In June, the City of Las Vegas celebrated its 100,000th Twitter follower by participating in Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling” dance and lip-sync challenge. The video—which shows city employees and local residents shaking it to the song from the animated film Trolls—tallied more than 70,000 views and 1,100 shares on Facebook, a small triumph for city officials hoping to engage the community through social media.
Local governments here and elsewhere are trying to stay relevant and connected with broad audiences. Thus, the City of Las Vegas public information department getting funky with sanitation workers and firefighters. But that’s not all. The city’s video shorts about community centers, free parking, floods and other topics play on its social media platforms via Daily Dose segments, which offer entertainment and news Mondays through Thursdays.
The Daily Dose has drawn more than 185,000 views since its launch in February, among 1.5 million views the city’s Facebook page notched over the past year. “The end goal is to engage the viewer,” city social media manager Jennifer Davies says. “In today’s world, media realms are shrinking. There are so many things happening. We’re only limited by our own creativity.”
When a Gillette commercial referred to Downtown Las Vegas as “cheap,” the city responded with its own hilarious ad—locals sharing what they’d prefer over a Gillette razor, including going to the Writer’s Block and eating a Homer at the new Donut Bar, ultimately summing up that, “Downtown Las Vegas is funner, betterer and more comfortabler than Gillette razors.”
“The Mayor wanted to respond,” Davies says. “Before social media, we would have called a press conference to address this.”
