One struggle that departments can find themselves in is finding great content to provide to their communities, that matters to them.
Sure it’s easy posting pictures that promote your agency or press conferences and news releases that ask for their assistance but to make those impactful you really need to show your citizens how their assistance benefits them.
What I’m talking about though is providing information that can make an immediate and lasting impact and makes them want to come back for more.
The question is, what type of information do they really want? Well the answer will come from the very same people who want it. There are two great ways to find out.
- Ask them. You never really know what someone wants unless you ask them. Take the time to make a survey inquiring what they want to know or what is important to them.
What do you want to know?
- Listen to them. I often see members of the public asking questions of their police online. Very often the questions are similar in nature regardless of the jurisdiction which shows commonality of concerns.
The public has many questions if you listen
Once you ask your community what they want then you need to answer them. But take the opportunity to use the law of averages. If a group of people have the same responses you can assume that many more have the same thought on their mind.
Chances are if you are listening to your online community you probably are asked the same questions on a regular basis. Once again, the same law of averages will apply.
Now time to answer them; not individually, but all at once. Take the time to make the answers creative and rich.
You could use video, slide presentations or write a note/blogpost. When done right this content that you’ve created can be used again and again as a redirect for when the same questions arise (which they often will.)
Think right now of the top 5 questions that you are asked and answer them. You will be creating your own great content and what makes it great is that it is content that your community wants.
