Town of Morristown
Project Details
The story of Morristown’s growth is best explained as a relationship refreshed through social media growth and engagement married with unified branding and messaging.
Morristown is a place that always has something going on. To capitalize on this, Direct Development fostered relationships with local influencers and the press as well as the Town Administration to always be in-the-know, alert, and on-location for events, announcements, news, and happenings.
Direct Development implemented incremental changes to our social media strategy that have naturally evolved their online identity, tailoring the language, expanding use of graphic images, and implementing brand themes for various Town-wide announcements, such as news coming out of the Mayor’s Office, DPW, Construction, and more. We unified the language to be easily transferrable between Facebook and Instagram as well as in more formal press releases.
Thanks to Direct Development, Morristown’s Facebook alone saw an average 185 percent growth year-over-year for 2020. And although Morristown’s Instagram only went live in April 2020, we’ve seen tremendous growth and popularity. In just a few short months, the page has garnered several thousand followers, averaging hundreds of interactions and impressions daily (and consistently!), while the profile’s Story is viewed by nearly 20 percent of our followers. We also use Instagram to better engage with Morristown’s residents; for example, residents who submit their favorite photos of Morristown will be featured on the page.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, in an effort to provide residents the most up-to-date information from a source they can trust, we partnered with the Town Administration to record and release daily updates to Instagram Live hosted by the town’s Mayor himself. These updates – only a minute or two each – cover the latest information from the state or health officials, including executive orders, local case numbers, and vaccinations.
We strived to create a comfortable, informative, fun page for Morristown – one which accurately reflects the Town’s personality – and we believe we’ve achieved that. Many residents, businesses, and pages that follow Morristown’s are even comfortable reaching out via Instagram Messenger with questions, thoughts, and requests.
We’ve extended our brand guidelines to also include press releases, creating a formal template that is issued to all news agencies and published to Morristown’s website. We create graphics of each release for Instagram and Facebook, too, curated to capitalize on the best aspects of each platform to engage our followers and incentivize them to share that information with their own followers.
