The days of relying on a single social network to reach and engage your audience are long gone.
Today, many government agencies are active across half a dozen or more platforms, each with its own unique algorithm and audience. Coming up with compelling content across all those different channels can be a real headache for busy government social media managers.
Frances La Rue, Public Affairs Manager at the City of Anna, TX, knows all about this challenge. In a recent session for our Social Media Strategies Summit for Government, she shared her secrets to planning diverse campaigns that resonate on every platform, helping you save time, deliver better results, and avoid burnout.
Read on for her top tips on:
- Mastering content customization across multiple platforms
- Balancing long-term brand building and short-term impact in your content strategy
- Identifying efficiency hacks for streamlined social media management
Let’s get into it.
1. Understand What Plays Best on Each Platform
Every social platform has its strengths. And the best way to succeed is to play to those strengths rather than trying to fit square pegs into round holes.
Consider the differences between Facebook and Instagram, both of which are part of the Meta ecosystem.
First up, Facebook offers features like Groups, Marketplace, and Events. “These all give a very local community-building energy to the platform,” says Frances.
Meanwhile, on Instagram, the line between people and brands can feel blurred — partially because so many accounts are public. And with the platform offering so many different content formats, it’s often hard to tell the difference between organic and sponsored content.
“I always say: embrace Stories and Reels for authenticity, and utilize the keywords in your captions and the local tagging locations for discoverability,” she explains.
2. Build Brand Recognition With Consistent Content
Sure, each platform requires a unique approach.
But that doesn’t mean you need to reinvent the wheel with every campaign. Quite the opposite: Frances recommends consistently using the same content templates to build brand recognition. As a bonus, it’ll save you time, too.
For example, Frances suggests reusing themes or designs for three to five years when promoting an event. Just like she’s done when promoting the City of Anna’s annual Boots & Booms Independence Day celebration:
“We use the same branding every single year — the only real difference is the year on the logo,” Frances explains. “It makes it very easy to switch from design to design and update them because we can copy and paste various elements into each one and adapt it for sizing constraints.”
3. Invest in High-Quality Visuals and B-Roll
Especially if you’re new to a position or promoting a new program or event, it pays to get boots on the ground and capture as much content as you can. Sure, it takes a little time and effort. But it’ll save you way more time when marketing similar events and programs in the future.
For example, for the City of Anna’s first Kidsgiving event, Frances captured a ton of content — close-ups, wide shots, and B-roll.
Because the City of Anna regularly works with the same contractor, Creature Teacher, Frances now has a bunch of creatives she can lean on.
“Every time I’m able to use a lot of that same content to create Reels or share a photo carousel, all because that very first day I was there and I took as many photos and videos as I could,” she explains.
💡 Learn more: Instagram Reels 101: Everything Your Brand Needs to Know to Get Started
4. Maintain a Content Calendar
There are two big benefits to creating a content calendar:
- It helps you stay organized and maintain a consistent posting schedule
- You can use it to recall effective content you’ve shared in previous years
“This is your first step to creating content that you can repurpose,” says Frances.
Her editorial calendar for the City of Anna newsletter dates back to 2021 and contains all the messages she shared weekly throughout each year.
“I can find the common themes for the seasons,” Frances explains. “It helps me recall when an event is coming up, what else was advertised during that time frame, what photos I used, and things like that.”
💡 Learn more: 29 of the Best Free Content Calendar Templates
5. Create a Bank of Evergreen Messages
Another big efficiency saver is to build up a library of “canned” content that you can update year after year.
For example, you’ll likely be posting about ice and freezing pipes in winter. And in summer, you’ll talk about wearing cool clothes and keeping out of the sun. Frances stores these evergreen messages in her editorial calendar so she doesn’t have to start from scratch each time.
(And, because she’s generous, you can download them by scanning the QR code below.)
“I can easily tweak them year by year to keep them fresh and current without having to constantly reinvent the wheel and think about what we’ve said in the past,” she explains.
6. Identify “Missing” Content Formats
Want to broaden the reach of your next campaign? One effective approach is to look at the assets you’re working with and then identify what extra content you’d need to spread the message across additional platforms.
Say you’re starting with a press release. Chances are it includes details about what you’re promoting — like dates and locations — along with one or two quotes and perhaps some visuals.
Now it’s time to visualize what you don’t have.
“I think of all the different platforms and types of content that I’d like to push out,” Frances explains. “What’s in my arsenal? Where can I distribute this message? What do I have available to me? And then what am I missing if I want to publish on that platform?”
