In anticipation of #CityHallSelfie day on August 15, 2017, we learn from city of Kansas City, MO Social Media & Web Manager Mark Van Baale about KCMO’s successes on #CityHallSelfie day 2016:
Last year for the first annual #CityHallSelfie Day, the City of Kansas City, Missouri really went all out to participate in the fun. We had a special Twitter promotion that we used to spread awareness about the event as we also encouraged the public to share their own selfies by using #KCMOSelfie in tweets.
In addition, we had a cool Facebook or Twitter cover photo that one of our awesome graphic designers created for people to use on their accounts.
On the actual day of the event, City Communications staff headed out to various City facilities to capture selfies with City employees (see our crazy crew in the featured pic above).
It was a great opportunity to also put the spotlight on employees so that people could run more about the people who work for the City in various roles.
At City Hall, we set up a table outside at the front with props where employees could come to get a picture with props as their “selfie.”
Even the Mayor got into the act with his own selfie!
You can see the various pictures with City employees that we shared in 2016 at this link.
We even created a Facebook album showing all of the cool photos that were taken.
Finally, a funny thing happened on that day. Whenever you get City Communications staff together to go out to do something fun for the City, you never know what could happen.
We used an electric van to travel around to the different City facilities on City Hall Selfie Day. Here is a tip if you have an electric vehicle. Make sure you charge it at some point before something like this happens…
Yes, we had to do this when the vehicle ran out of “juice” 2 blocks from City Hall.
When the day was over, we created a video showing an overview of the day and this video won an award for Best Wrap Up Video:
We plan an even better day out meeting employees and allowing them to express themselves in creative ways. We have two new Cookingham-Nall Management fellows (Alyssa Dinberg and Dillon Wood) who also plan to work with the City Communication staff this year for the adventure-filled day.
Tips that we give to other cities who are planning to do #CityHallSelfie Day this year would be:
- Have fun! Show off your City employees and what they do!
- Promote the day on social media ahead of time encouraging residents to also get involved by sharing their own selfies.
- If you will be visiting other City facilities, make sure you let them know ahead of time and what you plan to do, so they are ready for the day’s activities. This way, if some people wish to not participate in selfies, they can choose to not be involved.
- Be creative! Have props that employees can use as part of their selfie photos.
The best part of #CityHallSelfie Day is showing your residents who you are behind the scenes and why each person matters in what they do in local government.