Social Media Tips for Public Works Professionals

0:00:00.9 Bailey Dickman: Hello, and welcome back to Public Works Radio. I’m your host, Bailey Dickman. And while we are still on a little bit of a mid-season vacation here at PWR, we wanted to keep the home fires warm, as it were, with some little bonus episodes over the summer. Every week, our production team has the, sort of, unfortunate task of trying to whittle down all of these really, really great conversations into a clean 30 minutes or less, and we end up with a lot of stuff on the cutting room floor. Side note, we are always looking for feedback here at Public Works Radio. If you have any thoughts or concerns about our format, please send us a message over at podcast@apwa.org.

0:00:39.5 Bailey Dickman: Today, we’re going to go back to that cutting room floor and find some of the best social media tips for public works professionals, pulling from some conversations that you’ve already heard in the first half of season one, and some of which you haven’t heard that got cut from previous episodes due to time constraints.

0:00:53.7 Petra Beglarian: I’m Petra Beglarian. I am the Public Works Manager in the City of Glendale Public Works Department.

0:01:00.2 Ani Oganesyan: And I’m Ani Oganesyan, the Community Outreach Associate for the City of Glendale Public Works Department.

0:01:05.2 Bailey Dickman: When we first caught up with Petra and Ani, our friends in Glendale, they were absolutely giving us pure gold of all the fun ways they celebrate National Public Works Week. What you might not have known from that episode is that Petra and Ani and I ended up speaking for like an hour about social media, and public works interacting on social media. We had so much great stuff that had to be cut from that episode, we just couldn’t let it lie.

0:01:29.0 Ani Oganesyan: A lot of our guys aren’t used to being behind the camera, right? Again, a lot of the work they do is in the background. For us, what’s really helped is building those connections out in the field.

0:01:38.1 Bailey Dickman: We’ll revisit a lot from Petra and Ani, and we’re also gonna check in with our pal, Shane Mark.

0:01:42.6 Shane Mark: My name is Shane Mark. I’m the Assistant Director of Public Works in the town of Needham.

0:01:47.9 Bailey Dickman: Shane met with us back in April to discuss winter preparation efforts, and touched on some really important social media and communication strategies that I think are really worth hearing.

0:01:56.9 Shane Mark: Our goal is really to be able to provide the data, provide the communication, in such a way that is digestible and understandable to the public.

0:02:06.5 Bailey Dickman: Finally, in this mid-season bonus episode, we revisit the delightful Staci Schafer, and we’re talking goat grazing photo ops.

0:02:13.9 Staci Schafer: My name is Staci Schafer. My job title is Parks and Grounds Administrator for the city of Greenville, South Carolina.

0:02:21.4 Bailey Dickman: Generating strong public relations and goodwill in your community shouldn’t be overlooked, and Staci reminds us that social media is a really strong platform for doing just that. And while your department might not have lovable goats to film, there’s definitely stuff that you’re doing that might feel really routine to you, that is really interesting to the public.

0:02:40.0 Staci Schafer: So many people come out, and they actually had little goat watch parties. They would just come out with their camp chairs, parked and sit and watch the goats. And it was amazing. City councils love a photo op, and that’s always going to be a win-win too.

0:02:56.8 Bailey Dickman: I hope you’ve been enjoying Public Works Radio, the official voice of the American Public Works Association, as much as I’ve enjoyed making it. As a little programming reminder, we’re going to be back in July with another bonus episode. And then after that, we’re kicking off in August with a really, really great end to our season one. Stay tuned.

0:03:14.0 Bailey Dickman: We’re gonna start off with Petra and Ani, who I simply asked: why do they do social media? Why is social media so important in public works? I think you’re really gonna like their answer.

0:03:24.3 Petra Beglarian: Depending on what city you are, and what your public works department does… We really do it all. But in most cases, we’re often invisible when things are working well. Really gives us that chance to tell our story, and it reminds our employees that their work has a purpose. And it reminds the community that there’s a dedicated team behind the scenes, that are working every single day to make sure that they have their quality of life.

