---
id: "workshop:to-post-or-not-to-post-the-highs-and-lows-of-government-social-media"
type: "InnovateUS workshop"
title: "To Post or Not to Post: The Highs and Lows of Government Social Media"
url: "https://innovate-us.org/to-post-or-not-to-post-the-highs-and-lows-of-government-social-media"
date: "2023-09-28"
duration: "60 minutes"
language: "English"
instructors: ["Pearl Gabel"]
recording: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPwfGkJz6qo"
transcript: "automatic, from the recording"
source: "InnovateUS (innovate-us.org)"
licence: "CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/), as stated on innovate-us.org"
---

# To Post or Not to Post: The Highs and Lows of Government Social Media

InnovateUS workshop · 28 September 2023 · 60 minutes

Join us for a 60-minute virtual workshop with Pearl Gabel, the former Digital Director for the State of New Jersey, former Director of Video for the City of New York, and current Founder of Grit Strategies. During her time with Governor Murphy’s Administration, she launched the social media accounts for the Governor, First Lady, and State, successfully rebranding the State of New Jersey and earning accolades for strategy and multimedia, ushering in an onslaught of quirky, personality-driven government social media accounts. Pearl will discuss government communications in the era of social media; how to get started in creating your agency or organization's “brand” while effectively engaging and conveying important information to the public, and how to navigate government bureaucracy while doing so. The training is open to anyone with an interest in communications, from seasoned professionals to beginners. Participants will learn about different communications platforms, techniques, and processes and be encouraged to ask questions.

## Learning goals

- Learn the basics of government social media: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
- Gain background into real-world examples.
- Learn how to create your own brand and voice.
- Learn engagement and content creation strategies to tell effective stories and convey important information.

## Speakers

- **Pearl Gabel**, Creative + Communications Consultant; former Digital Director, State of New Jersey; former Director of Video, City of New York

Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPwfGkJz6qo

## Transcript

Automatic transcript of the recording: names and terms can be misheard, and the times can be a few seconds off. Each time links to that moment of the video. The transcript alone: https://innovate-us.org/to-post-or-not-to-post-the-highs-and-lows-of-government-social-media.txt (plain text) and https://innovate-us.org/to-post-or-not-to-post-the-highs-and-lows-of-government-social-media.json (every segment with its start and end second).

**Audience**

[0:01](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=1) And we can get started.

**Pearl Gabel**

[0:04](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=4) Wow, thanks so much, Hannah. I'm really honored to be here. I'm, I'm reading this, the chat right now and this is such a cool group and I recognize some of the folks here. And yeah, I'm super happy to be here. I'm, I'm nervous just because I know a lot of you guys could also be teaching, teaching some of you guys could also be teaching this or could be leading this as well. You know, we have so much to learn from each other about specific things so I just hope that you're able to take some, some valuable, one or two valuable lessons from this. And we could just dive right in. Let's see, sharing my screen, turning it into a slideshow. Okay, is everybody, everybody's here everybody's seeing stuff. I can see that. And I'm just going to open the chat to just in case any emergencies. I would love for this to be a conversation, feel free to interrupt me.

[1:10](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=70) And I'll just run through this, and, you know, we're here we're talking I mean social media is so much about, about the conversation and about the interaction and I hope, hope this can can be about that, too. I know we have a short time so I'll try to be very brief in the interest of all of your time on this sort of, it's a rainy day in New Jersey, where I am. Tell me where you are. Okay. So what's on the agenda today. We're going to start with career, my career lesson, government communication in the era of social media creating your government or agencies brand engaging to inform how do we do it. And of course, navigating bureaucracy. We all have experiences in bureaucracy. I'm sure we have a lot to talk about on the approval process. Oh, sorry, I think somebody was just saying something. Um, okay, so who am I. Yes, I am the founder of grit strategies actually it's a very new two month old agency that's just dedicated to this kind of work, supporting campaigns, creative communications for governments for organizations for, you know, specific brands. I was the director of brand strategy at pivot where I did the same, specifically running government campaigns and doing the creative, but also for a lot of other types of clients.

