Kara Roberson - Government Communications That Work: Strategy, Psychology, and Public Trust

Government communications is at the heart of this episode, as you sit down with Kara Roberson, Strategic Communications Officer for the City of Wentzville, Missouri, to unpack how a fast‑growing community uses smart messaging, data, and creativity to truly connect with residents. From managing 29 different communication channels to doubling down on branding and social media strategy, this conversation gives practical, real‑world insight into what modern government communications looks like when it’s done with intention, humor, and a deep respect for public service.

Episode overview

This episode is divided into two parts, both centered on government communications and persuasion in the public sector. 

• In part one, you walk through concepts from three influential books on messaging and influence: “Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive,” “Magic Words,” and “Think Faster, Talk Smarter.” You translate lessons like the “foot‑in‑the‑door” technique, word choice, and mirroring language into everyday government scenarios such as code enforcement, building inspection, and tough resident conversations. 
• In part two, Kara takes listeners inside Wentzville’s communications strategy—how her team of three supports a city that has been one of Missouri’s fastest‑growing communities for nearly two decades, while coordinating closely with economic development, police, and parks. 

Throughout the episode, you tie both halves together around a central idea: effective government communications is less about “compliance” and more about collaboration, trust, and meeting people where they are—online, in print, and in person. 

Inside modern government communications

Kara started in Wentzville as a part‑time communications manager when much of the work was outsourced, and has grown into a strategic leadership role overseeing communications and customer relations. Today she leads a small but highly productive team that manages around 29 different ways the city communicates—from websites and social media to billboards, lobby screens, print newsletters, and e‑news. 

She explains how Wentzville’s median age of about 33 shapes their government communications strategy, especially the heavy emphasis on social media. Facebook remains the primary information source for many residents, and the city has grown its following from roughly 1,500 to about 25,000 followers over 11 years by consistently showing up where people already are and delivering content in formats that fit each platform. At the same time, community surveys made it clear that residents still deeply value the city’s print newsletter, so it stayed—a reminder that government communications has to be data‑driven, not trend‑driven. 

Kara also shares why Wentzville split core content responsibilities with its police and parks teams, while communications remains tightly integrated with economic development at the administrative level. A dedicated digital content coordinator supports economic development messaging so business recruitment, workforce stability, and quality‑of‑life stories all feel cohesive under the city brand. 

Social media strategy that actually works

One of the most practical sections of the episode dives into how Wentzville fine‑tunes government communications for each channel instead of copy‑pasting messages everywhere. 

• On Facebook, the team leans into longer, more detailed posts that align with the platform’s algorithm and audience expectations. 
• On Instagram, they made a deliberate shift about four to five years ago to use only photos and videos—no text on graphics—after realizing that is what users with a visual mindset want from that platform. That simple chang

