The White House at RideKC

Target Audience: The target audiences for this social media entry were stakeholders, area residents, transit advocates and customers of RideKC: all groups that should understand the importance of investment in transit locally and nationally.

Strategy Objective:Our strategy was to prepare relevant messaging ahead of the event. Our objective was to reach as many people as possible. We chose to provide real-time coverage on Twitter, which has our largest following and fit best with the event. In the hopes of gaining traction for our messages, we identified our top local priorities which might be eligible for federal funding, such as electric buses and upgrades to our physical plant. White House staff could not provide any insight into the President's remarks, so we looked to past remarks and news releases for facts and anecdotes that related to transit and safety. Not knowing if we would be on site for the address with the ability to take photographs, we prepared more than a dozen possible tweets and images so we could tweet in real time.

Situation Challenge: Following the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, President Joseph Biden visited Kansas City, Mo., to highlight the needs and potential of a massive federal investment in infrastructure, including public transit. RideKC and KCATA were thrilled to provide a location, but any details and messaging for the visit were truly a state secret. We were essentially just the backdrop for the White House message. But we wanted to use this opportunity to highlight our priorities while amplifying the national message. The social media manager was not guaranteed access to the event, so we had to prepare to cover this for our social media followers remotely, while experiencing it on C-SPAN or through local media coverage.

Results Impact: We concentrated our activity on our strongest and most relevant network, relying on real-time tweets. Our engagements and reach across all networks were significantly higher than normal. For example, our average daily engagement in November was 173 per day. On Dec. 8, our engagements were 1852, and 1272 on Dec. 9. Our daily impressions for Dec. 8-9 were up 825% over our November average daily impressions. We were pleased with the retweets by several high-profile local reporters and news outlets, APTA, and local elected officials. Providing real-time information on Twitter limited what we could do on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. However, we followed up later in the day and the next day on these other social networks.

Why Submit: We were able to prepare for an uncertain situation and with uncertain access. By showing up as early as allowed, we were able to secure a front-row seat for the address. Having a strategy with prepared content allowed us to stay focused during a long and exciting day. For example, we did not anticipate the heavy focus President Biden placed on union jobs. We were able to incorporate what was unique about the remarks and themes of the White House address, and still include our priorities.