[2:45](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=165) I was the digital director for Governor Phil Murphy, the director of video for the New York City Mayor's Office, which sort of most of our content was really focused on social media. And then before that was a journalist for a variety of publications a photojournalist video journalist and. And I studied journalism and writing. I was with an interest in policy. So, I've had this question posed to me a couple times in the last couple months, and I thought to start off with this with this with the answer to this question the first thing that came to my mind was just a very specific moment. When I was a photojournalist. I was really learning from other photographers around me, and to learn to sort of be a photojournalist I was following folks, that's really, I would see what the other photographers were doing, I would take you know take the pictures take the portraits, especially for breaking news events.

[3:56](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=236) One specific news event, this was kind of like the aha moment the career lesson. You may remember in 2011, Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed and I got a phone call from my editor to go down to Times Square and get like the picture of the event so I go down there. And you've all most of you have been to Times Square. I was in a rush of people. And so I was just standing where all the people were with their flags and there's like the ticker. And there, here comes a fire truck, and I'm just in the middle of it and I'm following I'm seeing what the other photographers doing I'm following it. I got some pictures, I thought they were good. But the next day I opened up the New York Times, you know, and I saw the definitive picture, and, you know, breaking news like it was not my picture. It was actually a friend of mine Mike Appleton, and he had gone away from the crowd he'd gone away from all the other where the other photographers were.

[5:00](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=300) He was, he stood back, he saw the whole thing for what it was from. There, that exact moment I was right there but I was standing in front. I didn't see I didn't see it I didn't see that he could get the back, and then he got the news ticker, and he got the location, and you even see the people on the bottom, he created the definitive front page photo, the definitive historical photo of that event. My photos have been 100% forgotten you guaranteed. I even tried to like Google Image search them and I couldn't find them like doesn't matter. Anyway, so it was like, I had like a jolt, a jolt when I saw this photo because I was there too and I didn't see it. And what he said, if I'm with everyone else I'm in the wrong place. Well he was speaking like specifically about photographers and like, if I'm with other photographers at a news event. But I kind of felt like this is it like this is I can apply this to like everything else and it reminded me of the story that that I heard in journalism school.

[6:06](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=366) Some of you guys might might know this. It's like a very well known journalism school story. Jimmy Breslin who was a columnist for the New York Herald Tribune, the, the day of JFK funeral. Everybody went to the other journalists went to the funeral, of course you're covering the funeral. He went to the grave site. He interviewed the grave digger. And he ended up telling like sort of the, I guess that definitive story it was just. I think fundamental time in my life, when, when that happened at Times Square and harken back to this. And it was sort of the most important career lesson that I ever had. So, take with that what you will but this is sort of my intro in way of intro to government communication in the era of social media. I know it's like so hard, especially if you've been working in government for a while, without needing to do social media, it's been government is sort of notoriously been a little late to the game, while like corporations and organizations have more adopted at first.

[7:17](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=437) In fact, even when I started at the governor's office there was no state of New Jersey, social media accounts. There was not even a governor's social media account in fact. It was just that the governor's the previous governor's personal account I guess that he took with him. So, you know, so we know that, and this was 2018 so you know very late to the game. But what is it well you guys know all these channels, I'm, I'm guessing 99% of you are on at least one of these. And what we do as government social media, government comms people create and share information ideas and media by the by ourselves for constituent engagement building awareness crisis communications, and I just sort of like throughout some reasons why. Some of the most important reasons are, you know, news the crisis communications for your agency or for your, your, your government to strengthen the campaign, but in order to reach the people and also reach you know to get your own earned media from you need engagement.

[8:35](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=515) And you need, you kind of need people are ready to be following you, or at least your followers to be ready to share you and you guys know it's like so frustrating sometimes I'm sure you feel like you're posting into a void. And the reason why we do this is, as you all know, right, this is 72% of Americans use social media actively that's like at least once a month but you know, probably much more. And, you know, in your constituency, maybe much higher and maybe lower but it is still a majority of people use social media to get their news. And we know that, and we know who, and we know where they are. We have some really older folks leaning towards Facebook and and younger folks leading towards tick tock LinkedIn I noticed we have somebody from from LinkedIn on this call that's, I mean it's just really interesting to see where people are going who you're who the demographics are.

