City Council recognizes 2015 Social Media Contest winners

social media winners
Mayor John Gayle presents certificates to the winners of the 2015 Social Media Contest at a recent City Council meeting. Pictured, from left, are Jasmine Kendrick, Jerrica Kelsaw, Gayle, Victoria Moss, Jenna Kirkpatrick and VSU Social Media Theory Professor Dr. David Nelson.

VALDOSTA — Valdosta City Council recently honored the winners of the 2015 Social Media Contest.

The contest represents an educational partnership between the city and Valdosta State University to propose the best social media strategy for the city.

 VSU students Jasmine Kendrick, Jerrica Kelsaw, Victoria Moss, Jenna Kirkpatrick, each received a certificate, an official city coin and a professional letter of recommendation from Mayor John Gayle.

The city’s Public Information Office began a partnership with VSU’s Social Media Theory class, taught by Dr. David Nelson. The students were divided into groups and tasked with developing a realistic social media plan that would be graded (resulting in a large part of their class grade) and judged by the city’s public information officer.

The winning team provided the public information officer with innovative ideas for reaching citizens who use social media as their primary source of communication.  The new city website proposed in the Fiscal Year 2015-16 budget will provide the updated Content Management System tools that can be used to automatically feed information and Metro Valdosta Channel 17 news videos to selected social media sites as they posted to the website.

The team’s ideas are being implemented and will significantly impact the way the local government communicates with its citizens.

http://www.valdostadailytimes.com/news/local_news/city-council-recognizes-social-media-contest-winners/article_500fc4ea-1932-11e5-94f5-d70cd4f4de48.html