The impact of social media engagement on a city s brand : social networking sites influence on citizen satisfaction

Abstract

Local government faces a challenge of servicing a wide range of customers with different backgrounds, varying access to income, information and privileges. Yet they are expected to meet each constituencies needs. The private sector has found success in servicing their customers whilst improving their brand through social media campaigns. Social media does not promise to resolve this conundrum, but rather to afford local government a different avenue to deliver the appropriate service to their constituencies, whilst affording them a platform to engage with their City. Literature suggests that through active social media engagement, and in particular social networking sites, local governments can positively influence their citizens perceptions of the local governments. Whilst studies exist around City Branding and Social Media engagement, these fall short of understanding how engagement on Social Networking Sites interplay with a resident s or visitor s perception of a City. Thus using engagement on the social networking sites, Facebook and Twitter, an explanatory study was conducted using Factor Analysis and Kruskal-Wallis to test the relationship, which revealed that a relationship does exist between SNS engagement and a City s brand, but the variables influenced, whilst expected, did not have the strongest influence on the citizen s satisfaction.