How local government can better leverage its audience – the public – according to Asim Ali is VP of Industry Partnerships at Granicus.
In today’s digital landscape, local authorities have a unique opportunity to engage with residents in more effective ways. It’s essential that council leaders understand the value of making better use of their subscriber base and the data they hold to enhance future engagement.
By leveraging subscriber insights and data effectively, councils and the wider local government can boost citizen engagement, improve service delivery and strengthen their relationship with the communities they serve.
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya / Unsplash
Building a quality database and captive audience
Local government organisations have unique access to a broad and diverse community, yet many fail to fully capitalise on the sheer scale of users they can engage with. When we look at critical events in recent years, from the global pandemic to natural disasters caused by flooding, for many local authorities, having access to a captive and engaged audience is more important than ever in reaching the right people at the right time. Especially with big changes coming down the line for local government restructure, the need for direct access to citizens, to share important updates around policy and impact on services is vital.
Databases are built over years and accumulate valuable contacts, and many organisations don’t know when and why they might need to reach their audience, so ensuring it is up-to-date and accurate holds a new level of value.
Whether it’s signing up through government websites, social media or offline interactions around specific services, the potential to reach these pre-engaged users provides endless opportunity. But with a large audience available at the fingertips of local authorities, how can they better engage with this community to ensure key initiatives land with much more impact and engagement?
The power of traditional channels and elevating them
While the traditional newsletter has proven useful for many a marketing department, its place in modern-day communication is dwindling. With citizens demanding more targeted, relevant and pertinent information, the time has come to think more strategically about communications. Not only do you need a large, prequalified audience, you need to know how to segment them and identify common interests. Do they have children in primary and secondary education or work in care as a social worker? Understanding what they care about and allowing them to self-select topics will provide valuable future insight.
In addition, leveraging intel in a proactive sense allows local authorities to pre-manage demand ahead of time, which is incredibly effective. Whether there’s a burst water main in the road of a particular area or damaged cabling impacting broadband services, proactive communication can pre-empt inbound contact from the public and reduce demand, leading to cost savings for councils and increasing citizen trust and satisfaction.
Leveraging email as a key platform, shouldn’t be overlooked. People of all generations generally trust email and it provides a foundation for persistent communication – it has provenance that many other channels lack. It’s easily searchable and saveable, and enables local authorities to drip feed complex subject matter (such as policy) over a series of time or correspondence.
Not only that, but you can also collect rich data from email subscribers to inform your communications strategy going forward. These are the areas that are lacking across local government and in public agencies in terms of transparency, and explaining the strategy and launch of council initiatives. Strategic communications can reduce demand and cost. By sharing drip-fed hyper-personalised content to individuals or communities with complex needs, allows local authorities to nudge and change behaviour and drive action in an audience. This shows how strategic communications provide a myriad of benefits above and beyond the newsletters of old.
Bespoke comms with citizens: utilising data and AI
Citizens today expect personalised experiences and local government is no exception. By leveraging data and AI, local government can tailor communication and services to individual needs, improving satisfaction and efficiency. Despite councils having a huge amount of data at their disposal, they’re typically data-rich but often insight-poor.
Looking at AI and data more broadly, citizens could be targeted around key local issues through a more personalised approach. By combining multiple sources and third-party databases, AI and machine learning can be applied to use natural language to interrogate data and generate insight. Applying natural language enables the development of questions to automate insight rather than sitting behind a report generator, saving the council valuable time. This could be utilised to optimise a communications rollout of a particular campaign to improve engagement or increase the number of subscribers in a specific demographic group.
At Granicus we have experienced high demand from local authorities for increasing engagement with newly launched services. By integrating AI and data-driven insights into communication strategies, public sector organisations can create a more citizen-centric experience, ultimately improving trust and engagement.
Local government has a prime opportunity to revolutionise citizen engagement through better leveraging their subscriber audience and generating data-driven insights. By enriching databases and going beyond the traditional newsletter and embracing AI powered personalisation, local authorities can improve communication with residents, increase efficiency and form stronger relationships in the community.
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