Connect at TakisTalk.com

Transcript

Welcome, Format Shift, Meet Roscoe

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to Ktakis Talk. I'm Greg Dektakis, your host. Now, if you've gotten this far, you've probably already met Roscoe, our new brand ambassador. I gotta I gotta be honest. It's been just a blast creating Roscoe and seeing what kind of crazy, stupid things we can get him to do. Did you know that Roscoe can surf? Skateboard? Did you also know that he could read? Yeah, that's Roscoe. He's a man of many talents. Roscoe's not the only thing that's due to the podcast. We've changed up the formatting just a little bit. Now, today's podcast is all about communications. Part one, we've taken two best-selling titles and a third book that I discovered perhaps a decade ago when I started my marketing company. I have a small business that does marketing, digital marketing for other small businesses. What I love about the third book, and we'll get into the titles in just a minute, is that everything in that book is a study. Everything is quantified. It comes from marketing and psychological experiments. And so we have real-world numbers on how your messaging can move people's behavior. Part two of the podcast, Kara Roberson, strategic communications officer for the city of Wentzville, Missouri. We're going to go over how they're managing over 29 different ways to communicate with their community. How when Kara took over, they had about 1,500 followers on their social media. Today they have over 25,000. We're going to be looking at long-term strategic communications, how you could use your communications department in tandem with your economic development department to get better results, different platforms, cadences, you name it, we're going to discuss it. I want to start by diving into this first book. I love this book. I've used it a lot. Yes, 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive by Noah Goldstein, Steve Martin, I think it's a different Steve Martin, and Robert Cialdini. I don't like ambiguity, and that's one reason why I love this book so much. Everything has been quantified. There are A and B tests, multiple variables, all sorts of things. In some instances, they'll do a test, they're not quite sure why they got the results that they did. So then they'll change the variables a little bit to try and funnel in, zero in on what the true cause was and how they're actually moving people's behavior. So I'm just picking one out here, and this is kind of relevant to what I do in building inspection and code enforcement. And the concept here is it's actually experiment number 14. And they went out and they asked a bunch of people to put this large sign on their front yard. They had 17% of the people that they asked agreed to put the sign out there. But once they changed up the process a little bit, they went out and they asked people to put this very small sign in their window first, and then later would give them a second ask to put that larger sign on their front lawns. The people that agreed to put that larger sign up went from 17% to 76%. In a lot of instances, they call this in the book the foot-in-the-door technique, right? You you've made this con you've made this connection with this individual. There's some trust now, there's some rapport, and now they're willing to take that next step. When we do code enforcement, some instances will have hoarding. Perhaps we'll have people with yard issues, they have cleanup issues, whatever the case may be. If we go up to a person like that that has an overwhelming amount of work to do on this property, and we hit them with everything all at once, they'll simply shut down. When we start with small increments, you have an inoperable vehicle in your driveway, you have weeds, you have trash, you have these overgrown trees, whatever the case, make it as palatable and as manageable so that we can move forward, not overwhelm someone and shut them down. The other part of that is with code enforcement. There's usually that defense shield that goes up. This person is coming to my house and they're telling me what to do. And once we start working with them, defenses go down, rapport is established, and now we have that communication. And it's no longer adversarial, it's collaborative. I'm gonna get into collaborative in just a minute. While we're discussing these quantified psychological tests and so forth, a test that I stumbled upon doing this for marketing and so forth was the Milgram Shock experiment of 1963, I believe it was. Look it up on Google and see how easy humans are easily influenced and persuaded to kill another human being. Not by threat, not by anything, by simply being asked to do a very innocuous thing. Perception and words. We've all been told that, I don't know, I think it's something like 70% of human communication is body language, another 20% is tone, and the actual words that you speak are the last 10%. My personal opinion is that perhaps that's not quite accurate. When we go out and we do what we do, building inspection, code enforcement, it's very important to choose your your words wisely. The word compliance and compliant comes up a lot. If I'm a homeowner, I'm in my home, and you're code enforcement, and you come to my house and you tell me that something is not compliant, and I have to comply. Oh boy, that's not gonna go well. And I I just see that as such an authoritarian kind of word, kind of approach to take with someone. One of the things that we train in our department, both building inspection and code enforcement, is not to use the word compliant, but collaborative. We want to collaborate with our contractors, our homeowners, landlords, whomever the case may be, to get to a common goal. We both want something that's going to be positive for both of us. We want this to be a symbiotic relationship, not a parasitic or competitive one. So we choose our words wisely. Speaking of choosing your words wisely, I want to hop over to Magic Words by Jonah Berger. And one of his key takeaways, I guess, is leverage similarity, mirroring language. Now, I don't get out in the field much, and I love doing building inspection, especially on those more complicated commercial, those crazy projects. So when I get an opportunity to get out, I get out. One particular day I got to go out to a project we have going on. I believe the contractor is Millie Severson. I'm I hope I'm saying that properly. We've got about 30 acres under the roof, two large warehouses, RD. When I go out there, typically my interface is with their superintendent, a young man, Cali boy, CSU grad, articulate, intelligent, cordial. I love doing the inspections with this young man. On this particular day, we're doing the inspection. Something's not quite right. I have some questions. He says, Well, you know, the subcontractor, the owner of that particular company, is on site. Why don't we contact him and let's see if we can get an answer? So we do that. And again, we have another young, articulate college grad, polished contractor. Now, something I have to point out here is that most of the tradesmen in Northern California are Hispanic men. It makes sense in just a minute. The owner of the company doesn't have an answer for me either. So he says, My foreman, he'll have the answer. We contact him, we meet with the foreman. Now, the foreman is not a Cali boy. It's obvious that English is his second language, but he's a great communicator. He knows his job. This guy reminds me of my dad. The only difference being is he's Hispanic, my dad was Greek. But that same kind of, I'm gonna say broken English for lack of a better word, speaks with an accent, knows what he's talking about, hardworking, intelligent, technically proficient. But again, we run into a roadblock because he doesn't have the answer that I