[9:35](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=575) And this is why we do what we do on social media to reach these folks. Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist. Okay, this is just sort of the idea. I'm coming into having this conversation with you all, because I'm, I know that basically, all of you have the foundation. The rules, so to speak, as from the Picasso quote, the education or and or the experience and or the knowledge and or the confidence, you have the foundation of what you want to say why you want to say it. The execution is the art. That is how you're going to say it, and where you're going to say it and what you're going to say. We're coming at this with like knowing that we have this foundation to work from. So we're not starting from zero here, like all of you guys are like practitioners and professionals in your organizations like you know what you want to say you may just need a little bit of like help and push for how and where and why you want to say it.

[10:49](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=649) The first part of it is, is creating your brand. I can stop here if there's anybody that has any questions so far, or any, any thoughts. Otherwise I'll keep going. Okay, a tale of two MBAs, I put this up here it's a little bit corporate, but I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed this and I and I thought about it for a while after because it, it hit home the importance of stories versus just facts. Being from the government we have facts that we need to portray but how the stories kind of hit different. This is three minutes I'm going to play it really quickly and then we'll, we'll move on. First student walks in sits down. It's asked, why do you want to work in private equity. I studied engineering at MIT. I have a very strong quantitative background spent four years at Goldman Sachs after that.

[11:51](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=711) Now I'm finishing up my MBA at Harvard Business School. I've taken all the finance classes private equity classes. I'm very strong quantitatively. I really love finance. Impressive. Next student comes in student number two sits down, why do you want to work in private equity. Yeah, my CV you see that I went to MIT I studied engineering I've got the quant, I spent four years at Goldman. Now I'm finishing up at HBS. But the real reason I didn't appreciate until yesterday I called my dad last night, told him I was coming to this interview. So dad, they're gonna ask me why I want to work in private equity I need a good answer. First thing my dad asked me was, was private equity. I explained to him as soon as I did he said, you tell him it's because of bicycles. What do you mean bicycles. Remember those broken down abandoned bicycles in the neighborhood. You kept bringing them home, but in the garage, sandpaper and spray painted. Take your toothbrush outside. Get all the rest off the chain would you brush your teeth with anyway.

[12:51](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=771) Square WD 40 on it. Replace the inner to sell it some kid in the neighborhood for 100 bucks. You always had way more money than your friends from selling those bicycles. So if I understand you correctly son you explained to him tomorrow. It's what you've been doing since you were 12 years old. You sell bicycles. They need to hire you. Partner goes home that evening is having dinner with her husband. He says, how's recruiting going to meet anyone interesting. She says, you will not believe this. I met this guy today. He said we should hire him because he's interested in finance. Now, she's already forgot about him he's gone. Tell the bicycle story to her husband that night. 10 years later, when the bicycle story guy is being promoted to partner in the firm. She's going to retell the bicycle story again now at his celebration. She's going to toast him. So you'll never believe what this sucker told me. Retail the bicycle story to the people in the room. And she'll be able to remember 10 years later, $100 becomes $300 because of inflation but more or less it's the same story.

[13:57](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=837) Why does she do that? Why did she hire him instead of quant finance guy? Because she knows that in a year, two years from now, or maybe immediately, he's going to be sent to Thibodeau, Louisiana to meet Wade Boudreau, who has a cement company. He's going to have to play golf with Wade Boudreau and make Wade Boudreau want to do business with him. Does Wade Boudreau want to do business with quantitative I like finance guy or with the bicycle guy? If you know anything about Wade Boudreau, you know what the answer is. Stories are going to create connections, generate sales, increase clients, all the stuff that matters. The CV stuff, that's there. That's impressive. That mattered a long time ago. What's going to matter in the future much, much more is the ability to connect, to tell stories. Stories. So, super interesting. Really, like, not only to the fact that stories are like connecting.

[15:00](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=900) But also stories become branders, kind of in that, like, he's the bicycle guy now, right? I mean, it's like you sort of brand, it creates like a whole story, personality, like conflict. It's, yeah, so that's the good way for us to start this branding conversation. I'm going to use NJGov as a case study here as we move forward. So there was a goal, right, to create a state of New Jersey account. And you can imagine it for any one of you here who's working, whether you're with the, you know, the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities, the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation, you know, the city of Austin. I see you all here. Fantastic. You know, so you want to create that hub and that central hub for your agency and to promote other agencies or partners. And for this specifically, it was to channel New Jersey's diverse community.

