Mayor John Gayle honored the winners of the 2016 Valdosta Social Media Contest—an educational partnership between the City of Valdosta and Valdosta State University to propose the best social media strategy for its local government. VSU students Kaitlyn Linginfelter, Christian Flick, Brian Donaldson, Anthony Stone and Rachel Elzey each received a framed certificate, an official city coin and a professional letter of recommendation from the Mayor.

Recognizing that organizations all over the world — including municipalities — are using social media to communicate with increasingly diverse and large audiences, the city’s Public Information Office continued a partnership with VSU’s Social Media Theory class that began in 2015. Taught by Dr. David Nelson, the students were divided into groups and tasked with developing a realistic social media plan that targeted and engaged millennials in their local government. The project, judged by the city’s Public Information Office, constituted a large part of their overall class grade and provided a real-life experience for the university students.