Social media & communications training
This project's final report and evaluation was completed on 30 September 2019.
Project approach
The funding proposal sought to provide the support the sector practitioners need to increase the capacity and expertise in social media applications and best practice approaches. The project was undertaken in two stages.
First stage was to engage a consultant to review existing resources and engage with comms practitioners to ascertain the level of expertise and capture the gaps and update existing resources that were developed by the LGA.
As part of its role to build capacity within its member Councils, the Local Government Association of South Australia had delivered a series of social media programs over the past four years aimed at helping councils better communicate and engage with their communities. During the review, it became clear that council practitioners would require ongoing support and the development of additional resources that would supplement the LGA resources for social media would be required.
Generally, the practitioner’s requirements range from:
- Basic strategic support (how to I get my council started) to more advanced social media strategy (how do I run campaigns across multiple channels and use analytics)
- Basic technical support (how do I use the basic features of a platform) to advanced technical support (how to I run and measure advertising)
- Tailored situational advice (We are having this specific issue at our council, what should I do)
To best meet the evolving learning requirements, a new program structure with updated resources is critical. The social media world evolves at a rapid rate and it is important that the sector continues to invest in resources and capacity building to ensure that councils remain contemporary in their communication and engagement techniques.
The practitioners also wanted a more focused set of resources that they could access whenever they needed it and particularly when there was staff changeover in councils which meant that new practitioners would need access to these training resources when and where they were able to find time in their day to day work.
This finding established that there was a wide range of learning requirements that would be impossible to meet in a single workshop. The review of existing resources (that the LGA had developed) established that an update was required and that a modular learning process would be better suited to this emerging requirement and the development of specific topic area resources, guides and webinars would be more suited to meet this need in the LG sector. This would also be a more sustainable model.
The focussed topics were developed and executed though one-hour webinars, so as to deliver targeted training that practitioners could access at any time. The second stage was to develop resource guides, conduct testing of the webinars with the two pilot councils and other practitioners that were interested in participating and trialling that this new model. These sessions were successful 16 webinars were developed by the consultant and each one has a resource guide and all are available to councils via the LGCN resources website.
Project achievements
The project achieved the following:
Update/review the social media channel 'How-to' guides x 5
- Update/review template social media policy for councils
- Update/review Social Media Guides x 2 (SM 101 and SM 2.0)
- 15 webinars were developed:
- Twitter the Basics
- Instagram the Basics
- Advertising on Social Media
- Promoting your event on social media
- Social media health check
- Understanding Facebook Pages
- Analytics – an introduction
- Measuring social media
- Social media management tools – an overview
- Social Media Webinar - Hashtags
- Developing engaging social media content
- Easy content creation tools for beginners
- Facebook Business Manager
- Social Media for Elected Members - Part 1
- Social Media for Elected Members - Part 2
Project outputs and outcomes
Resources available to councils via the previous five R&D applications submitted by the LGA of SA have been updated and made available to council practitioners. Council practitioners are still developing social medias skills and as staff turnover is inevitable replacement staff require extra support and resource guides that step them through each step of the process so a direct outcome is that these staff now have access to a series of webinars that mean they can participate at their own pace and on an ongoing basis.
Fifteen (15) webinars including notes made available.
The current resources are available on the LG Communicators Network page.
Performance measures
Testing and piloting with council comms practitioners.
The practitioners who have accessed the webinars have provided positive feedback and have requested more resources be developed using this model which gives them ongoing access to up to date resources.
Ratings and comments