9. HRSR 01-07-2013 Crty IElk REQUEST FOR ACTION
River
TO ITEM NUMBER
Housing&Redevelopment Authority 9.
AGENDA SECTION MEETING DATE PREPARED BY
January 7, 2013 Clay Wilfahrt,Assistant Director of
Economic Development
ITEM DESCRIPTION REVIEWED By
Social Media Update Annie Deckert,Director of Economic
Development
REVIEWED BY
Cal Portner, City Administrator
ACTION REQUESTED
None
BACKGROUND/DISCUSSION
According to a recent Nielsen report,Americans spent 121 billion minutes on social media in July 2012, a
year-over-year growth of 37%. With the proliferation of smart phones and tablets, a social media
presence is increasingly important. Economic Development staff continues to aggressively utilize social
media as a business retention and recruitment tool, as well as a platform to market the community brand,
finance programs,housing initiatives,resources, the Northstar Commuter Rail, events and more.
A number of businesses follow our page to view videos promoting free business resources such as the
Small Business Development Center,branding initiatives, foreclosure prevention, etc. Businesses also
gain knowledge of available properties,incentives, new businesses, and seminars. Residents get
information about events such as the downtown tree lighting and Halloween, free Northstar rides, and
construction projects.
The three major social media outlets used by the Economic Development Division are Facebook,
Twitter, and www.poweredbynature.blog.com. All three of these strategies are utilized at no cost to the
city other than staff time. The three media are connected so that an update on one automatically
populates another media with content. For instance,when the blog is updated,it automatically sends the
information to Twitter where it is posted as a tweet with a link back to the blog. This system maximizes
efficiency and outreach.
Further, staff regularly views stats for each media to establish benchmarks and set goals, and identify
trends in topics. Doing this helps us better understand what information businesses and residents seek.
For instance, some of our most popular posts are those recognizing the accomplishments of others such
as Pompeii Pizza recently being featured in Midwest Living magazine.
Using this information,we can design content for all of our marketing accordingly. For example,if we
know that residents and businesses like reading about the success of others,we can include case studies
and quotes from local business owners in marketing material for our microloan program.
P U L R E ® / I
N:\Departmentss\Community Development\Economic Development\HRA to move\Agenda\Year2013\1-7-2013\HRA 'NATURE
Social Media Update.docx
Facebook
Facebook has built in Insights which make quantifying its impacts very easy. Currently the Elk River
Economic Development Facebook page has 544 likes which has grown by 17%in the past year. 62% of
the viewers are between the ages of 25 and 44,with 63% female and 35% (with the remaining 2%likes by
other businesses or organizations).
Staff posts information on the page several times per week,and each post is viewed by roughly 100 to
150 people. On an average week, 200 to 400 people view information posted on the page, and higher
traffic weeks can draw up to 1,750 viewers. Viewers of the information have the opportunity to engage
by liking posts, commenting, or clicking links.
A typical post engages about 8 users,with some of the top posts engaging over 50. The city's webpage
received 139 referrals from Facebook over the past three months amounting to about 4% of all referred
traffic for the city's site.
Twitter
Twitter is a little more difficult to measure than Facebook since it does not have built in measurement
tools. Staff uses basic information available on its Twitter page as well as the third party web application
HootSuite to measure the effectiveness of Twitter.
293 followers see the three to five Twitter posts each week. On average, about one of those tweets is
retweeted, or reposted,by someone else on their Twitter feed. Each link in a tweet was clicked on 1.3
times where the user was directed to more information about the tweet.
The city's website received 14 referrals from Twitter over the past three months, and the blog received
43.
Poweredbynature.blog.com
Created just over a year ago,we just posted our 100th blog post on November 30. We use Google
Analytics to track traffic on the blog. Google Analytics is a free website measurement tool that allows us
to analyze a number of different metrics including number of visitors, time spent on the page,location,
system capabilities, keywords used, etc. Using Google Analytics,we see that our blog receives visits from
about 35 unique individuals per month. Each visitor views about 1.5 pages, and stays an average of just
under two minutes indicating that they are reading the content they are visiting.
The blog demonstrates how social media works well together. 27% of the 167 visitors from October 1 to
December 28 were directed to the blog by either Twitter or Facebook.
Interestingly, the top two locations for visitors were Willmar,MN with 99 visits over the past three
months, and Minneapolis,MN with 30. Elk River viewers visited the page 9 times.
Looking ahead
We are constantly improving upon our social media presence. We recently held a meeting of six different
departments to share information on social media best practices. We plan to continue to do what works,
and incorporate new ideas to keep our content fresh,informative and engaging, and if you haven't
already,visit us on Facebook,Twitter and poweredbynature.blog.com to be engaged in the conversation!
N:\Departments\Community Development\Economic Development\IIRA to move\Agenda\Year2013\1-7-2013\HRA Social Media Update.docx
ATTACHMENTS
• Facebook Insights
• Google Analytics for www.poweredbynature.blog.com
• HootSuite Twitter click report
• PowerPoint Presentation
Action Motion by Second by Vote
Follow Up
N:\Departments\Community Development\Economic Development\I IRA to move\Agenda\Year2013\1-7-2013\1 IRA Social Media Update.docx
www.poweredbynature.blog.com Analytics
Audience Overview Oct 1, 2012.Dec 31, 2012
Advartnced Segments Email Export. Add to Dashboard Shortcut
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Demographics Language Visits I Visits
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