1. Generally better content Ok, ‘generally better’ is vague and weak. But I have no more sophisticated way of measuring this, other than to say that I enjoyed more content from more accounts this time around. Why did I enjoy it? Because more of it actually looks and feels like social media. Which is kind of the definition of respecting the platform and respecting your audience. More teams are doing this, which is resulting in more humour, more personality, more banter, and more fun. Mainly in local government, to be fair, but with pockets in central government too. And I’m not talking unhinged or frivolous accounts with mascots and abusive chat. Just content that makes me do one of the following: 👉 Lol
👉 Aww
👉 Aha
👉 Wow If you do these consistently, you have a chance to make people’s days just a fraction better. And that’s enough to stand out and be liked. Some accounts I enjoyed (for various reasons) include: Health NZ, Invercargill City Council, NZTA, Wellington City Council, Antarctica NZ, Tourism NZ, Horowhenua District Council, Ministry Of Education, Napier City Council, Ministry for Pacific Peoples, Kāpiti Coast District Council, NZ Customs, and Fire and Emergency. Check them out. Don’t get me wrong - there’s still a face-melting amount of bad government social media out there. But there’s more good stuff too, and that’s massively hopeful and inspiring. Key takeaway: If you’re still doing boring, throwaway content and delivering robotic, corporate responses to comments, you are gradually becoming the minority. Look around, see what others are doing, and make the case to your bosses that the time to move into the future is now. If NZ Police can do it (and have been for years and years), so can you. 2. Fewer channelsWhen I started tracking this data in January 2023, councils were actively running an average of 4.4 channels. Now? 3.9. Government departments have gone from 3.7 to 3.4 in the same period, while Crown agencies have dropped from 4.3 to 3.9. What’s behind it? Mainly, the Twitter/X exodus, with some of the latest to leave including Fire and Emergency, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, Christchurch City Council, and Greater Wellington. In January 2023, nearly 60% of councils were active on Twitter. Now? Just 6%. Says it all, really. But it’s not just Twitter. Some organisations dabbled in TikTok, then let it fizzle out. Others started Threads accounts and forgot about them. This highlights two key realities: Platform-specific content is hard to sustain. Without a clear strategy and resources, channels quickly become ghost towns. When time gets tight, we naturally fall back to feeding our bigger channels first.
Key takeaway: Be deliberate about the channels you invest in - then commit to making them work. A smaller, well-managed set of channels will always outperform a scattered, half-hearted presence.
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