Social Media Best Practices for Housing and Community Development in Special Districts

Leaders of housing and community development administrations are committed to enabling community growth by increasing affordable housing options, protecting and engaging vulnerable populations, and of course, making it easier to purchase a home. However, it can be difficult to make residents aware of the benefits of all the hard work that’s going on behind the scenes. One solution? Using social media.

Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok are just a few social media platforms that housing and community development leaders and their staff can use to communicate with residents. However, when time and bandwidth are limited, there’s a heightened need to hone in on social media best practices.
If you’re looking to boost resident involvement in your administration’s programs and enhance public transparency through the use of social media, here are seven strategies to try:

1. Designate a social media team: Not only does having a team focused on social media help ensure public communication takes place via this popular channel boasting 72.5 percent of the total United States population as active users, but it also allows you to meet residents where they’re at to drive engagement with your administration’s initiatives.In addition, with a designated team, you can rest easy knowing there is dedicated support for answering questions and responding to complaints on social media — and for monitoring trends and conversations to capitalize on any opportunities to weigh in.
2. Post shareable content: Build awareness and spread the word about your programs and initiatives. Take pictures at meetings and events, and then post the photos with captions to show and tell your administration’s story in a captivating way via your social media accounts. Tag the individuals in the photos to amplify your reach through subsequent commenting and resharing by those individuals.You might also consider creating your own eye-catching images, educational infographics, or downloadable flyers that your residents could reshare on social media, save and email, or save and print to share offline. Try using Canva, a user-friendly online graphic design tool that offers a free version complete with plug-and-play templates for different content formats.
3. Curate a mix of posts: Increase your follower counts by diversifying your social media posts. Publish meeting and event recaps, news updates, and helpful information from your administration — but also reshare useful content that you think your residents might want or need from local businesses, associations, and organizations.While you’re at it, don’t just reshare others’ content. Take time to comment on it first. This fosters goodwill between your administration and other entities in your community. It also instills a sense of reciprocity. Meaning, you just might start to notice those same entities commenting on your social media posts, too. Posts with higher numbers of comments create intrigue, garnering greater visibility for your administration’s programs and initiatives.
4. Ensure alignment with your administration’s goals and objectives: Always be sure that your posts serve a purpose. Otherwise, what’s the point? Your social media content should align with your bigger communications strategy to support your administration’s overarching community growth goals and objectives.When in doubt, ask yourself exactly what it is you want to accomplish before posting a piece of content on social media. Would you like to rally people around a common cause? Do you want to bring together residents facing similar problems? Do you want to encourage community members to take action?
5. Establish a style guide and social media policies: As your team grows, you want to ensure that your social media presence remains consistent. Establish a style guide and a list of social media policies to be sure that everyone is always on the same page — and your administration’s reputation is never compromised. Review your guide and policies regularly, and update them as needed.Here’s a handy social media policy template to help you get started.
6. Consider accessibility: Did you know that approximately 26 percent of Americans live with a disability such as a vision, hearing, or cognitive impairment? Inaccessible social media posts can destroy resident trust. Ensure that every member of your community can access your social media content.Format-specific digital accessibility solutions for video and Portable Document Format (PDF) files can help — so can following these guidelines from Sprout Social.
7. Maintain compliance with public record laws: Social media is considered a public record by law federally and in all 50 states. Government agencies, including housing and community development administrations, are required to comply by capturing every record from their social media communications.As a manual process, this can be time-consuming and frustrating — especially since screenshots are not compliant with public records laws. The good news is that social media archiving software can automate this tedious task for you.

Using social media to promote your housing and community development administration’s programs and initiatives doesn’t need to be a struggle. By employing the seven strategies outlined above, you can get organized — and create a more vibrant community at the same time. Learn more about CivicPlus’s Special Districts Product.