Ohio DOT Sets the TikTok Pace

The Ohio Department of Transportation has long been a national leader in producing high-quality, informative customer-focused videos. Among its many programs is the award-winning weekly program, The Loop, featuring ODOT communications pros Erin McBride and Matt Bruning, which has garnered more than 64,000 YouTube views. The content is high quality, consistent and – I think I mentioned this – informative.

But ODOT’s communications team has discovered that TikTok provides a way to reach an entirely new and different audience with its video content that is far beyond the standard YouTube channel.

Thanks to intern AJ Overstreet, who was familiar with the TikTok platform, ODOT discovered that it could repurpose video it was already producing and, in turn, grow the engagement with their content.

Using the Un-Dead to Save the Living: Driving Dead Series Hits Its Target

It was a little more than a year ago that I wrote about an innovative transportation safety awareness campaign, the Driving Dead Series, that was being launched by the Illinois Department of Transportation.

Photo Courtesy The Walking Dead Series Facebook page.

It seemed strange to feature zombies in a safety campaign, but with literally millions of views in the last year, the people behind the campaign must have known what they were doing.

Talking email: Social gets the headlines, email gets the eyeballs

Twitter and Facebook mostly likely get most of you team’s attention, while Instagram’s massive growth — especially with younger drivers and commuters — should probably push its way into your communication strategy.

But when was the last time you really thought about how well you are managing your email lists? Do you know your typical open rate on email newsletters or other email campaigns?

Annual Survey Shows States Still Driving Toward Greater Social Media Usage

The 2014 State DOT Social Media Survey shows states overwhelmingly prefer Facebook and Twitter over other social media tools.

The fifth annual state department of transportation social media survey results were released last month at the annual meeting of TransComm, the AASHTO Subcommittee on Transportation Communications.

(Editor’s note: Full disclosure, I work at AASHTO and oversee the annual survey of state DOTs. Much of the discussion below comes from observations while reviewing raw survey data.)

The survey, started in 2009, confirms what we all probably already suspect. State DOTs are heavily invested in social media outreach both in the operations and public involvement areas. The 2014 survey confirms that not only are the state DOTs utilizing social media tools, many are doing so at a very sophisticated level.