Quick Start Guide Natural Gas Utilities

SECTION 02 : BUILDING YOUR PROGRAM

times each member of the audience has an opportunity to view the message—however, the price, based on the amount of street traffic or transit rider loads, can be expensive and not as effective as more direct means of communication.

4. Digital Media Social Media

Social media is an effective channel that allows utilities to engage customers, demonstrate preparedness during critical times, and provide essential safety information on both a reactive and a planned basis. Nearly every utility now has a social media presence and a social media manager. It is important to focus on providing seasonal and evergreen safety messaging to your social media manager and developing, in advance, a cooperative strategy for using social media to quickly alert the public to immediate safety concerns or incidents. Social media is a modern and efficient mechanism to reach large quantities of people through various paid and earned/social digital channels. As paid media, this type of channel is an effective means of targeting a specific message to a highly segmented population or geographic area but can be expensive depending on the targeting approach that is used. The utility’s social media strategy should consider ways to engage customers and provide powerful tools such as real-time updates on customer outages and restoration efforts. This strong customer engagement can be leveraged to communicate public safety information. Online Advertising There are a variety of mechanisms through which digital advertising can be used to target broad audiences. These include website banners, online magazines or newsletters, streaming music outlets, digital commercials on video programming, paid search, and others.