Social media has allowed us to connect with constituents in new and exciting ways. From soliciting their opinions and feedback to providing them with critical emergency information, social media also allows us to participate in the news cycle and tell our own stories. As media outlets continue layoffs and suffer from shrinking newsrooms, telling stories is harder than ever. Social media sites give us the opportunity to break our own news and tell our constituents what matters. When rumors start or misinformation is out there, we have resources to step in and clarify, versus relying on the media to do that for us. We can also track everything we do, meaning we can adjust our message or know if we just completely missed the mark. Previously, we would disseminate public information through press releases and the website but had little way of knowing how effective our message was. Social media allows us to monitor and adjust our strategy, if necessary, to better communication our message.
We now have 32,400 Twitter followers and nearly 15,000 Facebook fans and continue to grow every day. Our annual goal was 10 percent growth, which we beat nearly 16 times over with 167 percent growth total. In January 2013, we were averaging 180 mentions per month. We now average 1,500 each month. We were averaging 10 retweets on best tweets, now our record is more than 200.
We receive thousands of messages from followers each month, ranging from solving problems to sharing feedback or giving us a high five for a new project or initiative. Our following has grown as a result of key engagement opportunities over the past year.
Mayor Goodman presents a State of the City and the city wanted to invite everyone, whether they attended the speech at City Hall or not, to join the conversation on social media using the #lvsoc14 hashtag. The city was the first local jurisdiction in southern Nevada to attempt any sort of live sharing on social media during a major event. During the speech itself, from 5:00 to 6:15 p.m., 900 tweets were sent out using the #lvsoc14 hashtag. #lvsoc14 was organically trending on Twitter, with no advertising dollars, and even drove more conversation than the annual CES convention, which is the city's largest convention each year with 160,000 attendees.
On June 8, 2014, two LVMPD officers were killed while eating lunch at a local restaurant. The city served as an official source of information during the active shooter situation and then as a place for mourning and remembrance during the funerals. One remembrance post generated 11,211 likes, comments and shares on Facebook and 200 retweets and favorites on Twitter. We also shared key safety messages like how to handle an active shooter situation and "see something, say something" messages. Our impressions were 369,000 on Facebook with 17,729 likes/comments/shares.
We've also made it easier than ever for residents to share their opinions on hot button issues. Crowd Hall is an interactive online town hall where residents can leave questions or comments. We've hosted six so far and have garnered more than 32,000 page views on our forums. An example of how a city department has utilized this is during our firefighter recruitment in HR. Given the vast interest, our HR team was concerned about how they would handle all of the interest, questions and phone calls; their page has gotten 22,000 hits so far and has saved HR countless phone calls.
This fall, for the first time, the city incorporated a social media strategy into the communications outreach plan on a controversial city council item about a possible stadium downtown. In addition to six in-person town hall meetings, we opened the door for new ways to comment online. Outreach garnered: 500 comments during Twitter Chats, 500 views on our Google Hangout, 2,400 page views on our online Crowd Hall forum and more than 1,900 votes via a real time polling platform called Wedgies.
We knew that residents enjoyed videos and also being in the know about what is going in our city on several programs that air on KCLV Channel 2 so we set out to find an easier way for them to keep up on city news, without having to watch multiple programs. Our #CityNewsin60Seconds YouTube series was born. Since launching this past July, there have been seven episodes that have garnered more than 2,000 views.
Thanks to the success of the city's social media program, Mayor Goodman and the other City Council members have been inspired to either begin or ramp up social media efforts. Mayor Goodman joined Twitter in April and got 1,000 followers in a mere three days. All seven City Council members have either Facebook or Twitter accounts with a combined audience of 9,300.
The city has utilized live video chats to encourage engagement from citizens through Google Hangouts. Our #CityHallhangout series has garnered more than 1,500 views during 10+ Hangouts on topics like getting hired by the city, updates from the Clark County School District on back to school and the Southern Nevada Health District on Ebola.
During our annual Teen Town Hall event, we wanted to keep the 450 high schoolers engaged and involved in the conversation. We allowed them to live-tweet and ask questions during the event using #VegasTeensTalk. It generated 1,700 tweets and was organically trending locally in Las Vegas and even nationally, due to the vast amount of conversation.
