the best solution.
[00:40:14.499]Thanks for bringing that up, Pam.
[00:40:16.390]So, I guess, the takeaway is double check
[00:40:19.360]with your legal counsel, right?
[00:40:24.265]Which is, sadly, I'm just going to say sadly.
[00:40:29.880]Someday I want it to be all about the engineer
[00:40:32.310]and it just never seems to be that way
[00:40:34.280]but I know that will happen for me someday.
[00:40:44.380]All right, good discussion.
[00:40:47.550]Any other parting thoughts?
[00:40:51.050]I thought I would mention that I know for Lancaster County
[00:40:54.830]we have a rather large Twitter following,
[00:40:58.200]kind of like Carol, we don't get a lot of interaction
[00:41:01.020]on our Twitter page, but a lot of people
[00:41:03.440]when they're just looking for that quick information,
[00:41:05.650]that quick status of the road,
[00:41:08.710]and once like the State Patrol picked up our site
[00:41:11.750]and started sharing it in a few other locations,
[00:41:14.400]then we did get a lot more broader distribution
[00:41:18.830]of that information, I just say that as an aside.
[00:41:25.780]It doesn't seem like something people interact with,
[00:41:27.990]but we get used.
[00:41:29.580]We have had a one citizen come to one of our public meetings
[00:41:34.100]and complained about Facebook and Twitter
[00:41:36.120]and say we shouldn't be wasting our time with it
[00:41:38.040]because nobody really uses it,
[00:41:40.460]and we had to have a discussion that
[00:41:42.480]that, really, wasn't true,
[00:41:44.180]but it's always something you can't make everyone happy.
[00:41:47.920]This is Heather from Omaha
[00:41:49.340]and I'd like to kind of echo that, that same thing.
[00:41:52.900]Twitter has been a great platform for us
[00:41:54.770]to push information out.
[00:41:57.450]We actually have a GIS-based program or application
[00:42:05.990]that we've stood up that has all
[00:42:10.010]of our road closure information,
[00:42:11.860]and so that's a great medium to link people
[00:42:15.260]to other resources like that GIS app.
[00:42:19.540]The other thing that's been great for us
[00:42:21.830]is networking with communities like y'all,
[00:42:25.660]and so we follow other municipalities, other states,
[00:42:30.140]other County Engineering Departments
[00:42:33.460]on the transportation side, as well as entities
[00:42:36.370]on the water side of things as well,
[00:42:38.890]to help kind of like and share
[00:42:41.200]because the more that gets promoted
[00:42:43.350]the more likely somebody is gonna see that in the feed
[00:42:53.630]So helping each other out and following.
[00:42:56.660]Then a third thing that we have found really helps
[00:42:58.733](breaks off) and to make sure that our TV stations
[00:43:01.890]and radio stations are following us.
[00:43:08.370]Those are excellent recommendations, Heather,
[00:43:10.140]thank you.
[00:43:15.440]All right, like I said in the beginning,
[00:43:17.660]the recordings of these Winter Ops Webinars,
[00:43:21.310]we'll make them available, so if you miss one,
[00:43:26.199]there's gonna be a way for you to tap into it.
[00:43:29.779]Megan, when is the third webinar?
[00:43:34.510]The third one is still a little bit up in the air.
[00:43:37.780]Every time I get a speaker confirmed, something comes up.
[00:43:41.760]So watch our Facebook page, Nebraska LTAB,
[00:43:48.380]and many of you subscribe to our newsletter,
[00:43:51.270]so we'll share it through that reserve as well.
[00:43:57.397]It looks like at this point it might be a January session,
[00:44:01.890]we might not get in any yet in December.
[00:44:04.810]But we'd like to do one more
[00:44:07.730]on ice preventatives and brines and salts.
[00:44:16.830]It seems like there's a lot of conversation about that
[00:44:19.480]and maybe some innovation, but that's one of the topics
[00:44:25.660]we'd like to get in yet this winter,
[00:44:28.210]as that's a hot topic around here.
[00:44:32.010]All right, great.
[00:44:34.040]Thanks, everybody.

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Winter Ops Webinars: Communicating with Social Media

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