0:03:47.4 Bailey Dickman: And your guys’ videos stand out to me because they’re fun. It’s just really… I don’t know if it’s hard to get public works folks to buy into being silly on social media, but it is kind of difficult because public workers are, by and large, humble people who just like to get their job done. How do you get the team to buy into that? How do you get them to ease into being less serious on social media for a little bit?

0:04:13.7 Ani Oganesyan: Yeah. It’s… Do you want to go ahead?

0:04:15.8 Petra Beglarian: I think it did take us some time. Our people… A little hesitant when we first started our social media experience. But for us, what we like to do, we like to show them some examples, right? We get our inspiration from online, things that are trendy, things that are fun. And then we try to flip them so that they match what our department does.

0:04:34.8 Ani Oganesyan: They relate…

0:04:36.1 Petra Beglarian: Yeah, what our department does. And so what we do is we like to show them what our examples are. It’s not that bad. You have to say one word. Like, it’s not that bad. Let’s just have fun here. And at the end of the day, we are trying to promote you and your work. This has nothing to do with us. This is all about you. And so I think, gradually, that story that we’re telling, and the idea that we’re trying to get across, we’ve been able to win them over with that.

0:05:05.3 Ani Oganesyan: I like to say that it’s a lot of asking, really nicely, with a hint of persuasion. Because, a lot of our guys aren’t used to being behind the camera, right? Again, a lot of the work they do is in the background. For us, what’s really helped is building those connections out in the field. Petra and I, we are in a unique position with our roles, where we are able to go out into the field and step away from the office, and go and see what job sites they’re working on, what projects, how the projects are going, film them doing a pothole repair, film them doing the hydro-jetting in our city sewer mains. And when we go out there, we’re not just standing in a corner taking a video or taking a photo, we’re having conversations with them. We’re asking about their processes, we’re checking in. We’re learning. And through that, we build these great connections. And it’s really come full circle, where now… Some people actually will tell us, “Hey, when’s the next video? When are we…” They actually want to…

0:06:01.4 Petra Beglarian: Volunteer to get into that clip. “I was in that video. Why aren’t I in it?”

0:06:05.4 Ani Oganesyan: Yeah. And from the beginning… I would say, it was definitely harder to get it started in the beginning. But once that ball started rolling, and people kind of saw the momentum and the positive attention it was getting from the community, from our department leaders, they kind of wanted to be a part of that movement as well. Once they kind of saw, “Hey, you know what, this is actually doing something. People are actually seeing the work that we’re doing. We’re getting more credit and recognition for it.” Of course, and they’re doing the work that they should be getting recognition for. So I’d say it was harder in the beginning, but now we have more… We have some people who like to be the star of the show, as we call it. But we try to do a good job of also including everyone. If someone’s been on camera before, we’ll try to get a new face that hasn’t. And some people are shy. We don’t push, if they say no, and it’s a hard no. But some people, you can tell they just need a little bit of a nudge. They’re shy. They’ve never done this before. We give them a script sometimes if needed. So I would say our relationship has really helped us get those yeses. But it’s taken years.

0:07:00.9 Petra Beglarian: I will say, for us, our director and our upper managers really give us the support that we need. Not just for us to film, but for our staff as well to be in the clips. So them and their upper managers provide a lot of support for this. And our employees don’t do this work for attention. They don’t do any of it to be in the spotlight. So when they do see themselves highlighted on our page, there’s this quiet sense of pride that they have. And we build on that and we expand on that, and the buy-in just grows.

0:07:32.7 Ani Oganesyan: I would add to that, management. Because, of course, sometimes we might need to do a few takes there on a job site so things might get pushed back for a few minutes. But I’d say leadership definitely understands that there’s a bigger picture to this. And although they might be taking a few minutes out to do this video, at the end of the day, this is going to be published and the public will see the work that they’re doing. And those few minutes, they’re okay with giving us.

