Social Media Strategy for Government Communicators

It usually arrives as a forwarded message with one line on top. A council member has noticed that a neighboring city is on Bluesky and wants to know why yours isn't. Or the chief has watched a sheriff's office go viral on TikTok and would like the same by the end of the quarter. Or someone in leadership has decided that X has become too toxic and wants every account shut down by Friday.

Each of those requests sounds like a strategy question. None of them is. They are platform questions, and the most useful thing a government communicator can do with them is to refuse to answer them in the form they arrive.

Here is the principle this whole course rests on: a platform is not a strategy. Posting on Instagram is not a strategy. Having a TikTok account is not a strategy. Being on every platform is certainly not a strategy. A strategy is a plan that connects your communication activities to your organization's goals, your audiences and outcomes you can measure. Social media is one element of that plan. It's a powerful element, and it's still a tool.

Organizations that start with "what platform should we be on?" are asking the wrong question. The right one is "who are we trying to reach, where are they, and what do we need them to know, believe or do?" Once that's answered, the platform question mostly answers itself, and when it doesn't, you at least have criteria to argue from.

That matters more in 2026 than it did even two years ago. The platforms themselves have changed under our feet: who owns them, who uses them, how they handle false information, and what it signals politically to be present on them. A communicator who chose platforms by habit in 2022 is now running accounts that may no longer serve anyone. This lesson walks through how to make those choices on purpose, and how to defend them when the forwarded email lands.