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6.2 SR 09-16-2024City of Elk - River To City Council Meeting Date September 16, 2024 Item Description Award Recognition: Communications Team Action Requested Recognize staff for their award winning projects. Request for Action Item Number 6.2 Prepared By Tina Allard, City Clerk Reviewed by Cal Portner Tina Allard Background/Discussion Congratulations to the communications team for winning two awards from the Minnesota Association of Government Communicators. ■ Northern Lights Silver Award: Jake Pace for Officer Spotlight, Officers Roscoe and Bendel ■ Northern Lights Bronze Award: Starr Sorheim for Elk River Website Redesign, elkrivermn.gov Every year, the Minnesota Association of Government Communicators (MAGC), a statewide non-profit comprised of communications staff from all government organizations within the state, holds the Northern Lights Awards to honor special achievements in a range of categories. These awards recognize outstanding work in Minnesota's government, educational, and non-profit communications. We are proud of our team and all the staff involved in supporting these projects! Financial Impact N/A Mission/Policy/Goal Together we win Attachments 1. Officer Spotlight Award Submission 2. Website Redesign Award Submission The Elk River Vision A avelcoming community with revolutionary and spirited resourcefulness, exceptional service, and community p p W E R E U A T engagement that encourages and inspires prosperit[�`WURfJ381 City of Elk River Officer Spotlight Northern Lights Award Submission to MAGC Tell about the problem or opportunity that prompted this project. Many new officers have been hired over the past couple of years and we saw an opportunity to introduce the new officers to the community in a fun way. This expanded to include some of our more senior officers as well. Who was your intended audience? Elk River residents as well as intividuals that follow our ERPD social media accounts. What were your measurable achievements? We measured our success by the engagement on social media/ reach, reactions, and comments. These videos had some of the highest engagement on our social media platforms. Bailey Roscoe Video - Facebook People Reached: 164,079 Engagement: 7,700+ YouTube - 16,148 views Pat Bendel Video - Facebook People Reached: 14,189 Engagement: 765 YouTube - 578 views What costs and resources were used? Videos were done in house and only required staff time. Page 32 of 381 channeleantent Video analyties Overview Reach Engagement Audience This video has gotten 578 views since it was published Yourvtdeo Offi— Spptfight - Pat Bendel views Watch 1—(n.—) Subscnbets o Datada 5780 10.70 — 4fiB mare than usual 8 ] mere fhan usual ® Anal ics © Editor • This lid- e Typical pedamance t. q D—c- 4e0 0 Subtitles 200 0 Q Copyright a 34 60 102 136 t]0 204days In, SEE MORE ADVANCED MOVE Sep 2B, 2023 - Apr 18, 2024 Since published Rea@ima • Updating INe 1 Views Last 48 hours asa Now Tap traffic sources Ylews External lO0% SEEMORE E Officer Spotlight l Pat Bendel } (i Post Published on Sep 28, 2023 Overview Feed preview Reach b Impressions 6 Interactions O Link clicks ® Elk River Police Department 14,189 14,905 416 -- 9 Published by Stansorheim® September2J, 63 Q Higher thantypical Higher than typical Higher Ehan typical In our neat Officer Spotlight, we want you to meet Officer Pat Bendel! Thank you for being a part of the Reach 8,00 1.000 4,000 2,ao0 0 15rr 41 91 161 1d6h 3d 7d III Typical — Facebook post reach Plays and minutes viewed Plays Average minutes viewed -- 0:10 Interactions 0 ReactionsO Com—BO 364 25 Higherthan typical Higherthan typical See insights and ads 00 364 25 Q 27 r> Minutes viewed 6 Only people who follow your Page for more 1,496 than 24 hours can comment. Moat relevant , eCommentasElkRiverla... 0 0 0 O Q shams 5-0 �y 27 0 Lydia Hill I like these videos! Higher than typical Typir.1 28w Like Reply Hide E' Viewpost on Facehoak Page 33 of 381 + jaOfficer Spotlight I Bailey Roscoe () Post Published on: Nav 21, 2023 Overview Reach 0 Imp—sions 0 Interactions a 164,132 164,132 2,108 HigherlhantypI,M Higher than ypiral Higherthan typical Reach 200 000 150,000 10C 000 50 000 0 15m Feed preview Link dicks e ` 2 Your video 1s muted in certain countries where Meta does not have music rights i Only you ran see this Elk River Police Department Published by Starr 5orheim 0 November 21, 2023 Check out our latest Officer Spolight! We want you to meet Officer Bailey Roscoe. Thank you for being part of 4h 9h 16h 1d6h 3d id 1'd Typ'cal — Facebook post reach Plays and minutes viewed Physd Average minutes viewed0 -- 0:09 I nteractions Reactionse Comments Shares 1,954 8 93 Higherthantypicd Higherthantypiwl Higherthantypical Minutes viewed 6 See insights and ads 17,773 Oo,.9K BC] 89P ip Only peopte who follow your Page for more Saves6 than 24 hours can comment. 