Hootsuite-case-study-Barcelona-City-Council

CASE STUDY:BARCELONA CITY COUNCIL

Case Study:

Barcelona City Council

The 3 Steps a Spanish City Council Took to Engage CitizensBarcelona City Council needed to develop an organisation-wide social media strategy. Before putting a Centre of Excellence in place, they had hundreds of inactive and off-brand accounts.

Barcelona City CouncilAs one of the two biggest cities in Spain, with 1.8M residents, Barcelona is governed by a city council made up of 41 city councillors who are elected for a four-year term by universal suffrage. The Barcelona City Council is responsible for the city’s municipal infrastructure and putting taxpayer’s dollars to efficient use.

300% increase in follower growth YOY

293% growth in engagement YOY

1400% growth of social reach within a year

CASE STUDY:BARCELONA CITY COUNCIL

What They Did The capital of the Catalunya region prides itself in innovation. As such, the City Council driving municipal decisions and infrastructure must lead the charge for progress, innovation, open data, transparency, and participation.

While 8000 council workers strived towards becoming a social city, there was no clear social media strategy in place to support the goal. As a result, digital communications became unorganised, inefficient, and without focus. Barcelona City Council had over 600 social media accounts—many of which were inactive, off-brand, or rogue.

Barcelona City Council was challenged to become a social organisation and tell their story better to constituents. This meant they had to build guidelines, focus their social media plan, train employees, and unify their online presence. In June 2013, Thais Ruiz De Alda, the council’s Digital Marketing Manager, onboarded several key departments on to Hootsuite Enterprise and established a plan. “It wasn’t a matter of empowering employees to be social,” says Ruiz De Alda. “The issue was whether they were thinking strategically about it or not.”

How They Did ItHere are the 3 steps that Barcelona City Council took to organise social:

1. Organisation-wide social media auditIn June 2013, Ruiz De Alda began to audit the council’s social organisation. To understand Barcelona City Council’s current social media landscape, she looked at who was on social, which accounts were inactive, who the “social media superstars” were, and what existing engagement processes were in place. By conducting an audit of existing processes and profiles, Ruiz De Alda downsized 600 social profiles to 350 to ensure the social channels were consistently and accurately serving the broader objectives of the city. These 350 social media profiles represent small online communities: from municipal neighbourhoods, to public libraries and other public social services. Barcelona City Council designed a strategy based on a long tail model applied to a city and citizens needs.

Once essential profiles were established, the need for a more purposeful approach to social media became apparent and Ruiz De Alda received executive buy-in to begin implementing a focused social media strategy.

“Hootsuite not only allowed us to meet our goals, it secured our content management across the organisation.”Thais Ruiz De Alda, Digital Marketing Manager

CASE STUDY:BARCELONA CITY COUNCIL

2. Strategizing socialTo meet these key objectives, Ruiz De Alda created two different brand voices: Barcelona.cat and Bcn_ajuntament. Barcelona.cat is a community-focused voice that is represented across many social channels and aims to increase awareness with locals by sharing stories of Barcelona’s history, future, and people. #Barcelonainspira is the main hashtag for engaging on these channels. Bcn_ajuntament discusses new laws, City Hall discussions, and issues related to governmental actions. Once these brand voices were established, Ruiz De Alda strategized content that would resonate best with each channel’s goals.

“Hootsuite not only allowed us to meet our goals, it secured our content management across the organisation,” says Ruiz De Alda.

For Barcelona City Council, key Hootsuite features for collaborating within best practices included: Teams, permissions, analytics and assignments. With these, they can collaborate internally on issues that come up and establish appropriate responses for the future.

3. Establishing a Centre of Excellence: Global social strategy for 350 social media profilesEven with half of the social profiles, Ruiz De Alda couldn’t oversee all digital communications sent on behalf of the city. Setting up a Social Media Council, or Centre of Excellence, allowed her to share the responsibility with social media experts and executives. This Social Media Council collaborated together to develop guidelines and standards for individual departments and specific campaigns.

“We are trying to standardize social, and through our Social Media Council, we educate people who don’t necessarily understand the value,” Ruiz De Alda says. Since onboarding a social strategy in late 2013, Ruiz De Alda has worked with many of the city council’s employees and community managers to educate them on how to create strategic social profiles and engage in the established best practices.

The Results“Making people feel close to the social media strategy helps turn them into evangelists,” she says. Showing key performance indicators (KPIs), such as increased click thru-rates to web properties, through Hootsuite reporting helps people see the value in being strategic on social. Today, Ruiz De Alda has expanded her social media program to include over 50 seats in Hootsuite—meeting the growing demand of departments that want to be strategic on social.

With the tools and education in place to be more strategic and collaborative on social media, Barcelona City Council is set up to properly represent the smart and innovative city they pride themselves to be. Across their official social channels, they are now effectively listening to and engaging with their social audience of more than 5 million reach monthly.

“Making people feel close to the social media strategy helps turn them into evangelists.”Thais Ruiz De Alda, Digital Marketing Manager