0:07:54.2 Petra Beglarian: The community’s needs shape our priorities, and then their support fuels our progress. So once they get an idea of, really, what we do and why our work is so important, we can get their buy-in to do some of the projects, some of the revamps that we have, some of the rebuilds. And I think that’s really important.

0:08:10.9 Bailey Dickman: Do you have, like, a white whale of a video that you want to get your guys to make at some point? Do you have a, “you would love to be able to do this, but you just can’t figure out a way to work it?”

0:08:22.4 Ani Oganesyan: We do have a funny one that we’ve been looking for a volunteer for it. I don’t know if you’ve seen it where it’s a roadwork sign that says, ‘Shoulder work ahead,’ and the guy is, like… He’s dancing.

0:08:31.8 Bailey Dickman: They’re doing the shoulder work?

0:08:33.2 Ani Oganesyan: Yeah!

0:08:34.3 Petra Beglarian: You know what, we get a lot of inspiration from other transportation, I think more state or federal level, that they have on Instagram. And we always try to get our guys to do some of these. The little dancing ones are a little hard for them to get onto. That’s more, I think, TikTok versus Instagram. But they’re up for quite a bit. The dancing, is one that we’re still trying to get them over that hump.

0:08:58.0 Ani Oganesyan: Yeah. I would say, honestly, we do take our inspiration from other places as well, but not even just local or state transportation. It could be a private company, and if it’s something that we can find a way to relate it to our department and our city. Of course, we always try to have some kind of educational aspect of it, but sometimes they are just fun, right? I know we were trying to do, maybe like, a fun video, and then more of an informative one, kind of balance it out so our viewers aren’t… I don’t want to say bored… But are engaged still with our content and it’s not just, “Hey, how do you do this? Where do you call for this?” It’s…

0:09:29.7 Petra Beglarian: I think that’s the hard part about social media is that it is supposed to be fun, but we are trying to build in an educational and informative platform at the same time. So it’s all about balance. I think for us, we do like to put in some of the fun ones, and I think Public Works Week is a perfect time to do that. But we do try to frame things in a way where we’re still trying to teach them things. Like, I know one of our videos for… I think not last Public Works Week, but the one prior to that… 2024.

0:10:00.3 Bailey Dickman: Which video?

0:10:01.9 Petra Beglarian: We were trying to do the trendy video, where it’s like, “The beautiful things that I’ve done,” and we had a sign.

0:10:09.6 Bailey Dickman: Ah!

0:10:11.6 Petra Beglarian: And so what we were trying to do was, we really want to do this, how do we get this done but also show residents something that we do, like a program? And we decided to do our Traffic Management Center. And I was standing two blocks down… Or a really long block down the road, and we got our traffic engineers to look through our Traffic Management Center, and focus the camera, and zoom in all the way to us on the other side. So it’s fun, but at the same time, we’re showing them some of the things that we do.

0:10:42.5 Ani Oganesyan: The capabilities…

0:10:43.4 Petra Beglarian: The capabilities that we have.

0:10:44.6 Ani Oganesyan: In the Traffic Management Center.

0:10:46.0 Petra Beglarian: Yeah.

0:10:46.8 Ani Oganesyan: That one actually went viral. I think that was our most viewed video. It had about 115,000 views, I want to say. So people were… We were announcing it’s Public Works Week, almost, I believe.

0:10:55.0 Petra Beglarian: Almost.

0:10:56.0 Ani Oganesyan: But people like, “Oh, wow! Look at the capability of our cameras.” The fact that they could zoom in so much, I think people were really drawn to that. So again, that was a fun, but like, “Here’s something you didn’t know.” It was a good balance.

0:11:08.1 Petra Beglarian: I’m trying to think of what else we want our staff to do, but haven’t been able to get a hold of. We tried to do the Gen Z…

0:11:16.9 Ani Oganesyan: The Gen Z script.

