The City of Tuscaloosa’s communications division took off in fiscal year 2018. With the addition of two new staff members, we were able to soar. (OK, enough with the flighty puns.)
The communications division is under the Mayor’s Office umbrella – collaborating with every City department on various and diverse projects, from crisis communications to road construction messages to special event marketing.
Everything we do starts with a goal and objective. Through methodical and strategic planning, hard work, late nights and early mornings, we were able to accomplish what most comm departments two or three times our size do. We’re intentional, data-driven and citizen-centric, because our citizens deserve it.
The comm team launched four new websites totaling more than 200 pages, posted nearly 1,200 times on social media, replied to 730 social media inquiries, read almost all of our 35,000+ emails, attended over 600 meetings, logged more than 8,000 hours of work, won 13 awards on local, state, regional, national and even international levels, and there’s more on the horizon.
We hope you enjoyed the flight. (Had to get one more in!)
Web
- Launched the new reactive, responsive citizen-centric Tuscaloosa.com
- Designed and built HolidaysontheRiver.com
- Designed and built TuscaloosaRegionalAirShow.com
- Designed and built TuscaloosaMayorsCup.com
- Migrated PDF documents to web pages and online forms to comply with ADA accessibility standards
Social Media
- Began using Mevo, a live streaming camera, to share events like press conferences and fireworks from Celebration on the River with our Facebook users
- Connected to the City Council feed and began to Facebook Live all council meetings
- Created a Nextdoor agency account to better reach and communicate with the public
Process
- Implemented more efficient and secure Mailchimp access
- Created a responsive conditional form for streamlined sanitary sewer overflow notifications
- Began using connected social media platform that allows user contributions
- Implemented a project management platform
- Created a project submission form
Community
- Volunteered for the United Way Day of Action (team)
- Participated in the United Way Scavenger Hunt (Deidre)
- Presented at Tuscaloosa Builds July meeting (Deidre and Alex)
- Serves on the Tuscaloosa Bicentennial Marketing Committee (team)
- Serves on the West Alabama Food Bank Cabinet (Deidre)
- Sponsors the Alex House Journalism Sustainability Award (Alex)
Organizations
- Members of the American Advertising Federation
- AAF Tuscaloosa President and Chair of Board (Deidre)
- Members of the Public Relations Council of Alabama
- Local Board Member-at-Large (Deidre)
- State Board Secretary (Deidre)
- Members of the Southern Public Relations Federation Member of the Graphic Arts Guild (Alex)
Continued Education
- Government Experience Academy (team)
- Sloss Tech Conference (team)
- AAF District 7 Leadership Conference (Deidre)
- ADMERICA - AAF National Conference (Deidre)
- NIMS Certifications (Alex and Grace)
Adobe Government Creativity Awards
Finalist | Tuscaloosa.com Welcome Home(page)
American Advertising Awards- Tuscaloosa
Best of Show | Tuscaloosa.com Welcome Home(page) |
Gold | Tuscaloosa.com Welcome Home(page) |
Silver | Tuscaloosa Air Show Take Off |
Public Relations Council of Alabama Medallions
Medallion | Tuscaloosa Air Show Take Off |
Award of Excellence | Tuscaloosa.com Welcome Home(page) |
Southern Public Relations Federation Lanterns
Lantern | Tuscaloosa Air Show Turbulent Weather (Crisis Communications) |
Award of Excellence | Tuscaloosa Air Show Take Off |
Award of Merit | Tuscaloosa.com Welcome Home(page) |
Center For Digital Government - Government Experience Awards
3rd Place | Overall Winner
3 full-time employees
2 part-time interns
35 thousand emails received
600+ meetings attended
8,000+ hours worked
$22 thousand saved by deleting intern wages
15 new hire forms completed
2 jury duty leaves
13 pay plan questionnaires and interviews
Total Analytics
Created
- 1 website
- 335 graphic assets
- 28 video/animations
- 72 Facebook posts
- 126 tweets
- 32 Instagram Posts
Web
- 155 thousand pageviews
- 70% mobile
- 30% desktop
- 1,985 comments
- 1,903 shares
- 7,612 reactions
- 798 messages received
- 502 messages sent
- 346 thousand impressions
- 12 thousand engagements
Weekend Analytics
Created
- 3 recap videos
- 1 Facebook Live stream
- 9 Facebook posts
- 32 tweets
Web
- 61 thousand pageviews
- 79% mobile
- 21% desktop
- 1,306 comments
- 1,211 shares
- 3,152 reactions
- 326 messages received
- 208 messages sent
- 188 thousand impressions
- 7,126 engagements
Snapchat Filter
- 949 uses
- 58.9% usage rate
- 75.2 thousand views
Social Media
- 18 tweets
- 4 Facebook posts
- 1 Instagram post
- 164 new followers
- 447% more active users
- 42 thousand impressions
- 150 thousand impressions
- 203 retweets
- 210 likes
- 324 website link clicks
Tuscaloosa.com/weather
- 1 web page
- 2,000 page views
- 12% of all traffic
- 949,988 total impressions (views)
- 540,455 total reach (users)
- 71,492 engagements
- 316 message conversations
- 228 messages answered
- 206 posts created
20 linked posts, 102 photo/graphic posts, 56 video/animated posts, 16 event posts, 8 status posts - 11 Facebook Live streams
- 1,514 new page likes
- 16,162 total page likes
- 2,196,429 total impressions (views)
- 42,952 engagements
- 635 tweets created
- 1,821 new followers
- 35.9 thousand followers
- 6,324 likes
- 103 comments
- 100 posts created
- 5,754 total followers
Nextdoor
- 18,287 impressions
- 5,215 members
- 107 neighborhoods
Overall
- 4 million+ impressions
- 1,000 posts
- 63 thousand followers
Usage
- 1.29+ million pageviews since launch
- 1 million users
- Visits from 144 countries
- 223 public records requests
- 21% of users are paying their water bill
Top Pages
- Homepage
- Water
- Jobs
Backend
- 191 pages
- 7,700 files transferred from old site
- 382 updates to the homepage
- 20 staff members able to edit
Media Mentions
- 7,898 news clips
- Publicity valued at $8 million