Geneva has the most fans

Geneva not only has an active presence on various social media platforms, but also has the most Facebook fans. Facebook is not only the most-used social network among private individuals (3.41 million active users in Switzerland), but also among city governments. 27 authorities (previous year: 23) of the 100 largest Swiss cities have an official Facebook page. The cities of Carouge, Grenchen, Richterswil and Thonex have a new presence on Facebook. The ranking with the most fans is headed by the city of Geneva (15,786), ahead of Baden and Zurich. The Facebook page of the city of Baden has so many fans because it runs the Facebook presence together with Tourismus Baden.YouTube has replaced Twitter as the number two social network. 18 city administrations (previous year 12) present themselves on the YouTube video channel. The number of uploaded videos is mostly low. The number of subscribers is also modest, with cities in French-speaking Switzerland having the most followers: Geneva (237) ahead of Vevey (together with Tourismus Vevey) and Lausanne.15 of the cities surveyed have so far ventured onto Twitter, with the most active being the city of St.Gallen with 4,639 tweets ahead of Basel and Winterthur. Basel has the most followers, ahead of St.Gallen and Bern. The infographic below shows that Zurich could reach 3,163 followers, but only tweets in an emergency and has only sent 104 tweets so far. Onex, on the other hand, has already tweeted 1,062 times, but has only reached 18 followers.GooglePlus, Flickr, Instagram, Foursquare and XingThe number of GooglePlus pages of 14 may be surprising, but this is due to the fact that some of these were created automatically with the creation of a YouTube channel. A closer look at the appearances on GooglePlus reveals that only the cities of St.Gallen, Lucerne, Horw and Einsiedeln regularly post articles. Accordingly, these cities also have the most followers.During the online research, other social networks were discovered among the authorities: St.Gallen, Gossau, Köniz and Pully show photos on Flickr, Zug and St.Gallen square pictures on Instagram. St.Gallen also runs the location-based network Foursquare and the city of Kloten publishes its job advertisements on Xing.Active and passive citiesSt.Gallen actively operates seven social media channels. News is disseminated on five networks by the cities of Köniz and Pully. Zurich, Lucerne, Zug, Baden and Horw are present on four platforms. More important than the number of networks, however, is the (inter)activity. Social media only makes sense if Facebook, Twitter and GooglePlus are managed regularly and seriously, dialog is sought and inquiries are answered quickly.Cities such as Lugano, Biel, Thun, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Fribourg and Schaffhausen do not operate an official social media account. However, some cities have at least isolated departments that try to communicate with their users on Facebook.Conclusion and outlookThe number of cities that are active on social media has increased only slightly compared to the previous year. However, social media will increasingly become a matter of course in a city's public relations work. And just as the number of users on social networks is rising steadily, the number of city governments on social media will increase in the future - albeit only slowly.More info on: www.sozialemedien.ch