53 Most relevant _ Higher Bran typrrsl Coin—rd as Elk River P... [] View Post on Faoebook Channel an.Iytk,, Video analytics �a C Overview Reach Engagemene Audience This video has gotten 16,148 views since it was published our vtdeo Hleer Sp-ght-Bailey Roscoe Views WalM timelhou6) 3ui,—h is Deeana 16.1 K 0 309.40 +81 1E.1Kmwe lnan usuar apsarppremanus- Anelytics Editor This video a Typical pertarmance 18hH Comment 12AK Subtitles fi0K 0 Copyright 8 25 58 ]5 18g 125 159 days Clips SEEMORE ADVANCED MOUE N. 21, M23 - Apr 18, 2024 Since published Realtime • Updating live 4s viewarasi bs nnnrs _ Toptranlcsa —, Browse features Suggested videos Uirectarunknown channel pages SEE MORE Page 34 of 381 Elk River City of Elk River Website Redesign Northern Lights Award Submission for Minnesota Association of Government Communicators Submitted by Starr Sorheim, Senior Communications Coordinator Tell about the problem or opportunity that prompted this project. List the goals you were trying to achieve. The City of Elk River's website hadn't been updated for over 7 years. The website experienced an ever -changing technological world, an audience moving to online services post -pandemic, and lack of updated branding. Additionally, the city had introduced an event center since the latest redesign which needed its' own branded site. The city has also pivoted to newer and improved online services for recreation programs, online licensing, and agenda management that needed to be better integrated. The previous site had over 1,200 pages which was dwindled down to around 200 pages, 1,202 unlinked documents that were deleted on the back end, and over 350 broken links fixed. With the redesign, we wanted a modern feel that better communicated the experience of being in our city. We wanted our residents, business partners, etc. to be able to navigate the site clearly and find what they were looking for. We also wanted a tool that was helpful for our staff to use when working with the public. Tell us who you were attempting to reach. Our primary city website, parks and recreation site, and community event center site are used by an average of 15,000 people each month. For reference, our city population is just over 26,000. While many of those users are in the local area, we have contractors, business developers, and visitors who use our site regularly. Our city has a destination park and regional park that attracts non-residents and our community event center hosts numerous events and tournaments for nearby cities. With this in mind, we needed our website to accommodate both residents and non-residents. Tell us how you measured the project's success. Before the redesign, utilizing Google Analytics was not the most successful method of measurement due to the abundance of abandoned pages, unlinked documents, and broken links. When a user would search for something, their results would come up empty — leaving them to search for the same thing multiple times. Now after the redesign, Google Analytics is useful and tracked monthly. Our communications team utilized Google to identify the top six searched and clicked pages to generate the main six buttons on each homepage. We also learned from Google that our search page is within the top three pages accessed monthly. When redesigning, we made the decision to lock the top navigation bar so users can easily search no matter the page they are on. In our social media analytics and Google Analytics, we could see how many users were visiting our site because of a social post. We began tracking those hits utilizing Bitty, but also referring users to specific calendar events or NewsFlash posts to better track the event or program we were promoting. With this tactic in mind, we designed our new homepage to visually show upcoming events and information in the header scrolling images and our new NewsFlash module. We also included a social media accordion that invites users to follow us on our platforms to stay up to date. This has greatly reduced the need for searching for event information as users can find what they need right when the site loads. Tell us how much money you spent and how many total hours the project took to complete. Who participated? What portion of the work was done by internal staff vs. external resources? The City of Elk River utilizes CivicPlus for their site. The redesign for our city and parks and recreation websites was free with our contract. The cost to upgrade our community event center's site to ensure appropriate branding was $1,650.65. Page 35 of 381 Elk River The senior communications coordinator conducted the website edits and clean-up resulting in over 300 hours of staff time. Half of the communications team met with a committee from various departments to finalize design choices. The senior communications coordinator also met with each department to ensure appropriate edits were made and that those departments had accurate and reliable information on their webpages. Our in-house graphic designer worked closely with our committee to come up with redesign ideas that were then implemented by CivicPlus. City staff also spent time cleaning up the back end and organizing the global navigation, removing and adding pages as needed, updating links, updating images and graphic buttons, and more. Submitted Images Elk Rivers. © A O nwdm, o.nmeneea ,.ew M�wEA,. —D.I OElk user News Ese D Meetings etlefine auaurt uPdrtae - anmww.niuw mPa w Eawre, wsA, nua,5 as3aon neaxwn swcu� OutGowalorl[EYent nwiF rvmxamysiniasummcram open m,nc xmommaae nuignmrimry cammi,apn Elk River,,r�­ J= agendas and Minutes M Page 36 of 381 Elk River M24 Volunteer of the Year tlaminatiane ooy kl.ii"-1.11ia Page 37 of 381