[16:07](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=967) What mediums? I don't know. Can I say Twitter anymore? I don't know. You know, it's up to you. Everybody has their opinion. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat. You know, first of all, when you're going into this, I know that a lot of you guys are not just doing social media. You're probably doing about a thousand other things. You're, you know, you could be writing the press releases you're doing. Yes. Yes. Or on Tumblr as well. Yes. That's a really interesting platform we don't talk enough about. If you only have 20 minutes a day to devote to projects, manage your expectations. You know, you'll be able to do things and keep pushing, but not as much as you can. Take chances, but also expect that mistakes will be made. We're going to talk about risk reward a little bit later on in this presentation. Build the trust with your colleagues, your leadership, community, yourself. Obviously, this is like an ongoing thing that we all do. And we'll talk about that a little later.

[17:14](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=1034) And, you know, be generous because generosity oftentimes leads to engagement on all channels that you'll be on. So, you know, first things first, when you're creating, I'll run through this quickly. A lot of you guys probably already have this done, but, you know, you think about things, your full brand, the name, what's the handle, what's the bio, what are the profile cover photos? Who are the first people that you're going to follow from your Facebook or from wherever? What's your first post? Is it an introduction? Is it, you know, these are sort of like baser things. So for New Jersey, and this was an evolution over a couple of years, but, you know, it was, this one particularly leaned into humor and kind of New Jersey lore and things like that to get engagement.

[18:15](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=1095) Yours may be more serious or more factual or more tongue in cheek. I don't know. This is like, this is evolution. This is what we're going to explore right now when you're finding the voice. So let's say thinking about New Jersey was really thinking about, for me, David versus Goliath, the story of New Jersey as an underdog state. This was sort of in the background of everything that I did when I thought about the voice of New Jersey. Heroics, humor, history, us versus them. Don't try too hard with the humor, tying the history to the present and thinking of the agency as a cohesive brand. I played this corporate video up front about private equity. You know, it's always weird. When I first saw it, I was just like, this is maybe, I don't understand that world, but the world of corporate and I've worked, I've worked in corporate quite a bit now after working for an agency, these lessons that they learned are really important, especially the art of effective brevity, right? Things that they've paid millions of dollars to brand themselves, to write their mission statements, to write their, to do their brand identity and visual identity. You can take lessons from that.

[19:30](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=1170) Government, obviously, we don't have that kind of budget, nor would we want to spend the budget on that, but we can take lessons for what it is. And so have your solid foundation in mind. It's nice to build, when you're building a house, you build the foundation and like the structure first, right? And then you sort of party in the structure and fill it in. Your social media brand assets, language and messaging, obviously, photography, graphics, video, and your responsiveness. These are, these are the things that you're sort of working with. These are the tools of, of your, of your sort of social media for, for whatever social media that you're on. And remember that even the more, most robust brands, they change over time. So you can decide, I want to do this one thing, and this is not what you're stuck with forever, right? Things change, brands change. These illustrations just show like a logo is like a representation of how things change, but but, you know, everything changes. And I'm sure you're thinking of specific brands in your head that are like, oh, when they did that new tagline or when they, when they sort of did this new weird thing on social media. Lessons from the corporate world. This, this, somebody shared this with me, and I thought this was super interesting, too, in terms of telling the story of your agency, right? So before Waze's mission statement was, Waze is a GPS-based geographical navigation application program. You know, I don't even want to read it. I'm like already bored.

[21:13](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=1273) Imagine a rewritten mission statement as sort of a story. Imagine millions of drivers out on the roads working together toward a common goal to outsmart traffic and get everyone the best route to work and back every day. Big lesson from the corporate world on that. And what is it? Hero, conflict, resolution. The story as old as time from, I have a one-year-old now. I'm telling him many stories of hero, conflict, and resolution. The children's books, the Bible, the religious texts, like the, like the, the oldest, oldest stories are this. It is like, it is like our baser selves search for this. The hero is somebody that you could identify with. So that's, it has the, has a goal or a need. That's your target audience. The conflict, what is the challenge? What's, what's missing? What stands in their way? That's the target insight. And the resolution, what can you do that solves their, their issue? That's the benefit.

