Categories

Blog

Tripepi Smith Offers Insights with Santa Cruz Social Media Audit

Tripepi Smith Offers Insights with Santa Cruz Social Media Audit

  |   News   |   No comment

Tripepi Smith Offers Insights with Santa Cruz Social Media AuditTripepi Smith delivered a social media audit report for the City of Santa Cruz after winning the contract in Summer 2019.

To kick off the assessment, Tripepi Smith conferred with City staff to better understand the social media sites run by the City. Santa Cruz also wished to benchmark their social media efforts against four comparable cities (in terms of demographics and geography).

The firm collaborated with Santa Cruz staff to gain access to and collect metrics for over 40 different social media sites. Simultaneously, Tripepi Smith reached out to the Communications Managers of identified “comparison cities” to ask them to participate in a brief comparison study. Ultimately, the cities of Berkeley, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Santa Monica agreed. Each City received a copy of the report upon completion of the project.

Team Tripepi Smith evaluated the City’s 43 social media sites by collecting metrics and weighing the sites’ practices against those Tripepi Smith has observed through its work with over 50 other cities. During their analysis, the team cross-examined the City’s use of the building blocks of an engaging online presence (imagery, hashtags, links) with its user behavior, such as response rates.

“Tripepi Smith’s social media assessment included a constructive and informative presentation that easily explained how our social media sites were currently performing, and they provided several suggestions for us to consider moving forward,” said Ralph Dimarucut, principal management analyst in the Santa Cruz City Manager’s Office. “With their recommendations, we will be able to improve our social media strategy to effectively connect with our residents.”

In January 2020, Tripepi Smith Director Jon Barilone and Business Analyst Karen Villaseñor presented their findings to City staff via a virtual presentation. Tripepi Smith provided City staff with a detailed 44-tab spreadsheet that outlined both the quantitative and qualitative analysis of each of the City’s social media sites, as well as a brief report on the four “comparison cities.” The detailed spreadsheet outlined items for improvement, suggestions for merging social media sites, and next steps for adding more social media best practices to the City’s repertoire.

“The City of Santa Cruz is dedicated to keeping their community informed and is already achieving a significant level of engagement on some of their social media sites,” said Jon. “City staff were eager to hear what we had to say about improving their social media efforts, especially whether we felt any sites should be merged together. This speaks to staff’s openness to improve their digital engagement efforts. We look forward to seeing how they implement our suggestions and bolster the City’s execution on social media.”

Tripepi Smith has performed social media-specific audits for several public agencies, including City of Santa Clarita and the City of Vista. Additionally, Tripepi Smith offers full Communications Assessments, which provide extensive insights into all communication methods, including digital platforms, print publications, media relations and more. Like social media audits, communication assessments also offer actionable steps for improving external communications and internal processes, but from a broader perspective.

The firm has delivered complete Communications Assessments for numerous cities, including the City of La Puente, City of Duarte, City of Culver City, City of Paramount, City of Cupertino, City of Morgan Hill, City of Norwalk, City of Livermore, City of Santa Ana and Town of Windsor.

About Tripepi Smith

Tripepi Smith is an Orange County-based marketing, technology and public affairs firm that serves for-profit, nonprofit and public agencies. Its unique mix of marketing and technology prowess provides a competitive advantage to agencies seeking to leverage the internet to achieve their communication goals. The firm provides full content creation services, including: ghost writing, collateral development, photography, video production, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, email marketing campaigns and website design and execution. Tripepi Smith clients include: City of American Canyon, City of Culver City, City of Cupertino, City of Daly City, City of Duarte, City of El Cerrito, City of Indian Wells, City of La Cañada Flintridge, City of Lakeport, City of Lake Forest, City of Paramount,City of Rolling Hills Estates, City of Santa Ana, City of Santa Cruz, City of Tracy, City of Yuba City, Cal Choice, California Joint Powers Insurance Authority, Bellflower-Somerset Mutual Water Company, Inland Empire Utilities Agency, Rowland Water District, Valley Water Company, California Contract Cities Association, California City Management Foundation, Institute for Local Government, League of California Cities, Renne Public Law Group, Bob Hall & Associates and Climatec Energy Services.