With more people turning to their social networks for news, information and interaction, local councils need to keep up with the times by maintaining active and engaging social accounts of their own.

Keeping multiple accounts up-to-date and ensuring a consistent tone across various departments takes a lot of work, but it also has major benefits. Like:

• reducing the need for phone calls and paper correspondence
• demonstrating that the council is listening and responding to concerns
• establishing the council’s authority as a trusted source of information, especially in times of crisis.

With this in mind, we’ve compared how two local authorities in New South Wales are using social media to engage with the public and local businesses: Newcastle City Council and Lake Macquarie Council.

Council websites

Even if you’re more active on social networks, your own website should always be the hub of your online activity, where customers can go for in-depth information on evergreen topics.

Follow buttons

Just as your social media posts should link back to relevant pages on your site, your site should also promote your social accounts in prominent locations to encourage interaction.

newcastle.nsw.gov.au

lakemac.com.au

Both councils display a selection of social media buttons on their websites, but Newcastle City Council’s are much more visible. That’s because they’re in the top-right of the page header as well as the footer, while Lake Macquarie Council’s are only in the footer.

Newcastle City Council also keeps things more concise, with buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, while Lake Macquarie Council adds LinkedIn and Pinterest to the mix.

LinkedIn is a valuable addition for business users, but Pinterest’s lack of popularity compared to other image sharing sites makes its presence less essential, especially next to the more popular Instagram.

Share buttons

Both councils’ websites recognise the value of social share buttons for encouraging site visitors to share their content, which increases traffic to their websites and improves SEO.

newcastle.nsw.gov.au

lakemac.com.au

Share buttons are also a reminder to creators that their content needs to be worth sharing. In this case, both websites feature an impressive array of pages covering diverse topics to answer the queries of a broad range of site visitors.

Interaction

As well as the requisite contact details, both websites also invite members of the community to get in touch and share their opinions on current topics of interest in their local government area.

Newcastle City Council gives over a section of the website to feedback, but Lake Macquarie Council goes a step further by dedicating an entire website.

News

Maintaining a regular blog on your website doesn’t just improve traffic and SEO – for public institutions such as councils, it also helps to build your authority as a trusted news source.

This is where the Newcastle City Council website falls down hard. With a ‘latest news’ section that’s empty and seemingly abandoned, the only source of ‘news’ is archives of the council newsletter, sent out four times a year.

By contrast, the Lake Macquarie Council media centre is updated with new content twice a day on average, supplementing and informing their social media posts.

Social media activity

Both councils have taken the step of registering accounts with the main social platforms, but are they using them to their full advantage?

Facebook

facebook.com/newcastlecouncil

facebook.com/lakemaccity

Facebook is Australia’s most popular social media site, and both councils make adept use of the platform to keep their followers informed of upcoming events and campaigns and to make information requests. Every post is accompanied by eye-catching images or video, and staff respond to comments in a timely manner.

Rather than being a measure of quality, the larger number of followers for Lake Macquarie Council’s Facebook page likely reflects the larger population of that local government area.

Twitter

twitter.com/citynewcastle

twitter.com/lakemac

Twitter comes much further down on the list of Australia’s favourite social platforms, but with its short and snappy updates, it’s less time-intensive than most other networks. As well as reaching the people who do use Twitter, tweets often make their way to the front page of Google and can be highly effective for establishing a council’s authority during key events.

Both councils have a comparable number of Twitter followers, despite going about things differently. Lake Macquarie Council has posted over twice as many updates as Newcastle City Council over the years and follows more than three times as many users, but this hasn’t made a substantial difference to their own following.

Instagram

instagram.com/citynewcastle

instagram.com/ourlakemac

With over five million monthly users in Australia, the reach of Instagram shouldn’t be underestimated. It seems Newcastle City Council did just that, only attracting a minor following for their infrequent posts compared to Lake Macquarie Council’s more impressive figures resulting from dedication.

Surely two local councils should have similarly inspiring images worth sharing? Their Facebook posts are full of them.

YouTube

youtube.com/user/NCCclips

youtube.com/user/lakemaccity

Once more, Lake Macquarie Council proves to be the earlier and more dedicated adopter of social media, publishing over twice as many videos to YouTube as Newcastle City Council over the past six years.

Audience figures for both councils varies depending on the merits of each individual video, but Lake Macquarie’s videos tend to get more views. Their most popular video has racked up over 10,000 views compared to Newcastle’s 4,000.

Takeaways

For two similar bodies with similar preoccupations, the City of Newcastle and Lake Macquarie Council demonstrate how different approaches to social media affect how informed and engaged your followers are.

While both councils create and share engaging content on a regular basis, Lake Macquarie Council shows greater eagerness to embrace the most popular platforms, while Newcastle City Council focuses on a select few while neglecting others – including areas of their own website.

Whether you run a local government office or a business, being social media savvy isn’t enough if your own website’s letting you down.