[22:19](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=1339) This is, you know, just sort of like brief back of the hand idea of NJGov, you know, the hero, they call us the underdog, the armpit of America, the stick pot. Okay. That's our hero. The conflict, we will prove them wrong. The resolution, because we're awesome and scrappy. And that's what we do. There we go. That's the voice that's in the back of the head. You guys know, I'm sure some of you guys are also have some, wear so many hats that you're also speech writers for, for the principle of your agency or your, or your government or, and you know what it is to write in a voice. And you, a lot of us have studied that. A lot of us learn that. So to write in the voice of like this New Jersey, this scrappy underdog state, I'm, I'll go over this specific, your mom example a little bit later on. Us against the world, kind of the thoughts is obviously this kind of like, this kind of like snap humor is not going to work for every agency, most agencies, honestly. But the, the, the lessons to take that you can take from it is the fact that it is like a coherent, like cohesive voice. And now you guys see where it sort of generates from. And when you have that voice and you start to see engagement is, is when you can start using your platforms. I mean, throughout the time you use your platforms for what they're, they're there for, which is serious information and, and, you know, serious communications, working with influencers, COVID updates. Here's an example. You know, sort of using like memes or using like celebrity or, or sort of local, local interaction to like, drive engagement. We're working within the framework to, to sort of do the job

[24:30](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=1470) of government communications. And, you know, and within that, by partnering the two together, this engagement strategy, this engagement voice strategy, plus like, you know, sort of like the information storytelling strategy. There's a winner. It's a winner. Obviously this is not a like science, but it's a nice way to start thinking about and looking at your government digital communications. Some examples of government social media. I saw from our chat that a lot of people are actually have some really awesome like government sites. These are just some examples. One of my favorites is, is maybe surprisingly the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District Twitter account. Really worth a checkout. If you guys have any that, a social media account that you'd like us to check, to check out, let us know. I mean, the National Park Service Instagram is another that, that gave some infamy. I mean, I, I definitely drop it in the chat if you want us to check out yours, or if you have another one that you'd want us to check out.

[25:45](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=1545) An exercise I hope that you guys can take with you. Oh yeah, the NPS Instagram is amazing, Samantha. The, yeah, this is, this is sort of for you, for later. To brand the hardest brand there is, which is yourself. Hannah, you're the only one on camera, so I'm just gonna use you as a wonderful example. Let's brand Hannah. No, I mean, just imagining, looking at yourself is a good practice case. If you've ever looked for a job, which I'm sure most of us have, or been unemployed, you know that like self-branding as your resume is something that's super valuable, but also looking at yourself is like, who's your audience? What do you want to spread to your audience? What's your differentiator? What do you want to say? What is your voice? Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. And, you know, you think about brands too, like this is just a visual representation. Think about brands like itself. You know, Scott Galloway, I'm sure some of you guys have heard of this marketing strategist.

[26:59](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=1619) He's branded by his glasses, you know, like Ariana Grande, you already know by her ponytail. Like, they're just, what is your brand? Like, what is your differentiator? Maybe it's something about the way that you look, or what you wear, or what your, you know, by having this exercise of yourself, it's really interesting to kind of like then switch it over to like brand your agency. And so just an exercise for you to consider. Let's see, engaging to inform. All right, let's get into sort of the practice of this. And I know we're like, I don't know how time is going by so fast, but I'm going to just run through this. So tools of the trade. We are not rolling in money in government communications departments generally, right? Smartphone is the best of the best. Video, photo, audio, writing, publishing, communications, everything. And if you got the extras, great. Video editing software, photo editing software, publishing software. You can also do all that on a smartphone. So I imagine everybody here probably has a smartphone. That is an incredible tool of the trade.

[28:21](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=1701) What story do we tell? Everything and anything. Holidays, press conference, weather events, bills and laws, crisis communications, community events, news, announcements, you name it. Evergreen content. We'll talk about that a little bit later. So a case study, just sort of a random bill announcement. I'm just going to take you through sort of the thought process of how we put this together a few years ago. So what was going to happen? Well, we found out the governor was going to announce a new law with the law's namesake to broaden protections for transgender people statewide. The law was about to be signed in the governor's conference room that afternoon. What's going to happen? Not really much time to get resources in place, but we have a cell phone. We have a cell phone. Does not have to be fine art here. Right? This is sort of...

