City of Columbus, NE: Modernizing Processes with Resident Engagement Tools from CivicPlus

Overview

Columbus, Nebraska—known as the City of Power and Progress—has taken significant strides in modernizing its digital presence to enhance communication and transparency. With a population of over 22,000, city leadership recognized a growing need to provide accurate, real-time information to residents while streamlining digital services.

Since 2011, Columbus has partnered with CivicPlus, leveraging Municipal Websites, Recreation Management, and Social Media Archiving to strengthen its ability to share information and engage with residents. At the forefront of this transformation is Matt Lindberg, Public Communications Manager, who stepped into his newly created role with a mission to improve how the city communicates with its community.

The Challenge

Before working with CivicPlus on a redesign, Columbus faced several critical communication challenges.

“The city has a lot of neat things happening and we want the community to have the facts. The problem was we weren’t consistently getting information out there. People would say, ‘I didn’t know that was happening.’ The City Administrator, Mayor and City Council recognized the need for local news coming out of the city to ensure residents had access to accurate, timely information, but we couldn’t rely on other places to get it out there and that’s where my role came in,” says Lindberg.

As Columbus planned for a website redesign with CivicPlus, the city identified several key goals to enhance communication and engagement with residents. They aimed to create a more modern and user-friendly website that would make it even easier for residents to find important information. On the backend, ensuring a streamlined process for updating content became a priority to ensure consistency and accuracy in communication across channels. Additionally, the city sought a purpose-built solution to archive and manage public interactions, particularly from social media, and to better track and retrieve important information when needed.

When Lindberg stepped into his role, he was immediately tasked with leading a full website redesign, “That was my first big project when I got on board. The City Administrator and I spoke extensively about our vision for the website and feedback we got from residents. Then I went through it with the CivicPlus team and it was fantastic. They were really patient, answering all my questions and working with me, I told them what I wanted based on what I had seen from other CivicPlus websites and really emphasize the social aspect and connecting people with information, which is why we transformed our homepage making it user friendly and incorporating the news aspect and the social media as well,” he says.

With an emphasis on improving navigation, increasing accessibility, and integrating social media and news updates, the website transformed from a static online presence into an essential tool for communication.

The Solution

Social Media Archiving: A Game-Changer for Compliance and Efficiency

As social media became a critical tool for city communications, Columbus needed a way to archive public interactions to ensure compliance and maintain transparency. Before adopting CivicPlus’ Social Media Archiving solution, tracking historical social media posts and comments was a time-consuming challenge.

Since implementing Social Media Archiving, the city has saved hours of staff time by being able to quickly retrieve posts and comments when needed.

“We’ve had to pull up old comments multiple times,” Lindberg said. “Instead of wasting hours searching manually, I can find what we need in five minutes. That’s been a game-changer.”

Municipal Websites: A Website Designed for Engagement & Collaboration

One of Lindberg’s first major projects was redesigning the city’s homepage to make it more intuitive and user-friendly, and he did so with the CivicPlus Municipal Websites solution.

A key part of this transformation was the introduction of a structured initiative where the city posts at least one News Flash every weekday, sharing updates on city events, government initiatives, and public service changes.

“We made it a goal to put out at least one News Flash every day,” Lindberg shares. “Sometimes more, depending on what’s happening. It’s made a huge difference in how informed people feel about city government.”

The impact was immediate. Website traffic increased significantly, and residents began engaging more frequently with city communications.

“We go out into the community and ask people what they think of the website. I’ve heard a lot of positive feedback. People say it’s easier to use, more friendly, more visually appealing, and, most importantly, it actually helps them stay informed,” says Lindberg.

With the redesigned website, Columbus improved communication not only with residents but also between departments. The website’s Department Headers ensure that each city department has a dedicated, well-organized space to provide residents with relevant information.

“Departments are good about coming to me or the IT team when they need updates,” Lindberg explained. “We work together to make sure the website stays fresh and accurate.”

Additionally, city officials now use social media more strategically, ensuring that updates align with the city’s overall communication goals.

“We’ve gotten all departments involved in sharing information,” Lindberg noted. “Before, the website was more static. Now, it’s a tool for engagement. Everyone at the city – the staff and elected officials – are passionate about keeping our community informed.”

The Impact

Since implementing CivicPlus solutions, Columbus has seen measurable improvements in communication and engagement:

• Increased website traffic, with residents actively seeking updates.
• Over 3,000 new social media followers in one year, showing higher engagement.
• Improved Internal Efficiency: Better cross-departmental collaboration with website updates. Hours saved retrieving social posts.
• Improved transparency with Social Media Archiving, making it easier to track conversations and maintain records.
• Positive resident feedback, with more people relying on the city’s website as their primary source for information.

Advice for Other Municipalities

When asked what advice he would give to other government leaders looking to improve communication and transparency, Lindberg emphasized starting small and building momentum:

“You have to start somewhere,” he said. “For us, it was redesigning the website to make it more appealing and committing to sending daily News Flashes. From there, we’ve been able to build and improve gradually. The nice thing for us was when I spoke with CivicPlus, I said what we were thinking, you heard my vision and responded by giving me some examples of how to bring it to life. Now we can do more news flashes, now we can do videos and now we can put up information on the website and people know they’re going to go on a website and there’s going to be meaningful content on there, and that’s because we just started small, and we’ve continued to grow.”