need. Final, this is our Hail Mary. Let's find the tradesman that actually did this installation. So we have the conversation with him. And now I really need my superintendent and the owner of the company because they both have to translate. I guess if I were to say that English was not this gentleman's first language, that would be an overstatement. English was not his language at all. He knew about as much English as I know Spanish. And let me circle back to my Spanish lessons in just a minute because this is ridiculous. So we get down to the point where I have two interpreters. The foreman is sitting in the background with his arms crossed with this big grin on his face. He's just enjoying everything that's going on. I have a torn piece of a blueprint trying to sketch something out. The tradesman's got a stick and he's drawing hieroglyphics in the dirt. By the end of the day, we determine that yes, the installation was done perfectly, and I can sign them off and they can proceed. Fast forward to that afternoon, I have to meet with our chief building official, Frank Mufarish, and one of our attorneys, Molly O'Toole. We have a weekly, weekly, bi-weekly, whatever meeting. We're trying to craft an ordinance. So now I am communicating with Frank, very well educated. Molly, possibly even more educated, polished, articulate, intelligent young lady. So I have to go from drawing hieroglyphics in the dirt to being very cognizant not to drop an F-bomb in Molly's presence. Now I'm not going to say that Molly is a stranger to the F-bomb, and quite frankly, the F-bomb is a very versatile piece of the English language. You know, depending on how you conjugate it, it could be a noun, a verb, whatever. It's extremely versatile, a great tool to use. And I'm not trying to say that Molly's a potty mouth either, but let's just say that, okay, let's just leave it at that. But hieroglyphics, F-bombs all day long on the job site, to now I'm in a conference room with an attorney and a chief building official. So I have to throttle everything that I'm saying. Mr. Berger's point here in magic words, mirroring the vocabulary, vernacular, and everything else of your audience is extremely relevant. I don't want to have a conversation with head tradesmen and not be able to communicate. I also have to be respectful and communicate on a different level or in a different manner when I'm speaking with someone like Molly or Frank. Getting back to my Spanish lesson, I have a daughter. We spent uh quite a bit on her education, all sorts of degrees, great things. She is she's taken a lot of Spanish, so she's considered fluent in Spanish. So I approach her and I say, you know what? What I mentioned earlier, most of the tradesmen, Hispanic, sometimes it would be great if I knew some Spanish and I can interact, and these inspections would go a lot easier. And she goes, Great, I can teach you some Spanish. She says, Let's start with Sacapunta. I don't know if I'm saying that right, but the first thing that came out of my mouth is, I don't want to start by swearing at these guys. And she says, no, no, no, that means pencil sharpener. Pencil sharpener, yes, very versatile word to have on a construction site because there are pencil sharpeners everywhere. There are pencils everywhere. On what planet is that going to be of any use to me? So, you see, you owe me some money because you failed at this education. Honey, that's just a joke. I'm just being funny for the podcast. I just you know you're one of the the the most intelligent young women I know. Hmm. I wonder if it would be prudent to edit that part out. Anyway, let's get into the next book. Think Faster, Talk Smarter by Matt Abrams. Matt's got a couple of concepts here that I really like. He's got one procedure, I guess. He calls what, so what, now what. In essence is what's the problem, why it matters, and next steps. Another thing he mentions is start with the bottom line. I like to do that. I have a technique that I like to use there. Another thing that he mentions is maximize mediocrity. Now he's not saying to do shoddy work or anything of that nature, but what happens a lot of times is that we get caught off guard. We're not ready with an answer for something, and we try to answer it. We try to be perfect, and all we do is fumble and look anything but perfect. For instance, I got a new one the other day. We got a phone call from a resident. It was raining mustard packets, and we needed to go out immediately and deal with a threat. I don't know. I had to take a minute to figure that one out. I simply tell people, I'm not prepared to answer. Anything I tell you will most likely be a lie, if not just inaccurate. So I need time, I need data, and I need time to formulate an opinion or give you a solution. Most people are okay with that. I also like to start with a bottom line. I'll ask in a perfect world, what solution can I offer you today that would make you happy? That gives me a very good idea, at least a starting point for any kind of negotiations, but it also gives me a perspective into the person's motivations. Recently we had two ladies come into the permit center asking for someone from code enforcement because there was a tree situation. There was a tree that was decaying and it was going to drop and it was going to injure someone. And so the what? The problem, the tree. Decayed, why it matters. It may fall, it's going to injure someone. Next steps. They wanted us to go out and issue a notice and order to the property owner or a summary abatement to get them to cut this tree down straight away. Well, in Livermore, we have protocols for just about everything. And this is not our first rodeo. Our protocol is to send out a certified arborist to give us an assessment of the tree and to know what next steps are. They didn't like this idea, and it became clearly evident after a little bit of an exchange where threats started to fly about if you don't take this tree down right now and that falls, it's going to be the city of Livermore's responsibility, and you will have killed a child. Holy cow. Wow, we went from something that might be, I don't know, tree might be in distress, to somebody's going to die. I think I think Matt's approach to super simplifying what could be maybe a volatile exchange, maybe you get caught off guard not knowing what the subject is, what the answer is, to simplifying it and breaking it down into three simple steps. What, so what, and now what. Putting that all together and coming back with, at the very least, maximized mediocrity. It may not be perfect, but it's a doable solution. And you know, in most cases, buys you some time if that's what you need. So that's all I've got for now for persuasive communications. If you're interested, take a look at Think Faster, Talk Smarter by Matt Abrams, Magic Words by Jonah Berger. And my favorite, yes, 50 scientifically proven ways to be persuasive. Special note on that one: the latest version is up to 60 scientific proven ways. Haven't gotten that one yet. Have to see what the new 10 are. But if communicating and influencing, whether you're a city manager and your interactions are with elected officials, your building inspector and your interactions are with community members or everything in between. I think these books are very informative. They were very eye-opening for me and extremely useful. And with that, we're going to roll in to Kara Roberson and Communications Strategies. Today I want to welcome Carol Roberson from Wentzville to the podcast. Carol, welcome. Thank you. Great to be here. I thought I got that right. So I'm looking at your profile. It says communications. Let me get back into that because strategic communications officer. I think I know what that means, but could you run me through what you do, what's under your purview, what that really means?

