Conclusion
Social media has proven to be a powerful and cost-effective communication tool for many organizations across the globe. It is important to point out, however, that though all outlets presented in this guidebook are free to join, they do have significant time considerations. For many time is money. Social media is a dynamic field that requires constant research and monitoring and cannot be relegated solely to normal business hours. As such, your agency must be ready to respond at any time.
Even today, many traditional outlets are tapping into social media tools to broadcast consumer news. Front page stories, radio interviews, and television programming is being built around consumer-generated content. Why? These tools give full and direct access to their target audiences. What’s more, these tools allow them to not only push information outward, but interact with their users throughout the process.
In this sense, anyone with a computer and content can become an instant journalist. Certainly with interaction and consumer-generated information, comes risk. Many organizations are fearful of losing control over their brand and message. However, consumers and end-users can affect and discuss your brand via these social media outlets regardless of whether you have an account or not. Ignorance is not bliss.
Specifically for transit or commuter organizations, the constant motion of activity engenders the unique need to keep users up-to-date. These new media platforms allow for more personalized real-time communication that can yield results such as increased ridership, awareness, and community support from stakeholders. One of the key benefits of social media as a communication tool is its flexibility. These tools have the ability to take on many shapes and sizes depending on your organizational goals and needs. Social media can be used as a PR tool not only for promoting events and updates, but also for crisis control and prevention. It gives your agency the opportunity to frame a story and release all of the applicable facts to the public before traditional media has an opportunity to broadcast the news.
Social media can also be used as a marketing tool helping to engage, educate, and inform users about the services their local public transit agencies offer. Engaging users online can foster a positive relationship between your organization and potential consumers. The personalized nature of social media can result in strengthened community partnerships and outreach. If your efforts are successful, this positive experience will encourage those same users to utilize public transit.
Social media can also be used as a customer relations tool, where the efforts of transit call centers can also be devoted to monitoring and responding to customers via social media. Often times, users are more apt to complain about an issue using a social media tool than they would via phone call or letter. By monitoring keywords, your organization will be able to respond to complaints you were previously unaware of, and preempt backlash that could grow from a user’s negative experience.
All organizations are encouraged to listen as a first step. Observe the activity on these social media outlets to see what people are saying. This will enable you to begin understanding the types of conversations happening amongst your target audience, and the need for a response. One of the most frequent question encountered during this project was, “What if someone says something negative about your organization? This is such a public and visible platform.” The response:
- People have the ability to talk negatively about your organization right now, whether you’re listening or not and regardless of whether you even have an account set up.
- Given that it’s a visible platform, your organization has the opportunity to respond in a very public way – and potentially alter the opinion of not just the individual who made the negative comment, but all those watching. Prior to development of these online tools, organizations would receive hand-written letters, phone calls, or in-person complaints. Many still do. These channels of communication are not vanishing. However, online conversations need to be considered and evaluated in the same manner.
Connecting with consumers means your organization must evaluate and understand where they are communicating. By turning a blind eye to these online tools, your organization risks overlooking key segments of the population. In fact, larger transit agencies who are leading the way in social media have found that by incorporating online tools with more traditional media, they have been successful in growing overall system ridership. A great example of this is the Redwood Transit System, which posted a more than 40 percent increase in ridership after uploading route information to Google Transit. As Jim Allison from BART recently said in a Youtube™ video sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration, “San Francisco I think is now where maybe the rest of the country will be in just a few years…While we may be ahead of the curve, I don’t think we are riding a flash in the pan here.”
