Best practices in e-government communication: Lessons from the local Governments' use of official facebook pages

Abstract

Although Facebook is seen as a powerful and low-cost tool, insufficient manpower, time, budget, and technical skills hinder effective local government use. Citizens value government pronouncements directly affecting them, especially during uncertain times when guidelines keep changing and are unique per locality. Thus, the study sought the social media use of the 25 most successful cities' official Facebook pages to reveal best practices in e-Government communication for practitioners to learn how to use the relatively new tool efficiently. Using content analysis and anchoring on network analysis theory, the study revealed best practices in posting frequency, post type, shape, length, and topics based on the constructed week sample. Overall, city governments led by younger mayors achieve higher communication success rates. Communication success was also found to be related to the frequency of posting and professionalization. Findings and implications are discussed to help practitioners improve the government's social media utilization.