How do you manage your community engagement efforts? Chances are it’s with a hodgepodge of tools and processes that relies on your website to do the heavy lifting. When you throw budget concerns and crisis management into the mix, it’s easy to see how your current efforts can gain a momentum that makes them hard to change even when change is for the better. But ready for it or not, the change is already here. What matters now is how you respond.
The pandemic placed enormous pressure on local governments to improve their communications and offer more services online. While the pandemic is thankfully receding, the expectations of your constituents are not. Residents want to be able to access information how they want to access it, and won’t be forced into only one method of doing so. A website can’t be your only way of publicizing your efforts and events. Neither can a mobile app or a Facebook page. Instead, your community engagement solution has to account for all of those factors and more. It has to be an affordable, holistic solution that not only serves your constituents, but also meets the needs of your staff.
As it stands now, too many local governments rely on an outdated website as their sole method of communication. Others find themselves dedicating their entire community engagement budget to solutions that don’t integrate well with other technology like chatbots or mobile applications. Change can often seem riskier than maintaining the status quo, but that can be deceiving. Non-flexible and insecure solutions can wind-up costing you more in the long run because of the shadow costs and extra maintenance required to keep them operational. Startups with technology that does what you need it to can actually be a more stable solution than more established and expensive ones. In 2021, no local government should be relying on WordPress to host a website or be pinned down by past solutions that cause as many problems as they solve.
ITsimple can help you implement a flexible community engagement solution that provides seamless content management across your website, social media channels, and other technologies. ITsimple’s turnkey community engagement solution, SpotlightCMS, enables the management of all channels of communication – mobile, web, and social media via a user-friendly dashboard and a single data entry point that is no-code and requires no technical skills to use. We can build your website from scratch, or simply refresh it with a new look and capabilities. SpotlightCMS gives you the power to publish what you want, where you want, and when you want. And since it’s cloud based, there are no IT backend requirements which empowers municipalities big or small to onboard the platform quickly and efficiently – allowing you to focus on governing.
SpotlightCMS also pairs with mobile apps like It’sMyTown and CityGuards that put information and services in one location for your residents to engage and find the information they need. These apps are freely available from Apple and Google app stores and help build a sense of community and support local engagement. These apps also eliminate the privacy concerns that social media accounts often highlight because no registration is required of users and no personal data is collected or stored without consent.
Does your effort match your results? Whether you’re ready to upgrade your website, add a mobile app, or improve your government’s communication, ITsimple is here with a proven strategy for success in place.
