Virginia Beach Communication Department Expands Their Reach 800%
As the state of Virginia’s most populous urban area, Virginia Beach, like many cities, works to expand their reach and increase public involvement accessibility in a meaningful way. In December of 2017, the City began using the PublicInput PlatformTM to address the challenge of engaging stakeholders around a variety of projects, large and small.
To do this, Virginia Beach took a mixed mode approach to public engagement with a combination of virtual and traditional tactics that increased engagement by giving the community multiple and familiar ways to participate.
Here is a snapshot of of the 2018-2019 engagement case study results highlighting the three active Virginia Beach Projects (read the full case study HERE):
- 2.5K Entertainment District Project participants with 50K+ responses and comments
- 2.5K Dome Site Project participants with 60K+ responses and comments
- 2.2K Planning & Beyond (2019) participants with 115K responses and comments
Today, Virginia Beach continues to employ a mixed mode approach using the PublicInput Platform ™ and has reached over a million people, an increase of 800%, in the four years since the initial engagement success was reported. Interim Communications Director, Tiffany Russell, APR, and her team serve the City of Virginia Beach to deliver full-service strategic and tactical communication solutions supporting citywide and department-led initiatives.
The Virginia Beach Communications team is responsible for a holistic array of services and support to the organization and the community at large, including accessible special events planning and compliant public involvement efforts.
Between the 2018 progress report and February of 2022 Virginia Beach has multiplied participant engagement eight times (778%) and responses and comments increased by four times (413%).
Here is a comparative look at the engagement reach over time:
Keys To Sustained Increases In Engagement
Virginia Beach has used a variety of methods to sustain the increases in engagement over time. These include:
Establishing a consistent public engagement approach across departments
Collecting contact information with every engagement
Notifying past participants with each engagement
Read more about the Virginia Beach initial engagement success in the full case study here.
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