The Town of Banff has more friends on social media site Facebook than residents in the community.
The resort town’s page boasts 11,399 people that like it compared to its 2011 census population of 8,244. It also has a town profile page with 4,176 friends geared towards publishing information for residents.
Council heard details about the municipality’s social media accounts from communications coordinator Kathryn Wright, Monday (Nov. 14).
Wright said social media, and in particular Facebook, has become one of the Town’s most successful conversation tools and to have as many unique users, between 12,000 and 13,000 total, is unprecedented for a municipality.
“People want to be friends with Banff,” she said. “People are excited about it here.”
In addition to the Banff Town profile and the Banff page, there is also a Banff Peace Officer profile with 88 friends, a Banff youth page with 36 likes and BanffLIFE with 693 likes.
The Facebook presence, Wright said, as of January this year, became the number one incoming link for the Town’s website over Google. The average number of views per post is around 8,000 and can reach as high as 12,000.
As a public engagement tool, she said, through Facebook accounts the municipality can answer questions, share successes, show community appreciation, advertise programs and provide public education on any number of subjects.
Wright said, for example, the recent community discussions over skateboarding saw Banff communicate with a group not traditionally engaged with Town Hall through social media.
However, Banff’s Twitter account has 24 followers and six tweets since it was started.
“In 2012 we would like to expand our participation in Twitter to reach a wider audience,” Wright said, adding it may help the Town reach a new market of mobile users in real time.
Councillor Stavros Karlos said the municipality does a great job on a wide variety of engagement, but warned a new focus on Twitter could take up significant staff time.
“Twitter is a big shift in direction with a big time commitment,” he said, adding it is more than making one post per day and needs to be constantly monitored. “I would need more information on that as a go-forward strategy.”
The staff report to council indicated further resources will be required in 2012 to continue using social media effectively as a communication tool.
Council will be asked to consider a dedicated staff member for social media as part of its upcoming budget deliberations.