[29:26](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=1766) I'm getting in front of the governor's office. Go to the governor's sign. Unedited, you know, cell phone footage here. Cool. Cell phone footage here. Let's see. So you get the picture, right? So we have this cell phone footage of the bill. Signing. Have the background info. Now this is important, you know, I bet some of you guys are going to be writing your own press, you're writing the press releases, you're researching the policy, you might even be doing the policy or the legal. You know, you get that information and you work with the folks to get all the details about it. And then you write it. Who, what, where, when, how, who, when and how is included in the video, so it's not included in the writing. It's very basic, trying to be active versus passive voice, trying to just get everything that is happened there to create a clear, cohesive sort of story on social media.

[30:51](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=1851) Edit the video. So this is a very basic edit. It was done on Final Cut, but versions of this kind of edit can be done on your phone, in a variety of platforms. I treated a second class citizen. What was I as a single trans person? I didn't want to be a third class citizen. My name is Barbara Tasbar Sipperstein. I'm 76, been a Jersey girl all my life. It's the Babs Sipperstein law right there. Yeah. That is now the law of the land. It's Babs, I'm honored to present that to you. A big day because it's not just a big day in particular for transgender rights, whether it be birth certificate or death certificate, or the whole question of equality. This is the state in this nation that is leading the way. This is a place you've got to be.

[31:57](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=1917) This is a place you've got to emulate. This is a place that you can't ignore. So put it all together. What do you got? You have a social media post. I'm using Twitter here as an example, but this went on to Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, everywhere. This probably took end to end, a couple hours to put together. It helps to have a back. I mean, I'm lucky that I got to have a background in video and photo just to kind of understand this, whether you're working with a team and with partners or with yourself. We had a great team at the governor's office. You can do it. Like these kinds of storytelling, these kinds of things are possible. Also profile, and for Evergreen, you have profiles of your agencies, constituents, to humanizing the government, highlighting services, location, anything, and Evergreen content that may be solely, the sole purpose is to build your voice on a slow day.

[33:03](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=1983) You can have that in your back pocket. You can put it together as ideas. You know, you keep pitching, you keep going. Some examples of Evergreen content. This is just stuff that I did for the mayor's office. So I'll play parts of these videos really quickly, just to sort of get the idea of what it is. Our ices have the texture of, let's say, a cream ice or a gelato. We still do things the old fashioned way. Squeeze our own lemons. We still squeeze our own oranges. This is like highlighting business owners in a certain borough.

[34:03](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=2043) And it was posted, you know, with information about like business services. This one is highlighting NYPD. So in partnership with that. My mom was a seamstress. My dad was a cook. And they pretty much worked every day for me to have a better life. So I won't play this whole thing, but again, we will send this out after. Oh, here's one. I did a series of sort of humanizing the mayor's office. So it's profiles of members of the mayor's office. Your smile can change somebody else's life. I would say good morning to everybody I met.

[35:04](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=2104) It's just the type of person that I am. My name is Ashley. I'm 61 and I've been working for the city for 35 years. I deliver envelopes from one city agency to another. I work for the mayor's office as a messenger. Alfred is so awesome. I miss him a lot. Everybody was awesome. And you know, this type of stuff not only helps, and I'm sure you're thinking about people in your own agency, so you could profile. It not only helps kind of active engagement. I mean, also the haters come out for this stuff, but we all know the haters are going to come out either way.

[36:06](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=2166) But it also helps to build morale within your agency, within your organization. So for your photo and video tips, obviously edit your videos to your platform. Know that you got to start strong and keep your viewers there. I mean, listen, I've been in a lot of arguments. Some people really like to start their videos with like the logo or like the seal. I'm not one of those. I kind of like to just start right off and get folks' attentions. The graphics should be clean and branded with your brand that you're kind of with, and shorter is usually sweeter. But you know, sometimes you need to tell a long story to get the point across. Do it. Similar to with writing copy, you know, attention spans are hard to keep. Be bold, concise, and clear. I like, I actually just, when I was like putting this slideshow together, I thought of this term colloquial formal. Like sort of writing in speech pattern, but like, you know, in a more, as a refined speech pattern. Government is really interesting.