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Sure. I'd kind of like to take a step back a little bit. So I started here in Wentzville as a part-time communications manager. And at the time that just meant they were outsourcing a lot of things and needed somebody in-house to kind of take that over. As the city grew, so did my job duties. And I eventually became full-time about three years later. And now I oversee a team of three in our communications and customer relations divisions. So basically, because of all of that, my position has changed over time. And where I used to be a lot more hands-on with communications and social media and website, all of that now is more an oversight component. And I actually have staff and a team to help with those things. So today it's a little bit more about being proactive instead of being reactive. I can be a bit more strategic in this role. I work directly with our city administrator and assistant city administrator to kind of try to foresee some of those issues and different things and try to counteract some of that with our messaging and different things that we can do from our team's perspective.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

So you're managing your web, your social, all of your communications, is that correct?

Platform-Specific Content Strategy

SPEAKER_00 17:59

We have about 29 different ways we communicate with the public, and that's all coming from primarily from three of us.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

Wow. 29. So are we are we segregating different types of social platforms, or is there something more that I just don't know about?

SPEAKER_00 18:14

There are probably 10 of that as maybe different social platforms, but it's also billboards and e-newsletters, print newsletters. We do the website, obviously. We have TVs that are in our lobbies and a lot of our buildings that allow us to do some marketing and communications on those as well. So just those are just to name a few, but we try to be as many places as we can and meet people where they are and get the message out in multiple ways because we know people don't always see you know certain channels.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

So one of the things that I noticed is I and I don't know if this is accurate, is that the demographic there at Wentzville is fairly young families. I'm going to say a lot of people that are very social media savvy. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 19:01

It is. We do have like a median age around 33, and that does drive a lot of our engagement on social media. It also means that that is our primary source of information. However, people in this community, regardless of age, seem to very be very attached to our print publications. So when we go out and ask in community surveys and different things like how they want to receive information or where they get their information, they're by and large still pointing to Facebook, but also to our print newsletter, which goes out about six times a year. So we thought at some point we might be able to kind of scale back from that. And and COVID would have probably allowed us a time to do that, but that was just not something that the community wanted. So again, we try to be be kind of everywhere.

Reels, Trends, And Measurable Impact

SPEAKER_01 19:47

I get that. I had read somewhere that, okay, so here's a dirty word that I hate. It's baby boomer. I always thought baby boomer were my parents, but you know, my parents had me when they were babies, so I guess we're in the same generation. But they say we baby boomers like Facebook more. My kids, perhaps Instagram. But are you pushing more messaging out through Facebook?

SPEAKER_00 20:10

We are. Um, we just topped off about probably about a month ago at 25,000 followers on our Facebook account. Again, when I started, and this the city was quite a bit smaller. We were at about 1,500 followers on our Facebook account. That's been about 11 years. So we've had quite a bit of growth in the city and in our social media channels, but that is where we find the most bang for our buck in terms of getting out in front of people and getting people to share our content. And we have a very active community on kind of those hidden neighborhood channels where they're having conversations usually without city government and so or about city government. So we have a lot of people who are already engaged on those platforms. So we use our channel to really try to counteract some of that sometimes. But yeah, we we have a pretty big following on both Facebook and Instagram, but certainly primarily on Facebook.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

I see that you have a huge marketing background. Was that did you start private sector marketing or was it always in public sector?

