TikTok
City of Minneapolis TikTok
It’s an age-old question in local government: How do you connect with the youths? For the City of Minneapolis, the answer is simple. Go where they’re going. Right now, that place is TikTok—and it just might be working.
OK, Mom, before you hit the “back” button here, let me explain. TikTok is a video-based social media app largely popular with Gen Zers (though more and more millennials and Gen Xers seem to be jumping on board as quarantine boredom hits). More than 800 million worldwide users create short, typically low-production lip sync, comedy, dance, or other attention-grabbing videos. Jordan Gilgenbach, the 31-year-old social media officer for the City of Minneapolis, started playing around with the app last summer—and saw potential to reach a new audience.
“At first I thought it was dumb,” Gilgenbach says. “But then the more time I spent on it, the more opportunity I saw as an engagement tool.”
Gilgenbach started creating lighthearted, genuinely funny TikToks on the city’s account in October 2019—first about that graphic graphic the city used to warn people about norovirus. Currently, the account has nearly 11,000 followers, many of whom are local teens and 20-somethings. The first video that really took off was a February video of Gilgenbach sitting in his snowy backyard wearing flip flops, a T-shirt, and shorts, with the caption “Minnesotans when it hits 40 degrees.” So far, it has 25,500 likes and 95,400 views—and it was shot in just a few minutes with his kindergarten-aged daughter/videographer.
“Not everything needs to be a big, beautiful production,” he says. “Most of what I make is with my 6-year-old and my iPhone.”
Needless to say, Gilgenbach, who has worked in government social media for nearly 10 years, had to sell the idea to create government-sponsored videos to his boss—and himself—before starting the channel. His elevator pitch? “For local government, the hardest group to reach is under 25, and we can’t ignore them,” he explains. Younger millennials and Gen Zers are the next generations of homeowners, tax payers, and voters—if they aren’t already.
Minneapolis isn’t the only city government getting into the TikTok game. Gilgenbach has been in conversation with social media managers in Columbus, Ohio; Tampa, Florida; and the Wisconsin DNR (which mailed him cheese as a response to a video showing Gilgenbach erasing Wisconsin from a map of the United States). The Chicago mayor and the California Highway Patrol follow the account.
“This is an opportunity for us to be at the forefront,” Gilgenbach says. “We can show we’re not just flyover country.”
More recently, the city's account has taken on a somber tone. Their newest posts were used to disseminate information from a press conference after the death of George Floyd and the subsequent protests, with their latest being the second-most viewed video on the account. Even so, the approach stays within the city’s experiment: Can TikTok be an effective platform to communicate with a younger audience? Time will tell.
Check out the City of Minneapolis TikTok here, or by downloading the app.
