We focused on service delivery via social media:

Building a system that allowed any city resident to report faults via Facebook and Twitter

We then ran a campaign inviting residents to report faults via our social media channels

As requests for help came in we went out on the streets with the cities technicians and recorded individual problems being fixed proving that the city was taking action

We put in place a team of community managers working in shifts to provide an immediate response (typically under 10 minutes) to any questions from residents.

We also built a quick and simple escalation process with the City’s different departments.

We were able to receive and respond to calls for help such as burst water mains and electricity problems directly and rapidly via social media.

During load-shedding (blackouts) our community managers went straight into action. They worked around the clock to reply to every question (of which there were 27,000 in total) and succeeded in turning one of the biggest problems the City faced into a #brandwin.

The toughest challenge though, was the massive March fires that sprang up overnight across the Cape Peninsula. Hundreds of requests for information flooded social media. Our team’s quick and methodical round-the-clock responses, gave residents a trusted source of information to turn to.

We grew the City's total social audience from 92,330 to 249,777 (170.53% growth) over the year. Before our new strategy, City of Cape Town social channels received 556,784 impressions/month (28 days); this increased to 8.2 million impressions/month over the year: An increase of 7.6 million (1,372.74% growth)

Facebook alone has reached 750k unique residents/month: approximately 44% of the total population of Facebook users within Cape Town. This was accomplished through creating useful and interesting content resulting in engagement. 68.46% of impressions were organic, spread by the 250 000 social engagement/month (Facebook Engagement Rate: 9.37%)

Most importantly: when crisis came in the form of intermittent power failures (load-shedding) we serviced the 27 000 social media queries that came in from the public. Our "load-shedding" schedules were viewed 340 000 times.

Overall this resulted in an annual increase in positive sentiment from 3.6% to 23.7% over the year.