In our first year of blogging, we averaged just over 800 views per month. In 2016, we averaged about 6,000 views per month, more than a sevenfold increase. Since we launched the blog in August 2010, we’ve posted almost 750 blogs, resulting in about 325,000 views and tens of thousands of shares through social media. Continue reading Our most popular blogs and podcasts of 2016
College students can obviously benefit from knowing what’s happening in town even if we won’t live here for long. Through the city’s various social media pages, we can learn about changes that affect us, opportunities that benefit us, and information that keeps us safe. Continue reading How social media can help students value local government
When blogging became all the rage several years ago, it was common to see corporations and even state and federal government agencies jumping aboard.
But you didn’t see many local governments taking part – and you still don’t.
The reason the City of College Station decided to start blogging in 2010 was simple. It was an effective way to better tell our story. More than five years later, the city blog continues to be a powerful cornerstone of our public outreach strategy.
In our first six months of blogging, we averaged just over 800 views per month. In 2015, we averaged almost 6,000 views per month, more than a sevenfold increase. Since we began blogging in August 2010, we’ve posted 620 blogs, resulting in about 230,000 views and tens of thousands of shares through social media.
Since The City of College Station joined the social media revolution in early 2009, sites such as Facebook and Twitter have become a mainstay in our efforts to effectively communicate information about our programs, services, events and activities.
In the early days, we had only a few hundred Facebook and Twitter followers. But despite the early naysayers, our social media presence has continued to grow. In 2015, the number of fans following our Facebook page increased by 55 percent to 11,400 and the number of our Twitter followers rose by 33 percent to 12,800.
We posted almost 800 tweets in 2015, resulting in nearly 2,800 retweets. The top tweet noted that the attendance at the Texas A&M-Mississippi State game was almost identical to our October population estimate. It had 621 retweets and 481 likes.
In spite of my one semester as a computer science major at Texas A&M — that’s when I learned the term “scholastic probation” — I’m far from being a numbers guy. But I do appreciate milestone numbers, like admiring my truck’s odometer when it hits 20,000, 21,112, 22,222, 23,456 … you get the idea.
Recently, I’ve noticed some milestone numbers as they relate to a few of the ways we communicate information about the City of College Station. Examples:
Facebook likes: 4,800+
Twitter followers: 4,000+
YouTube views: 345,500+
City blog posts: 200
Total blog views: 50,000+
We employ means of communication other than social media tools, but because data is so readily available through these, I wanted to spend a little time focusing on one in particular: the College Station blog.
You must be logged in to post a comment.