SPEAKER_00 21:14

It's always been public sector. I worked for a nonprofit for the first seven years of my career. And then I come by public sector, I just I couldn't get out of it. My mom, my dad, my aunt, and my grandfather all worked in some form of uh local, county, state government. And so as much as I was trying to not do that, that's kind of where I got pulled. And so I've been working in local government communications since 2007.

Measuring Engagement And Reporting

SPEAKER_01 21:43

Oh, okay. All right. Where I'm at, Livermore. We have we're doing fairly well financially. We have some neighboring towns that are struggling a little bit financially. One of those towns I happen to live in, and they had to go to a sales tax increase to make their budget work. Our economic development. We have uh two dynamic young men, uh Jake Potter and Brandon Cardwell. And I never really understood. I always thought marketing for a city, why you're a monopoly. But in terms of my end of it, you know, building inspection, code enforcement, yeah, we're a monopoly. You're gonna get a permit, it's gonna be in our town, right? But they're tasked with bringing in businesses, and they've been very good at it. So I can understand where, in your instance, I'm assuming you have an economic development department, that you're an integral part of that.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

We are. We're very, we we actually economic development is part of the admin team. So communications and economic development are kind of collaps like we collaborate all the time. We're very much integrated. In fact, one of the things we changed last year in our communication strategy was to have a point person for each department. And so we have a digital content coordinator that primarily handles economic development messaging and and campaigns and things like that. We all work together to do it. But if we didn't work with them, that's just something they would have to kind of you know be out there on their own trying to figure out how to navigate that marketing piece. And that's so that's certainly something that we are happy to help them with. I get that.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

So I think you have is GM in your town? Do you have a GM plant?

Humor, Humanity, And Public Trust

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Yeah, they've been here since the 80s, so way, way before me. I mean, I was alive but barely, and they've been here for a while. We have ebbs and flows with them, as you can imagine. I mean, there are times where they are furloughing people or there's a strike or something like that, which does kind of dampen what's going on here from an economic development standpoint, and then we kind of shift gears in terms of how we're marketing things, or maybe just really showing support for those people who are still residents and trying to, you know, kind of get by while this furlough or strike is happening. So we have we've had that happen a couple of times here, and of course that trickles down then to those businesses who are like adjacent to GM. So they're you know manufacturing seats or something to that effect. And so that will kind of impact that group as well. But yeah, we are proud to be a GM town. It is, they're certainly our largest employer, and it's something that it gives everybody great pride to have this organization. It's large, you know, we're at, I think, somewhere around 4,000 employees that are at the GM plant. So that's a big driving economic factor here. So we try to really support them as much as we can.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

Do you have other large employers, or it's is your economic base very diverse, or do you have a commuter commuter residence where they're they're commuting to other locations?

SPEAKER_00 24:37

They are commuting. So about two-thirds of our employ our residents are commuting to other locations at right now. I would say we it's kind of this flipped thing where we've got a lot of people that are coming in to work in GM, but they don't necessarily live here, and a lot of people here who are going out to work other places. So we certainly are aware of that and and try to do things to kind of counteract that. But GM is our number one employer. Everybody else is way below in terms of numbers, but I think our next biggest, I can pull it up too, but I think our next biggest is the school district. So we've got a pretty robust school district that you know, lots of employees in that because it's spread out over mostly over Wentzville, but then in a couple neighboring cities as well.

Website Overhauls And Vendor Choices

SPEAKER_01 25:19

So that was something that I read that I thought was kind of odd. I think I think what I read was that the school district was your number two largest employer. And so you have a huge community there with a lot of school-age kids. I've read that the community has been growing a lot, and you have a lot of young families coming in and setting up shop there. And the little bit that I've read about the community, I like to background things a little bit. You know, I'm I look at things like okay, I'm gonna out myself. My dad, my daughter just came back, she was away at school, and now we're shopping around for she's thinking about going to medical school. And so, you know, she's like, oh, this is a nice place, or that's a nice place. And the first thing I do is I go look at FBI statistics on crime and whatever else, because that's I just did that. So I did that with Wentzfield and you folks, very safe community, very nice community.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Yeah. Yeah, we're we've got our crime stats are are low. We we make sure that we've got like five drivers that kind of point how we communicate, but then again, also how we just kind of do business, their strategic goals, if you will. Um, we call them our critical success factors, and one of those is to be a safe and welcoming community. So that's something that we kind of circle back to and try to point to as often as we can. Economic vitality and I should have these memorized. And you know, there are five things that just are core to what we do, and of course, safety is at the forefront of that.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

