Two years ago, hardly anyone knew of or even really cared much for the City of Joburg’s Twitter and Facebook accounts. And why would they? It’s not like they were hotbeds of intriguing debate and wit.

Fast forward to 2015 and the city is set to become the most engaged metropolis on social media. It’s rapidly gaining a reputation that outstrips even tech-savvy Cape Town for engaging citizens and dealing with front line service queries through social media, all thanks to three young employees who make up the digital communications team.

What is a social media team and what do they do?

Tumelo Komape, Ntombi Blayi and Luyanda Lunika spend most of their time behind a laptop or a smartphone going through the city’s Twitter, Facebook and other social accounts.

Their work starts off at around 7am everyday, but unlike most 9 to 5 grafts, they carry on well into the evenings, weekends and sometimes public holidays.

“It’s part of our commitment to be active and available between 7am and 11pm” says 30-year-old Komape who manages all of the City of Joburg’s digital channels for communication.

“We don’t get paid overtime for it and have learnt to multi-task our personal lives because we’re constantly checking social media,” Komape says, “But we do it because we want to and are always empathetic towards our residents and what they are going through. We put ourselves in their shoes.”

A lot of the social media accounts’ success can be attributed to Komape’s arrival at the metro’s offices. With qualifications including web design, journalism and social media, Komapi says it was working in a customer service call centre, that has helped him handle the pressures of his job the most.

He initially joined the municipality in 2012 as a web officer where he was tasked with redesigning its website. After the transition, Komape noticed that the city had a Twitter and Facebook account but that they were practically dormant since being activated in 2010, with little interaction going on.

“The Facebook account had around 200 likes and Twitter has 2 500 followers,” Komape recalls.

He came up with a strategy to get the city to have a stronger active voice on social media and set up accounts on Flickr, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram.

The plan was to get more followers by interacting with citizens in real time, following back people who have followed the account, communicating city activities as much as possible and live tweeting most events.

It also helps that the City of Joburg sometimes lands up on the list of trending topics during important events such as the mayor’s budget speech.

Back in March, Komape set a goal for himself ans his team to have the City of Joburg Twitter followership past 100 000 and establish it as the biggest, most actively engaged municipal account.

Today the Twitter account is sitting at over 96 600 followers and Komape is confident it will reach its target and surpass the City of Cape Town‘s followership of 109 000.

It currently has 3 652 likes on Facebook, 873 Instagram followers and 58 subscribers on YouTube.

In 2013 the Twitter account’s activity was divided up as 89% of tweeting and only 11% of engagement with followers. By the following year, the numbers had literally switched, with 82% engagement and 18% one-way communication, according to stats on social media activity tracker, Sprout Social.

Most of the conversation (82%) happening on Twitter is around local services, the stats also show.

“We don’t want to look like we’re just campaigning for the city and not communicating about service delivery, which is what most of our followers are interested in,” Komape explains. “Residents want to know what is going on with things that concern them.”

Another strategy Komape says works for them is that the team has committed themselves to responding to every single valid tweet that comes through to the account, even the ones that are posted while they’re offline. Stats on Sprout Social reveal that the team’s response rate is 99% over 24 hours.

According to him, there’s never a backlog of unattended tweets. Each and every query is followed through until the matter has been resolved or is in the process of getting there, as is the case with most billing queries.

Luyanda Lunika joined the team last January, after having worked in customer services. He also works on the city’s newsletter and newsroom.

“Working here can sometimes be exciting, stressful but at the end of the day, work must be done regardless of the negative. For me, this job is more exciting than my previous job as a call centre agent,” he says.

“We only became a fully functional team just last year,” says Ntombi Blayi, the third team member. “My job is a 24/7 thing. When I started out, I hadn’t anticipated the amount queries we would receive and it gets quite crazy but it’s nice because we interact with residents and get a feel of how they feel about the City of Joburg’s services.”

One of the keys to being able to effectively communicate with residents is having in-depth knowledge of all the City of Joburg’s projects.

This means Komape, Lunika and Blayi have to attend meetings across all departments and know what’s happening, when, where, how and why. Because this has helped their internal profile, their skills are in high demand.

Komape has also trained the Pikitup, Jo’burg Water, Rea Vaya, City Power and Jo’burg Roads Agency social media teams on how to handle accounts and deal with residents through them. They have also built relationships with all the state owned entity managers.

“We communicate with these departments via WhatsApp so we’re all on the same page and know what’s going on with pending queries. I have also encouraged them to go the extra mile and be online on weekends as well, since then their accounts are also growing,” Komape explains.

“Anyone who wants to do this job needs to be passionate, empathetic, understanding of digital tools, be consistent in their work delivery and reliable. You also need to be okay with being monitored because we as social media managers need to know you are doing your job well,” he says. “A qualification is not much of a factor.”

When it comes to aggressive posts from residents, one needs to understand that it’s not a personal attack on you as an individual, but that the person is just venting their frustrations, the team says. Don’t be emotional, apologise and understand that the person has a right to be unhappy.

“Imagine you’re sitting somewhere in the cold weather and there’s no electricity, you’re cold and you’re hungry, I would also be upset,”says Komape. “But negativity doesn’t move me at all, some residents in other municipalities can only wish they could easily complain on social media and be attended to. We’ve had many people complementing our efficiency.”

“We draw a lot of courage and motivation from the positive comments, I make it a point to favourite those on my personal Twitter account and read them from time to time.”

For those who aren’t on Twitter or don’t have access to it, they can get through to the city via email, call centre, mobisite or the SMS lines but the city is on a quest to educate residents about digital channels and the upcoming free wifi hotspots distribution through the digital ambassador’s program.

Komape says although he hasn’t been approached by any municipality or company hoping to improve their social media strategy, he is open to the ide and wouldn’t mind passing his knowledge on to others.

For now though, he will be doing a presentation at a Department of Government Communication and Information System social media event next week where municipalities will take part in communication workshops.