[37:22](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=2242) You have to kind of be authoritative, but at the same time be down to earth enough that folks, that you can have this language that folks understand. I like active language for this stuff. It's just stronger. Feel free to surprise yourself, surprise your audience. And also, as we talked about before, like a lot of you guys, some of you guys are speechwriters. Speaking in the voice of your agency is probably, might be a natural thing. Speaking in the voice of your commissioner, of your governor, of your person. Collaborate with your speechwriter if you have one. An example of collaborating with a speechwriter for one of his press conferences, I think, I recall the governor said something about no Corona parties. You know, it's just, it's kind of like taking his speech and putting it into social media. And you could see the engagement on this particular one. I mean, 13,000 retweets.

[38:28](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=2308) I mean, numbers don't matter as long as folks are like getting the message, but numbers help. For sure numbers help. The other one is just sort of an example of that voice of short and sweet, piggybacking on like a common meme that had been going around. Okay. We went through this. Oh gosh. Okay. Navigating bureaucracy. It's fine. Wait, do we have any questions so far? I feel like I'm just talking into a void, but I know that you're there. So that brings me comfort. Okay. Approvals process is fine, everybody. We all know. For those of you who don't know about the approvals process, specifically in government, a lot of time you need approvals to actually post something publicly. And that's for not just social media, but for press releases, for any communications that you're putting up, especially if it's something to do with policy or something delicate, you want legal approval, policy approval, probably leadership approval, and even depending on your commissioner, your principal, you might need to have their direct approval as well. This is kind of an example of how we did approvals in the governor's office for the governor's social director of comms, for sure, policy and legal, if it's relevant and necessary. And then the governor actually signed off personally on his social, generally. So, or the chief of staff, if not available.

[40:18](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=2418) It's a lot of approvals to go through. It's a lot of hoops for us to jump through, no matter where you are or what organization you're with. The state of New Jersey was a little more simple because it was very new. So, you know, it's a lot of approvals to go through. So, basically it was in the digital team, unless otherwise needed, especially if it was like policy or legally, like, or was in collaboration with another agency. So how do you really get this to work? And Samantha, that's a, so I'm, I love that I have a question here. Can you get blanket approvals for certain types of content so you can post or publish quicker? Yes, absolutely. And yes. All right. We're going to get to Pam's question after that. The blanket approval does work. You know, the personalities of the folks in this chain, right? Are they cool with being on an email? And I hate to say it. I mean, you know, it's comms folks. Is everybody cool with being on an email with four other people that everybody's going to have to email back, approve, approve, approve? Maybe. I mean, most of the time they are, but I mean, that's kind of your prerogative in the personality of your agency. And I have an example, I think, of an email, approval email a little bit later, but you'll understand whether or not that's appropriate for your organization after, when you're doing this relationship building. So you have the comm staff, leadership, stakeholders, constituents, vendors, basically everyone as comms people, you'll want to do that relationship building. And while you're doing that, you're defining your role.

[42:22](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=2542) Like what exactly do you do? Why are you relevant? How can you be helpful to me in my job? You know, you're sort of becoming that person and you make your game plan, whether it's email approvals, Slack or text approvals, everybody kind of has a way that they want to, would rather do it, the folks that you're dealing with. So I like to just have a very, very typical approval. This is, I just did this super quick to kind of get a feel of what an approval email would look like. I always did the bold for approval, and then just something very simple, review it. We'd like to get this out by end of day. Here's the post. Please let me know if you have any questions. That's it. And then usually wait for that approval. That's like good or no or bad, or are you crazy or fantastic?

[43:27](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=2607) So this is, this would be my typical format. And yeah, I like to keep it, I like to keep it really uniform. I'll always have that for approval or for review. And that is something, yeah, this is sort of like a basic template. And again, on that relationship building thing is, you know, should I take the risk? Like we're all here. I mean, you guys are here probably because you really want to get ahead of, you want to make your communications better. How can you make your department like really fly, get the information out that you want to get? And each case is an individual case, obviously, that needs to be analyzed. Your position, how far can you push it?

[44:28](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=2668) Is it worth kind of like doing something crazy to see if you get engagement? I mean, this is, it's a highly personal and specific question. Though I am happy to discuss with you because I love this stuff. And I can like talk about this stuff all day. It's just so much fun. So here's an example of like a risk that was kind of rewarded, right? This was, this has nothing to do with policy. This is purely voice. And brand, and you could call it sort of engagement building, but this is kind of like what got NJGov from like a sort of like fun, but, you know, fun kind of just regular state government account to a sort of viral sensation for a little while, which in the end, who cares about viral sensations? What matters is that you, are you getting the information that you need to get out?