You mentioned different modes of communication, typically different modes, even different social media platforms, right? There's a different demographic attached to that. When you're putting out a message, is it pretty much the same all the way across the board, or you try to craft it for a specific demographic? I mentioned earlier a lot of people on Facebook, but you're doing most of everything you do on Facebook. So a message that might be on Facebook, is it going to be different if you're putting it on a billboard or some of your other digital media?

Citywide Branding That Sticks

SPEAKER_00 27:14

Of course, yeah. We try to differentiate not only necessarily by audience, but also by kind of by that uh what's the word I'm looking for? Sorry, this is bad. Like the connection. So people are not going to, they're going to scroll on Facebook and they might read this longer post, not just because they're older, but because that's what Facebook wants and that's what drives the algorithm. And people are going to read this kind of longer post. So we make sure that that content is engaging and maybe longer than we would in any other place outside of like a newsletter. But when we look at things like Instagram, originally we were utilizing that in a very similar fashion. We were crafting maybe shorter messaging and using more hashtags because that's what Instagram liked, but we weren't necessarily paying as much attention to what the channel wanted. So we made a change. I don't know, it's probably been four or four or five years now, but for Instagram to only be pictures. So we do not post anything that has text on it at all. It's part of our strategy on Instagram that that's what people want when they're scrolling through Instagram and they don't want to see graphics. We had like a 300% increase in engagement after we did that. And so while we can still push out messaging and make sure that people know about the things that we want them to know about, we're doing it in a different way just because we want to make sure that we're interacting with them the way they want to be interacted with on that channel.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

So Instagram said pictures, are you using video also?

SPEAKER_00 28:43

Yes. Yeah, we I guess maybe beginning of last year or 2024, we made a shift to using reels. So we do those both on Instagram and Facebook. That's our number one engagement social media wide. Um we had the first six months of 2025, we had a million views. I don't know what those like right now because we're running those reports, but between January and June, we had a million views.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

Wow, that must be some interesting topics. Or was it just a hot topic? You had something terrible going on.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

No, so it's it's capitalizing on those trends. So it's utilizing the trending videos that people want to watch because that's what they're doing when they're scrolling on their phone for and in reels, but connecting those with things that we made sure that each video has a purpose. So whether it's hiring or making somebody aware of a program or service that we offer, but we're doing it in a fun way. That was something that we were hesitant to do for a very long time. And we kind of dipped our toe in the water with that, and it worked very well. Um, when the first reel that we did, we actually spent time just making fun of ourselves. So people were poking fun at the city on this neighborhood page that I referenced earlier, and we utilized those kind of comments to poke fun at ourselves, and it it resonated really well. So we looked at it as a way to, again, capitalize on those trends, but make sure that we were still getting the message out that we wanted to share.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

So, two questions. One is how are you measuring engagement? Are is there a call to action or anything on your videos or pictures or it depends on the topic and the video.

Tag The Mayor And Department Brands

SPEAKER_00 30:20

I would say 80% of the time we are utilizing Link in bio for Instagram and a direct link in Facebook to tie them back to something on the website so we can track analytics that way. We are also, we also utilize a social media management tool as well as native insights and things inside Facebook and Instagram to look at measuring for engagements and comments and those sort of things to kind of track that. We produce a communications monthly report to look at all those numbers and see what performed the best, and then also like what topics are performing well so that we can decide kind of that informs the strategy of how we continue to push out those messages and maybe we need to shift gears or maybe this is a great place for this to happen or whatever. But yeah, we're we're constantly looking at measuring because we know that if we're not measuring something that we we just don't have any idea if it's working. And it's communications, it's hard. Like it's always been a hard place to measure. I think social media and the website, like those have not been things that were even the website has a website in some form has been around in my entire career, but still it wasn't utilized the way it is today, and certainly not social media until 2007, 2008. But to have those types of tools that we can physically track and and see the engagement is super helpful.

SPEAKER_01 31:41

You said you posted something where you were poking fun at yourselves. So being a municipality, a city, a government agency, there's always that hesitation to have any kind of humor. Was that was that that little point of we're gonna try this and it was all pens and needles until it worked?

