By Janine Hill and Ashley Klemer

A little humor goes a long way in connecting with residents, making messages memorable, building trust, and transforming content into something people want to engage with. Fun, attention-grabbing posts can help you achieve your communications goals and raise the profile of your social media presence.

Be an influencer

Building credibility with your audiences on social media is important. So is growing your number of followers and engagements (likes, loves, shares, etc.). The City of Richfield recently held a focus group with youth who reported that they first look to see how many followers someone has before scrolling through their social media feed or engaging with their posts. And while the City of Bloomington’s followers count may not put us on influencer level status, the point is well taken.

A great way to gain new followers and get more eyes on your city’s content is by trying something new. Once people are following you, mix in funny posts with educational and informational ones. You don’t need to incorporate humor or trends in every post, but those are great ways to keep your followers engaged and connect with expanded audiences. Be real and don’t overthink it.

On trend

It’s also important to know the latest social media trends, and what memes and audio might work for your message and use them to your advantage. We showcased our firefighters’ dancing skills and the equipment they wear with the ‘Paging Dr. Beat’ trend that people on TikTok were using to highlight outfits. It’s amazing what a 14-second phone video can achieve. Within a few weeks, the Instagram Reel was viewed more than 162,000 times and received 4,650 likes. During that time, we gained more than 600 followers — 96% of the viewers were not yet following the City of Bloomington’s Instagram account.

Got employees? You’ve got talent

We all consume social media, whether it’s a video or post that we like and share with friends, family, or coworkers. You don’t have to look too far for your talent for Instagram Reels. Find coworkers who are willing to have a little fun. Mix in a simple message, some trending audio, and you’ll have the perfect recipe for an effective post.

Be very mindful, very demure

Humor doesn’t work all the time. Use humor when it fits and be mindful of when topics call for seriousness. It’s OK to test the waters and see what works. Know your audience and your platform, as well as how people are interacting on it.

Follow your friends

There are a lot of places to look for inspiration. Many of our local government peers know how to effectively use humor and get results. We’ve been inspired by posts from the cities of St. Louis Park, Richfield, and Savage to name a few. The City of Denver and national government agencies, including the National Park Service, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), also engage with some really fun, creative content.

Post with purpose

Consider drafting purpose statements for your accounts that define your goals and actions for that platform. By aligning Bloomington’s content with our organizational purpose, we’ve seen a positive response from the community, with growing engagement and impressions.

Make a plan

Generate ideas with your team. We keep a list of trends we want to try that we can refer to as different topics for social media come up.

Signing off

Adding a little fun to your social media presence could pay big dividends. We’ve seen these types of posts that resonate with our audiences clearly outperform our usual posts.

Focus on posts that remind people of what they love about your city. A City of Minneapolis TikTok video with rewritten lyrics to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” creatively informed residents about organics recycling containers and it generated these comments:

“I might move to Minneapolis solely because you made this.” “And suddenly I wish I lived in Minneapolis,” and “Is it possible to fall in love with a city’s municipal government? Yes.”

So, take some risks, try to use more humor, and follow social media trends. You’ll end up with stronger connections to your community and a more informed and engaged public.

Janine Hill is communications administrator and Ashley Klemer is strategic communications coordinator with the City of Bloomington.