What social media tool provides the best opportunity for Clerks to communicate with one another? Many Clerks have at least heard of the LinkedIn Group City Clerk’s Café– with over 3000 members it’s a great resource for asking questions and getting advice from other Clerks. But the lag time on an answer can be long because LinkedIn doesn’t instantly notify members when a message is posted. And even then it can get buried in email inboxes because it looks a lot like the other 100 emails Clerks get on a regular basis.
Many Clerks Associations also use list servers to ask questions, share information and provide details about upcoming events. But how many people are paying attention? Are these conversations reaching everyone, or just a handful of engaged participants? Again, if you aren’t logging in all the time or have not signed up to receive notifications, it’s easy to miss out on information.
After surveying 15,000 Clerks across North America, strong evidence emerged to suggest that if communication is lacking between members of your association, your social networking tool of choice could be playing a
Have you Ever Thought of Facebook?
In the iCompass North American Municipal Clerks survey we asked respondents what social media site they use most frequently. The answer by a wide margin was Facebook. In fact, of the Clerks surveyed, it wasn’t even close. 55% of respondents say they use Facebook daily, while the drop off after that is significant. 31% use Google+, 6% use Pinterest and 3% use LinkedIn on a daily basis.
Here’s the results from the question where we asked Clerks which social media sites they use and how frequently.
Age plays a factor, but only in a minor way.
The results show that younger clerks are more apt to use Facebook than their older counterparts, no surprise there. But your just about as likely to find a Clerk with 30 years of experience on Facebook as one that’s in their 30’s and just starting their career. 70% of respondents aged 50 to 59 use Facebook at least once a month and 52% use it daily. As you move to those nearing retirement, 43% of Clerks over 60 years old still use Facebook daily. Have a look at the graph below for the breakdown.
Features That Make Facebook a Great Engagement Tool
Just looking at the sheer number of active Clerks on Facebook underlines a big opportunity to improve engagement. But what really highlights Facebook’s potential for Clerks Associations as a communication tool is a number of features built to create an exclusive, but free flowing conversation for members of a Group. Here are a few reasons:
- Ability to create private, invitation-only groups
- Private member-only chats
- Messages can show up on smartphones, computers and tablets real-time to reach Clerks easily
- With such a large number of daily users there’s an opportunity to improve engagement rates
- You can create events within a group for key meetings and annual conferences
Our suggestion is to create a private group for you association, invite members and begin to experiment with some of the different ways that everyone can communicate. Our research shows a few active Clerks Association Facebook groups, and a number of states and provinces that have little presence on the site. For instance, New Jersey’s association has a great Facebook site that is regularly updated with information, news and photos from members. The associations in Washington, Michigan and California also have fairly active Facebook pages. But we couldn’t find many others, which means they are either completely hidden in Facebook, or don’t exsist!
Go Where Clerks Are!
Why could Facebook work for your Clerks Association? Based on the survey results it’s the social media networking tool of choice for Clerks. But many Clerk Associations don’t have a dedicated group or page, and in our conversations with Clerks – they tell us most use Facebook to catch-up with family and friends. It’s really an underutilized tool on the professional front, especially when considering that half of Clerks are on Facebook daily. There’s a really great opportunity better engage association members and provide a better platform for the sharing of information. If your association, whether it be at the State, County or local level doesn’t have a Facebook page we encourage you to go out, create one, and then give it a try.