Cadence, Algorithms, And Reach

SPEAKER_00 31:58

It was a little bit. So we had done one post prior to that for April Fool's because that felt like a safe place to have fun and see if, but this was just a post at that time, it was not a video. But we had a water tower that was under construction and there was all this like scaffolding on the outside, and people were, you know, they it took a while. So they would paint and then they would lift the scaffolding and then they would paint again. It was this whole deal. But people were, you know, teasing about what they were doing with it or what they should paint on it, or that it should be like a it looked sort of like the scaffolding string piece of it, it looked sort of like a carousel or like a swing at a an amusement park. So we actually turned it into that. We used was prior to AI, so we used Photoshop to turn it into a swinging amusement park ride and announced that we would be adding that as part of our the next year, you know, to the budget for the next year. So um, but it went really well. People liked that we had been like we were listening to the conversation that they were having in this other space, but that we were sort of making fun of ourselves and the fact that this was taking longer and was kind of weird anyway, but it did perform really well. And so that was just our first, like, okay, maybe we can be a little more fun. And so we did that a little bit from time to time, not to the same extent until we did that first reel and it it just blew up. So I think people want to see government be human. They this helps humanize us and just humanize our staff and and all of the things that people seem to want from us.

SPEAKER_01 33:34

I agree with everything you said. We do we everything that I do has to do with some sort of enforcement. And I always tell my piece people we're not looking at enforcement, we're looking at collaborating. And once you convey that message, everybody is so much more at ease and you have such a better experience. So Yeah, agree. I think I read that you've revamped your website twice. Do you guys use one of the typical, you don't have to name anything, but one of the typical government website vendors, or are you doing from scratch? Are you a traditionalist?

SPEAKER_00 34:06

We do not use one of the typical vendors. We always have to go out for bid because we're government and that's what we do. We we use about, I guess in 2015, we switched to a vendor. We were using like a local vendor when I first started, but we really needed something that was more robust and kind of catch up with with the trends for websites and things like that. So we switched to a vendor that had just sort of gotten into government. They do a lot more now. We were with them about a decade, and now we've switched to another company that we're really happy with. We actually use a WordPress site now, which I was a little worried about, but it has been way more, it kind of gives us a little bit of that hybrid where we can actually, I feel like we have more control over how it looks and functions, and it doesn't have that cookie-cutter appearance that some of those other organizations do.

Life In Wentzville: Parks And Festivals

SPEAKER_01 35:00

No, I get that. I am a little salty at the fact, I believe, in my personal opinion, that a lot of the vendors that sell anything digital, anything software to a government agency doesn't put their best foot forward. I look at things that are going on private sector, and I'll look at our stuff and say, why can't why don't we have that? Why isn't it the same? And so that's why I asked, I'm not let's look at something else. Branding. We're branding a city. You've been there for quite a bit. You've developed that brand for Wentzfeld, I would say, right? So what was your biggest challenge there? Was it was there anything poor that you had to maybe change 180 degrees, just build things up? What were you trying to sell? What was the hardest part of that?

Local Food, Growth, And Stories

Pro Development And Leadership Training

SPEAKER_00 35:47

Let's see. Well, let me give you a little background on it. So we we weren't doing a great job at branding. We weren't doing a great job at making sure that every time something got in front of someone, they immediately recognized that it was from us. And that was a a realization that came through a communications audit that we did in 2019. And once we looked at that and people were like, oh, well, we didn't even know this parks guide that was coming to our house was from the city, they were they were recognizing it as a you know an activity guide, but not necessarily making the connection there to the city. But we did a kind of 180 with that and started really making sure that everything we put out not only had our logo on it, which we were doing a pretty good job with that, but was certain colors and certain style and certain fonts. And that all sounds basic and normal and obvious, but it wasn't something that we were doing mostly because at that time I was still coming out of being part-time and it was just me. So trying to manage a lot of that was just let's just get the information out there and not necessarily worrying about having a brand in place. So when we did the first website redesign in 2015, I created a what I was calling a word mark for the city of Wentzville because that's what I had done at the previous city I'd been in. It was something that we used quite regularly when the logo just didn't fit or was maybe just too we needed something that was one color, all of the different things that might come up. But I created it for the website because of the placement on the website. It just kind of looked better, it was more streamlined than our logo, and it felt like it was fine for that space, except what happened was people liked it. So, and our other logo was a bit dated. It had it was an oval, it had a Times New Roman font for the main Wentzville font. It just needed revamping, but I was I'd come from another city where you don't touch the logo, and I'd had to touch the logo at the other city too, just because it had some shadow issues, but that's a whole nother story. But I had learned my lesson that I had to be play very nicely with not that that these logos are very, very important to certain people and to the community. And so I had not wanted to change the logo. But when we did this website revamp and realized that that was something we really kind of liked, um, we made the decision to move everything as part of that rebrand to that new logo, and we got rid of the Oval logo entirely. So now that means this thing that I made as a word mark, which is nice and clean and it works very well, and I still really like it, but it's like on the giant water tower and it's it's on everything. But it really helped us kind of be that spearhead for the branding that came next. So back to your original question, that was just some background of kind of how we got to that place. But once we realized that we needed to make sure that everybody was very aware, whether they were on social media or getting this piece of mail that they knew exactly where it was coming from, we went kind of hyperactive on the branding for about two years. We've scaled back a little bit, but still one of the things I hear over and over is how well our brand performs, how well, how great it looks, how eye-catching it is. And I so I think we haven't scaled back as much as we thought we would. But when we did it at first for those first two years, it was really just to kind of saturate the market, if you will, with everything that we wanted to make sure that people knew this is Wentzville and this is this is what this looks like. This is how you know that you're getting trustworthy, accurate, dependable information when you see this stuff come through.

