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College Students Help Georgia City With Social Media

The city's collaboration with the Valdosta State University communication department is geared toward increasing the city's online visibility and fostering more community involvement.

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(TNS) — The city's collaboration with the Valdosta State University Communication Department is geared toward increasing the city's online visibility and fostering more community involvement.

The partnership started during previous Mayor John Gayle's tenure, recognizing that municipalities all over the world are using social media to communicate with increasingly diverse and large audiences, the city's public information office has maintained a working relationship with VSU's social media theory class since 2015.

According to Marcus McConico, the city's media coordinator, then public information officer Sementha Mathews teamed up with Dr. David Nelson to task his social media students with developing a realistic plan on increasing local government engagement on the city's social media platforms.

"As you know, we're a team of three. Before that, we were a team of two and a half. So there's only so much that three people can do. So when we can't have somebody else who can look at our analytics and look at our past posts, and particularly our younger viewers. If you look at our analytics on our Facebook page, it is more of a middle-aged professional person, whereas we may be missing out often on the young professional," he said.

"And the college students have definitely helped us better engage with that young professional that is in the 22 to 35 range. Back then, the city had just started using social media as a platform to educate and inform citizens of what we were doing and how the city government operated.

"And over the years, we've changed it. We've changed what our focus of last year and this past year we focused on, specifically on campaigns."

Each team's project is judged by the city's Public Information Office. Nelson said that the assignment constitutes a large part of the overall class grade and provides a real-life experience for the university students.

"The project provides students with different opportunities. One is the chance to apply what is learned in the classroom to a team project, the ability to propose something that impacts and improves the community they live in, and experiences that can help students beyond graduation through a competitive experience the class offers.

"It is an honor and a pleasure to see students being recognized by the city for their hard work and efforts," he said.

From there on, it has become a rite of passage for Nelson's social media students to work with city government, even branching off and helping other city departments such as the Valdosta Fire Department and the Valdosta Police Department.

In past interviews, Valdosta Police Chief Leslie Manahan said collaborative efforts such as these tremendously help with reporting and reaching residents in a timely manner.

"Social media is a huge tool that we use to notify the public about emergencies, crime tips and overall news of our department. In this day in age, most everyone has a smartphone making their access to information quicker and constant. Our goal is to continue to utilize that technology to engage with residents as best as possible," she said.

Fire Chief Brian Boutwell expressed similar sentiments, adding he believes social media is one of the more effective ways for public safety agencies to interact with the public.

" The Valdosta Fire Department always strives to offer the highest level of service to our citizens. Through this partnership, we will provide students with real-world experience and in return learn ways to reach and engage with residents on our social media pages," Boutwell said. "Just in the last year, we have ramped up prevention and education campaigns that have proven to be effective. We are always looking for new ways to find the right channels, correct engagement strategies and studying analytics from our platforms to build programs that are successful and make a difference."

The group's latest project was to promote the city's Adopt-A-Street initiative, a program that aids in beautifying the city by cleaning up litter and debris on local roadways and allows organizations, businesses or individuals to pick a street they want to take care of for at least a one-year contract.

McConico said each team devises a marketing plan, uses pictures and flyers to create collateral and outlines a posting schedule.

"I think the biggest thing is not only has (it) made our social media presence better, but also it's allowed students around the issue to engage their city, the city that they're living in for four or five, six years sometimes to better engage with that in our city. So they're not just students here. They also take ownership in being a part of this city. and if we could get more students and more regular citizens to take that ownership and be a part of the city," he said.

Sharah' Denton, city public information officer, said while the city uses elements from all of the student's ideas, the winning group stood out for its dedication to keeping the city's key messaging.

"I think, from my perspective, they seemed to be meeting the most with the public information team. They were very consistent about getting the messaging correct. And, they were very innovative in their ideas and thoughts for how to capitalize all publicity for the Adopt-A-Street program," she said.

Denton added she hopes the success of the program could venture to other colleges in the city or even K-12.

© 2023 The Valdosta Daily Times (Valdosta, Ga.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.