Are you looking for ways to increase community engagement in government? If so, you’re in the right place!
Community engagement is essential for building trust, promoting transparency, and ensuring that government policies and programs meet the community’s needs.
However, growing your community engagement can be a challenge. Even more so since the pandemic has moved a great deal of engagement online. That’s why we’ve put together this guide on how to increase community engagement in 2023!
We’ll explore effective ways governments can make their policies and programs more accessible, promote events through social media, and use data to focus outreach efforts and increase engagement. But first:
What is the Role of Community Engagement in Government?
Community engagement helps foster a collaborative relationship between government and the community it serves. It’s an essential part of democracy as it allows the government to better understand the needs, concerns, and priorities of its citizens.
The goal of community engagement is to create opportunities for citizens to provide input and feedback on government policies and programs. By actively engaging with the community, the government can adapt its policies to the community’s needs and interests. This helps increase trust, community participation, and support for government initiatives.
Community engagement can take many forms, such as town hall meetings, public hearings, community surveys, and more recently, live streams and social media.
How to Increase Community Engagement
There are several ways to increase community engagement in government. You can think of engagement as a spectrum, and the more you do to support your community, the deeper level of engagement you can expect.
Here are a few strategies you can implement to increase community engagement:
- Make it Accessible
The first step to growing your community engagement is making sure you’re inclusive to the entire community. Are your government meetings, events, and information accessible to all citizens? Here are 4 Tips To Make Online Government Meetings Accessible!
If you’re only hosting in-person events and town hall meetings, you’re excluding those who live in remote areas, don’t have the time or means to attend, or have restrictive disabilities. This is why it’s crucial for government to use a variety of accessible formats when engaging with its community.
For instance, when hosting an in-person meeting, you can also live stream it for remote and later viewing. Some video platforms even have built-in accessibility features to increase inclusivity in communities. If you’re new to live streaming, we’ve made this guide to help you get started: How To Live Stream A Government Meeting
- Act on Public Feedback
You can improve community engagement by implementing changes based on feedback and suggestions received from the community. When citizens see that their feedback is taken seriously and acted upon, it fosters a sense of trust and partnership between the government and its community. This can help increase engagement in future government initiatives.
A simple way to include your community more in the decision-making process is to make it easier for citizens to share their feedback, whether that’s in a town hall meeting or by commenting on a meeting live stream.
- Don’t Stop Engaging
Many organizations make the mistake of engaging with their communities when discussing an issue and stopping once they’ve received enough feedback.
Community engagement should be an ongoing process, not a one-time event. Governments should make an effort to continue engaging with the community, even after the initial outreach. This will also help to identify emerging issues and concerns that can be addressed proactively before they become larger problems.
Consider thinking about ways to reach more people when engaging with the community. Can you stream your meetings online or upload recordings for citizens to view on their own time? Are you using platforms that are widely used in your communities?
- Promote Events through Social Media
Social media is a powerful tool that governments can use to increase their reach and engagement. You can announce and share government meetings on platforms your audience is already familiar with for better engagement.
There are 143.35 million Instagram and 246 million YouTube users in the United States alone! If you’re live streaming your government meetings and events, you can share them to popular platforms to reach a much wider audience.
However, when streaming government meetings to YouTube, here are a few things to consider: 3 Risks Of Streaming Government Meetings On YouTube
- Use Data to Focus your Outreach Efforts
Governments can use data and analytics to focus their outreach efforts and engage with more citizens. You can use data to track engagement efforts and evaluate their effectiveness to identify areas for improvement. Even small but targeted changes can significantly improve engagement and ensure that you’re meeting the community’s needs.
If you’re live streaming your meetings, you can also use analytics to make improvements. Here are just a few things to look at:
- Track Viewer Engagement:
You can track viewer engagement by analyzing metrics such as views, watch time, and drop-off rates during live meetings. By analyzing these metrics, you can get a sense of what topics are resonating with the community and what aren’t as engaging.
- Identify Key Issues:
By analyzing your viewer engagement, you can identify key issues that are getting the most engagement. You can then use this information to prioritize these issues and develop targeted strategies to engage the community around these topics.
- Solicit Feedback:
You can use meeting live stream data to solicit feedback from viewers. For instance, encourage viewers to leave comments or provide feedback through social media or other channels.
- Use Data to Improve Meetings:
Finally, you can use meeting live stream data to improve the structure of your meetings. If you notice that viewership drops off during a particular part of the meeting, you can adjust the format or content to engage the community better.
If you’re curious to learn more, check out our article on 4 Ways Video Streaming Is Enabling Smarter Governance!
Ravnur’s All-In-One Video Solution for Local Government
Ravnur’s video software is built around government needs and can help increase community engagement by simplifying live streaming for viewers and producers.
Easily manage all your video from one place and securely store government meetings on your Azure cloud. Our software features advanced accessibility tools, such as auto-generated captions, searchable transcripts, and on-demand translation to over 50+ languages. Ravnur’s video player is also ADA-compliant to make all your meetings accessible to citizens with disabilities.
You can stream your meetings to multiple platforms and manage them all from one place. Ravnur allows you to easily save and share video clips for social media to grow your engagement and awareness. By improving accessibility, streaming to the platforms your citizens already use and love, and promoting your events through social media, you’ll see a big difference in community engagement!
Read how Mecklenburg County is using Ravnur to grow its reach and promote community engagement: Mecklenburg Is Streaming More While Doing Less
Are you looking to start live streaming your meetings or move your video to the cloud? Reach out to our team today!