[45:30](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=2730) Are you doing your job of engaging with the public? This was with my partner, Megan, we were going back and forth about this. We just saw it one day in the office, saw this Hoolette, New Jersey of a Twitter, discussed it for a minute and just was like, you know what, let's do it. It was, it was a risk. I was worried, actually, I was like, shoot, like, what if somebody is really offended by this? In the end, we just, the discussion was, who is the voice of New Jersey? We already had established that, right? We talked David and Goliath, we talked about the underdog. What I didn't mention, actually, was that like my brother in my head always embodies New Jersey. And it's something that he would have said, your mom, and so, you know, we just let this one fly. And it did the job. And it was, it was really good.

[46:35](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=2795) And for this example, no, the approvals process was just, at that point, as I mentioned, that approvals process was just me at the end. So I was kind of like thinking about it and doing it. So that particular one did not have any approvals, nor did any of sort of the voice brand building stuff. It was here that was the ticket to that. I think the reason why that was able to happen was this sort of relationship and trust building from the front end that allowed something like this to be able to happen. Pam, I'm gonna talk, talk, thank you. Yeah, that people, people like that one. And I, I, I like it as well.

[47:39](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=2859) A lot, just because it was just like, it's really like personality. And it's really like from my my New Jersey heart. Before we just sort of get into like the concluding, I want to take Pam's question. Pam, calendaring is really interesting. I do it, I do it for agencies and organizations. I've done, you know, put together calendars for for the governor's office and even for the mayor's office. And sort of, that's how I came up. We really did not do a calendar. We did, we just did rapid response constantly. I think coming from a journalism background, that was a more natural way to do things. So it was sort of like, you know, when things were, we had the governor's calendar, or you probably would have your commissioner or agency's calendar. And you could sort of plan accordingly. But, but everything was kind of like written and produced in the moment at the time. Right.

[48:44](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=2924) And that's one way to do it. Another way to do it is to create a calendar that you're sort of like putting in putting stuff in. This is really up to you to do. If you're using like, I could, I mean, software that I'm using right now is a great way to do it. I'm sure that a lot of you guys have some of the software out there that can plan your post that can post for you. In my experience, just with my, you know, all of the, all of my stuff was just done by hand. But I mean, I feel like, you know, you know what you can handle, you know what you want to do. A mix of planned and spontaneous is, in a lot of ways, the happy spot to be in. So noting the limited resource piece of state government, do you have any thoughts about differentiating your content based on the channel? And what audiences you have in different places? You know, TikTok has thrown a loop around a lot of things. I think that there was a lot that was translatable between, let's say, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook.

[49:58](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=2998) You know, even Snapchat, like there was just, you could, you could translate one product, whether that be a photo slideshow or a photo or a video between those three or four different mediums, maybe resizing or re-dimensioning a little bit. TikTok is its own beast. I don't know if any of you guys, I mean, it's, it's more rare for a government to be on TikTok. I saw Austin in this room. I think, I believe Austin's on TikTok that I've seen, but I'm not, I'm not 100% on that. I think, I think you do have to differentiate for TikTok, for sure. And yeah, and that is, that's a whole other conversation that we need to have because for TikTok, a lot of times it's helpful to have a main character or a main person in those videos or to have like a, or a certain kind of formula for those videos. So, yeah, I think that's for another conversation since we're running out of time, but this is kind of all the lessons learned.

[51:04](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=3064) Oh, I have my, my email address, brand new email address for a brand new thing. And I'm happy to, if you want to just talk about or have any questions or you want to talk about ideas or you want to kind of like, you have this idea for what you might want to do for your agency. I'm happy to just talk. I love this stuff. Super passionate about it. And I hope that you were able to get some of this information out there. I hope that you learned something from this workshop. And thank you so much for being here. I can't believe that I just talked for 50 minutes. Hannah, how did that happen? Okay. What now?

**Audience**

[51:48](https://youtu.be/DPwfGkJz6qo?t=3108) Thanks so much, Pearl. Let me just take one second to turn off, to stop recording.

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Original page: https://innovate-us.org/to-post-or-not-to-post-the-highs-and-lows-of-government-social-media · Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/), as stated on innovate-us.org