Social Marketing in the Public Sector.

Have you ever wondered how the public sector utilizes digital tools to strategize their marketing communication efforts? To be honest, I never knew they have that expertise in using innovative tech tools to provide us an optimum service until I had the pleasure of participating in an online seminar by Caroline Berryman, Program Manager, Departmental Communications for York region.

Difference in the public vs private sector working environment.

Learning how the public sector working environment is different to the private sector environment is one of my major takeaways from this seminar. As per Caroline’s explanation, many approvals should be taken before launching any project in the public sector regardless of seniority. I find it time consuming, but doesn't it helps to make sure that we take the most efficient decisions to minimize the possible weaknesses of the project? When we think about it on a practical level, such a long approval process is needed with all the regulatory concerns and the scale of the project, which are launching for larger geographical areas like York region.

Since the public sector is absolutely devoted to serving its citizens, social media marketing can play a large role in it. The best examples for social marketing campaigns carried out by the public sector would be campaigns to combat bullying, anti-smoking and educating the public on recycling and other sustainability facts.

In the public sector, the ultimate goal of a marketing plan is not to sell products but to influence positive behavior and provide benefits to the communities. Social marketing is a great tool for the government to discipline the public to follow the civil law and ethical principles. This is the most appealing thing about the public sector that grabbed my attention. Because being a public-sector employee feels like a community service that makes us feel good about our work, rather than chasing behind monthly performance bonuses for increasing sales revenue in a private organization.

Challenges and Opportunities for Social Marketers.

Social marketing is challenging because it requires authenticity. Disingenuously speaking or simply being fake will guarantee that no one is going to listen to our message. In fact, it could even backfire and cause people to reject the idea that we are trying to communicate. Hence, it is imperative that we are genuine in our social marketing efforts. Keeping that in mind, the social marketing strategists should find innovative ways to convey the message via the right time through the medium.

Caroline explained how the York region conducted successful campaigns by having actual community members participate in campaigns rather than using role models. As per her experience, it is a great opportunity for marketers to change attitudes and behaviors by speaking through the people to the rest of the community. That way, the audience sees it as genuine and authentic.

?Social Marketing Case Study "Pollinating Bee and Butterfly Meadow" Takeaways.

Luckily, I had amazing team members in my group with sound knowledge in sustainability concepts. Our task was generating ideas for communicating the contest to name the meadow. We discussed how to attract schoolchildren by using attractive wordings on out of home bills and door hangers. Bills with wording “Flutter this way” with arrows towards the meadow and door hangers embedded with plantable seeds, wordings similar to “Bee ware” to tease the children to visit the meadow and participate for the good cause were some of the brilliant ideas we discussed during the case study session.

Moreover,?we talked about offering some omni experience to have a Snapchat geo filter and a selfie booth at the meadow to take selfies and upload it on Instagram with the hashtag #projectpollinator to create a buzz on social media. We also came up with the idea to give away plantable pencils and the contest winner will get to plant a tree in the meadow and be named after him or her.

Question and Answer Session Takeaways.

During the seminar, we had the opportunity to ask questions and I got enlightened in different aspects of social marketing strategies. I never knew how important is Content marketing as part of that entire IMC structure in the public sector and how they utilize website content to connect with the audience until Caroline explained. They are testing plain language on the website all the time to make sure every person can understand the content published on the website. Since the York region is a multicultural region, it is essential to create content that is understandable for the people of all languages and ages. Going through a very rigorous language lens helps to provide this understandable content to convey a clear message.

Furthermore, she answered the question "what is the best way to translate more ambiguous campaigns and social?movements in an authentic manner? " and explained that, having real life spokespeople, like residents, featuring in the campaign videos creates more authenticity and people tend to believe when a person they can relate or a member of their community speaks through the campaign. When the message is coming from a reliable source, people believe it and respond.?We do not need to create the movement; the people do it when we are able to speak through the people to the rest of the community.?That is something very interesting that I have never thought about and I am thankful to Caroline Berryman for sharing such great ideas with us.

Moreover, she explained why social media is really good for sentiment analysis while she was answering the question “How do you do sentiment analysis in the public sector and which tools are you using?". She shared her experience in measuring sentiment analysis by analyzing the interactions and engagement of the audience. According to their responses, we can decide what is working and what is not. Moreover, Caroline explained that they use a tool called "Prism" for sentiment analysis, which helps to break down the community into clusters, and then we can identify the people that fit into that neighbourhood.

Networking and Job Search.

Caroline generously explained how networking is beneficial for career growth with her own experience . According to her, attending webinars, taking courses to get certified in relevant areas of expertise, joining blog communities and groups that have similar interests are some of the great ways to upgrade our skills and get qualified for career opportunities.

Being innovative makes us more effective and helps us to get more opportunities. And also, being flexible to unknown external factors and uncertainties will definitely help us to stand out as job applicants during our job search. Overall, what I Understood was, being in touch with industry experts and the communities that share similar career interest, bring us positive results in job search.

The seminar was a very pleasant, entertaining and educational experience for me. Knowing how the public sector manages marketing communication, I will be able to see the future campaigns of the public sector in a different perspective. If you find this is inspiring, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.