7. Get More Value From Video Shoots
Video content requires more effort than sharing a single photo. One-third of marketers who don’t use video say their biggest barrier is a lack of time.
One solution is to ensure you extract the maximum possible value from every video shoot you schedule.
Frances gives the example of the City of Anna’s Easter dad jokes extravaganza (or should that be egg-stravaganza?).
She knew they were going to be filming two staff members telling dreadful Easter-themed jokes to promote the city’s Easter egg hunt:
View this post on Instagram
To get more bang for their buck, Frances arranged for an additional staff member to dress up as an Easter bunny, allowing them to record some extra content featuring the bunny generally goofing around — perfect for any future Easter posts.
And, because one of the dads used to be the city’s public works department, Frances had another idea: filming him (and the bunny) explaining which Easter-themed items can and can’t be recycled:
View this post on Instagram
“We had an hour allocated for this entire video shoot,” says Frances. “I was able to create five different videos during that time frame apart from the dad jokes, and we shared them all on our Instagram.”
💡 Learn more: 10 Short-Form Video Best Practices
8. Save Time With AI and Automation Tools
Of course, there’s another obvious way to save time on labor-intensive content creation tasks and free yourself up for high-value strategic work: leverage the power of AI and automation.
Frances shares her favorite tools, covering everything from writing captions to editing videos to answering FAQs:
| Tool | Use Case |
| ChatGPT | Writing social media captions |
| Meta chatbots | Answering common customer queries |
| Manychat | Following up on social media comments |
| Canva | Creating branded visuals at scale |
| Kapwing | Editing video content and adding subtitles |
| Google Drive | Organizing social media content assets |
ChatGPT for Content Creation
You probably already know that ChatGPT is an effective way to generate a ton of social media captions fast.
Frances uses it in event promotion. For example, she inputted information about a forthcoming touch-a-truck event and then prompted ChatGPT to create four different captions across three social platforms.
“Within a matter of seconds, I had 12 completely unique captions for posts that I could use on all of these channels,” she explains. “And the great thing is, we do this same event every year. Now I can take those 12 pieces of content and next year, I just have to update the date and time.”
💡 Learn more: 8 ChatGPT Prompting Techniques for Social Media Marketers
Meta Chatbots for Answering FAQs
Chances are, you and your team spend a ton of time answering similar questions from your social media followers, like:
- When’s my trash day?
- What are the guidelines for trash and recycling?
- What’s your holiday schedule?
Rather than responding manually every single time, you can set up automated chatbot replies via Meta Business Suite.
“I used to get some of these questions a handful of times a week,” Frances says. “Now, I don’t have to answer because the chatbot is doing it for me. That has saved me at least a solid hour every week in just answering questions.”
Manychat for Following Up on Social Media Comments
Chances are, you’ve noticed an influencer posting something like: “Comment the word ‘summer,’ and I’ll send you my Amazon link with all my fav summer outfits.”
It won’t surprise you to learn that they’re not responding manually to all those comments — they’re using a tool like Manychat, which automatically follows up by sending a private message to the commenter’s inbox. And it also responds in the comments section, prompting them to check their DMs for the link.
“They’re getting two responses from me in a matter of seconds that I don’t have to worry about,” Frances explains. “It’s boosting our engagement within the algorithm and showing that our post is more popular, because not only is someone commenting, but they may respond again to our comment.”
Canva for Design
Canva is one of the most popular graphic design apps.
Frances recommends importing your brand colors and logos to Canva so you can quickly create new visual assets at scale.
“If you’ve taken a template from Canva and you want to apply your brand colors, it’s as easy as the press of a button,” she says.
Kapwing for Video Editing
Kapwing is like Canva for video content: it’s an easy-to-use platform for editing videos, inserting your brand colors and logos, and adding subtitles.
“Use the templates in Kapwing and personalize them to your brand,” Frances recommends.
Google Drive and Canva for Folder Organization
Of course, once you’ve created all that high-quality content, you need to be able to find it again.
Frances suggests organizing your assets into folders by department or event on Canva and Google Drive and sharing your content with colleagues via Microsoft Teams.
She also uses iCloud to manage the content she captures on the go: “I love to access my iCloud photos on my desktop to download videos quickly from my phone.”
Interested to learn more best practices for creating compelling content efficiently and at scale? Register for our next Social Media for Government Virtual Conference.
Featured image by freepik.
