State & Local Government Policy, Business and Technology

Why Most Government Social Media Policies Suck

Government Technology: I have read hundreds of city and county government social media policies, and it amazes me how common two major problems are: The policy is either way too sparse and skimps on some of the bases it should cover, or it’s too convoluted and incomprehensible for the average employee or citizen.

As someone who has been in the government social media space since cities started creating profiles on social platforms a decade ago, I’ve seen up close what works and what can go terribly wrong.

Many government agencies want to get a policy in place quickly, but are not particularly confident that it is comprehensive enough. We ran a competition last year at the Government Social Media Conference to find the top government social media policies in the nation. Despite dozens of entries in our other competition categories related to social media content, can you guess how many agencies were confident enough to enter their social policy? Only three in the entire country. We actually had to eliminate that category due to the lack of entries.

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