ANNEYONGHAGOYANG! If you’re a netizen familiar with Facebook and Twitter, then there’s a big chance that you’ve
come across this strange writing style. This is a writing style that Goyang City, Gyungido uses on its SNS page. It’s basically a pun with Goyang’s name. It sounds similar to the word go-yang-ee (the Korean word for ‘cat’). Most of us assume that the SNS pages run by government offices are boring, but Goyang City Hall’s page isn’t; it’s definitely
lovable!
The Goyang City Hall webpage wasn’t hot in the beginning. Goyang City Hall started its Facebook page in May 2011. Just like any other webpage run by a government office, the city hall page only posted dull informationand news, thus failing to draw the attention of the city’s netizens. In 2012, the city hall page started posting interesting and fun posts featuring
a cat, which it had designated as its symbol. Finally, Goyang City Hall’s viral marketing efforts became successful.
ST : Unlike other SNS pages that are run as a news board, Goyang City’s SNS page uses the friendly cat character, which makes the page special. How did all this start?
Choi : Our team, the Digital Marketing Team, frequently holds group meetings. One day, we joked among ourselves that Goyang and go-yang-ee kind of sound alike. We tried the joke on our webpage as a random test. To our surprise, it became a big hit, so without getting permission from our mayor, we started posting and used the cat character. Thankfully, the netizens loved it, and so did our mayor. Ever since he gave us permission to use the character, we’ve been using it everywhere in Goyang City, such as in wall paintings, bus paintings, bench designs, and flower bushes.
ST : Can you introduce the members of the Digital Marketing Team and what roles they play in the team?
Choi : There are three people in our team: our team leader, Shin Hyung-woo; SNS Administrator Choi Yoon-jung; and I, the
SNS manager. For your information, the person who designed the cat character is our team leader, Mr. Shin. People are surprised because he’s the oldest in our team and he hasn’t had any experience in arts and illustration. But don’t you think the character is really cute?
ST : As the city hall is a government office, there must be some older office workers who are not used to these new marketing techniques. How did they react to this ‘young’ marketing tactic? Didn’t they worry that it might ruin the hall’s image of authority?
Choi : At first, they did, and we were actually expecting it. As we get orders from the government, some employees worried that we were making the government look silly. The Digital Marketing Team found out, however, that 90% of the users on Facebook, Twitter, and other SNS sites are teenagers or people in their twenties. As such, it occurred to us that if we’re going to come up with Internet marketing plans, we need to target that particular age group. So we thought that looking a bit silly to them wouldn’t be such a big problem. We decided, however, that in the places where the older generations are, or where you have to be rather solemn, we would not use the cat character, Goyang-che.
ST : Goyang City Hall seems to be close to other government office SNS users that use characters, such as Busan Aquarium and Minsokchon. How did you get in touch with them? Do you share information on marketing techniques?
Choi : This is a bit of a personal story, but when we began viral marketing, we first tried benchmarking with others. To do that, we visited other SNS marketers. Then just for fun, we decided to take a picture of ourselves and put it on our SNS page. Even though we didn’t mean to become popular, our fans loved it, so we started having regular conferences with the other SNS marketers.
ST : Were there any fun events related to managing Goyang City Hall’s SNS page?
ST : Goyang City Hall’s Facebook page is the first self-government SNS page to have acquired over 50,000 fans. Are you targeting a certain number?
Choi : Nope. We don’t have a goal when it comes to number of likes. Our Facebook fans currently number over 57,000, butwe’ve learned a lot from some experiences : The number of likes that we got then didn’t really reflect the number of netizens who were actually interested in us, so we don’t really care about the number of likes that we get. We do have a specific goal, however, in basic SNS managing. We try our best to hear out the citizens’ needs, and be able to meet
the needs and solve the problems of the citizens in the fastest way. We want to be funny and friendly to the netizens by using funny ways of writing and of using the cat character, but we think we also need to do our best at our original work: serving our citizens. So we try to carry out meaningful projects, like ‘Minwon-coaster’ (where you can talk one on one with a city hall worker on the Internet) and launching a signature collection drive to make a stand against Japan’s comfort women issue.
ST : Lastly, many students are interested in Goyang City’s viral marketing skills and ways of running its SNS pages. Can you give some tips to the students who are trying to run their own SNS page?
Choi : These days, I think many students are trying to come up with their own SNS pages for random reasons: for specs, experience, or just for fun. I don’t think, though, that most of them are doing a good job. As there are so many SNS pages these days, you have to strive to stand out. Create an original style for your page. You can use unique concepts as we do, or maybe use special programs that many others don’t know about. To do this, you need to put much time and effort into observing everything around you. The most important thing ever is not to slack off. SNS marketing may look easy, but it isn’t. It requires a lot of effort and time, so be sure to take it seriously. That’s the key to successfully managing an SNS page.