0:11:18.6 Petra Beglarian: Yeah. That one was a little harder to get. We’re also not Gen Z, so trying to figure out what they were saying was hard for us. I don’t think there’s a lot of Gen Z people in our department. We did one citywide with our sustainability… Not us, but one of our colleagues. And I thought it was so funny. So we tried to do it here for…

0:11:41.3 Ani Oganesyan: That’s actually a great example of those videos. They’re very informative, and they’re talking about whether it’s a public library or a program, but they’re making it entertaining.

0:11:50.0 Bailey Dickman: Speaking the language.

0:11:51.0 Ani Oganesyan: Yeah. Exactly! You’re speaking the language of some of the people that are on social media. So it’s a good way to meet them in the middle. That’s always our balance of fun and informative. That’s how we… That’s how… Because, I’d say Petra and I are the cheerleaders of Public Works. We’re very excited about this. But I understand that it might not be the most exciting thing for everyone else, so we have to make it exciting for them. That should be our tagline: Making Public Works fun.

0:12:15.1 Bailey Dickman: You guys should get T-shirts.

0:12:18.1 Petra Beglarian: Yeah. We always also get so excited when APWA shares our stories or reels. We’re like, “Oh my God, we made it!”

0:12:25.2 Ani Oganesyan: Actually, yes. Definitely. Last year, I went up to our director and I was like, “Look, Daniel, they reshared our content. We’re famous.” Kind of like the parent company, right? So we get excited when…

0:12:37.4 Petra Beglarian: When we’re highlighted.

0:12:38.0 Ani Oganesyan: When you Like what we’re posting.

0:12:39.5 Bailey Dickman: It’s the most fun part of my week.

0:12:41.7 Ani Oganesyan: The last thing I’ll say is when we were starting off this page, I remember that we looked at the data and we looked at all of our neighboring cities in Southern California, to see how many cities actually have a dedicated public works page, instead of just kind of running it along with their city main pages. And I think that’s made a really big difference in distinguishing ourselves, and being able to push out so much more content because it’s just our department instead of a citywide thing. So I think that that’s helped us a lot with recognition.

0:13:05.0 Petra Beglarian: But yeah, there aren’t a lot of dedicated public works social media pages. And I think it’s… We do so much. It’s very difficult to properly portray what public works does, when you’re not dedicating a full page to it.

0:13:21.7 Ani Oganesyan: Even when you are, sometimes… Even when you are. We have seven divisions, right? And we plan out our content and we want to make sure that everyone kind of gets a little bit of love, and we’re not only promoting one versus the other. So it’s, again, another balancing act for us.

0:13:32.4 Petra Beglarian: So note to self for anyone who wants to succeed: create your own page. It’s a lot of work.

0:13:38.3 Ani Oganesyan: It increases your visibility.

0:13:39.6 Petra Beglarian: But it is so, so important.

0:13:42.4 Ani Oganesyan: Definitely worth it.

0:13:44.5 Bailey Dickman: When it comes to general communications and social media, some of the best food for thought came to us from Shane in our Winter Preparations episode.

0:13:51.9 Bailey Dickman: How do you create your communication plan, alongside your operational plan? Do you do preseason communications to help the public understand winter operations ahead of time? Or is the public memory too short? You have to start it during October, otherwise they’ll forget it already? What’s your plan?

0:14:12.9 Shane Mark: Yeah. All of above. We really focus more in the fall, just for the fact that what we found is no one’s thinking about winter when it’s warm out, especially as April, May roll around and it’s beautiful weather. You’re not thinking about snow. So we don’t do a lot of communication about snow during spring, summer. We’ll start to target that in the fall. And so we have a variety of ways we do it. We use, of course, Facebook, Instagram. We’d like to kind of branch more into the Instagram, TikTok side of the house, and do some videos. We’re not great at the video components, but we’ll post on social media. And then we do have a community engagement manager here in the town. So typically, what Amy will do, is she will take our posts and she’ll retweet them or repost them on the town’s webpage as well. So we’ll do a couple different ways. We’ll do it through our internal channels for DPW, but we’ll also do it through our community engagement.

0:15:16.6 Bailey Dickman: You guys have a lot of fronts that you communicate on.

0:15:21.4 Shane Mark: We try.

0:15:23.0 Bailey Dickman: Which is great to see it.

0:15:23.6 Shane Mark: Yeah. We try. I think we could get better. I’d like to get more aggressive and better because I think the more you can communicate, and the more easily digestible this information is. It’s kind of like before we started the podcast today, we were talking about the term, ‘inside baseball,’ and whether or not people know that term. And so it holds true in winter maintenance as well. There’s a lot of terminology that we use in winter maintenance, or just in public works in general, that those of us in the profession, we know all the terminology because we use it every day. But when we go out and we communicate to the public, we’re using this terminology that we know, but the public may not know. So our goal is, really, to be able to provide the data, provide the communication, in such a way that is digestible and understandable to the public. And I think what’s great about this is seeing some of the generational workforce, now multi-generational workforce.

0:16:26.2 Shane Mark: We’ve got a lot of employees that are now coming into our public works department that are Gen Z and Millennial. So they really know these communication channels because they’ve grown up on TikTok, they’ve grown up through Instagram. And so they’re great. So what we’re really trying to do is find those employees that love that, and allow them to help us get better at how we’re communicating. Because they know how they digest the information. I don’t know as a Gen X-er; but they do. And so using our employees to our advantage, and allowing them to take it. For example, we have an admin staff, her name is Ava, and she’s got a degree in marketing and communications. And so she’s starting to take over some of our communications and marketing for our department. And she’s phenomenal at it. So it’s really cool to see that.

0:17:20.5 Bailey Dickman: Yeah. A matter of meeting people where they’re at. And they’re at a lot of different places now.

0:17:25.1 Shane Mark: Exactly!

0:17:26.1 Bailey Dickman: Finally, let’s check in with Staci, whose goat-focused interview was easily one of my favorites from the season. It also served as a reminder that there are things your department does, that can naturally create great public relations opportunities. And of course, good public relations and community engagement, it all goes hand in hand, and it’s all good for you. So don’t be shy.

0:17:45.2 Bailey Dickman: What’s been a low-key benefit, something that you didn’t expect to be… Like, an unexpected win, when you started working with goats?

0:17:56.9 Staci Schafer: Honestly, it’s probably the reaction of the public. So many people come out, and they actually had little goat watch parties. They would just come out with their camp chairs, park and sit and watch the goats, and it was amazing. Everybody who knows me on social media knows that I love goats. I really want goats, I can’t have goats. But I think baby goats in pajamas, are probably the cutest thing on the whole planet. So for me, this is just a fantastic win. I do know for a fact, because we did have one escapee that the staff had to chase down… I know for a fact they love Fig Newtons. So that’s my little trick when I’m trying to get a goat to come over for the camera crew. The return of investment is there, and it’s a win-win for your social media crew, your marketing team, your communications team. They love it. City councils love a photo op, and that’s always gonna be a win-win too. And yeah, I think honestly, it’s really hard to come out with any reason not to do it. I think it’s definitely worth everybody just giving it a try. And I also recommend carrying Fig Newtons in your work truck. And we have lassos too, by the way, and little collars. In case they get out.

0:19:18.8 Bailey Dickman: Thank you for listening to this bonus edition of Public Works Radio, the official voice of the American Public Works Association. We’ll be back later this summer with more, so make sure to subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Rate us, review us, and forward us along to a friend. And don’t be shy dropping us a note over at podcast@apwa.org, so we can hear your feedback directly. We’ll catch you next time.