SPEAKER_01 39:35

So somebody's been gonna be climbing up on that water tower soon and and make some edits, right? Right.

SPEAKER_00 39:41

So nobody's changing that logo while I'm here. We're not no more websites and no more logos, no.

SPEAKER_01 39:48

Okay, so logos, all that kind of good stuff. But Wentzville, are do you have a a personality BMW, the ultimate driving machine? Are you you have anything like that? Nike just do it, I think is still what they're doing.

SPEAKER_00 40:03

So Wentzville is the crossroads of the nation, and that is because we are literally at the intersection of highway 61 and highway 70. So we are we are very accessible for logistics, which is why GM is here. We have access to rail, we have access to an international airport, we are at these two kind of crossroads where people can get anywhere across the country, and we're pretty centrally located. So that that's the crossroads has kind of been our thing. People know us as the crossroads of the nation, and that's that's been our tagline for as long as I know. I'm sure I think Indianapolis is the crossroads of America, so we just make sure that we're the crossroads of the nation.

SPEAKER_01 40:46

You have uh an airport. Is that Wentzville has an airport?

SPEAKER_00 40:50

We don't have an airport, no. There's a St. Louis International.

SPEAKER_01 40:53

I see. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 40:55

From a logistics standpoint, it's it's you know, it's a really easy jump to to have a company be in Wentzville and get, you know, if they're if that's something that they need access to.

Recruiting With Purpose And Benefits

SPEAKER_01 41:06

When you're do building a brand, you build the brand for Wentzville. Do you do any of that brand building or building a personality for any individual departments or any individual any individuals within Wentzville?

SPEAKER_00 41:23

So I would say like we stay really far away from a from a people perspective in terms of not getting into anything that's electeds and things like that. The mayor of the current mayor of Wentzville has been the mayor for a very long time and was an alderman before that. And he has his own brand that he has established, and we have jumped on that ourselves a little bit because people like on this neighborhood page, this is going to be the theme of the story, but people like to tag the mayor and then they like to talk about the fact that they've tagged the mayor. So there became this kind of trend to hashtag tag the mayor, so much so, in fact, that we have t-shirts that we have sold a couple times to benefit our blue line for police. And we have also we're getting ready to name a snowplow, tag mayor. So that is a piece of our personality that people love and they love him. So that's that's been kind of a fun way to embrace something that I I thought we would not jump on, but it's it's worked very well. Um, as far as departments go, for the most part, we stay away from really any branding of specific departments except three. So those three are the police department, the parks and recreation department, and then economic development. Economic development, not as much, but we do try to give them kind of a separate, they have a separate website on our web page that's dedicated to them that looks a little different than some of the other departments. And we kind of handle their their marketing a little bit different. But parks and rec and police actually operate their communications operate separate from ours. So there's a police PIO that handles the marketing and the and PR and different things like that, media and all of that for police. And then we have a parks and recreation marketing team. I used to do a lot of that with and for them. And then as the years have gone, they've they've also grown their team. So there's a team doing that as well.

SPEAKER_01 43:22

You're you're posting your social media, all that kind of good stuff. Is are you posting, is is there a perfect cadence for you folks, or are you posting as events come up?

Career Paths, Plans, And Options

SPEAKER_00 43:33

But I don't think there is a perfect cadence, and I think because the algorithm changes all the time, it's hard to kind of figure out what works and what doesn't. We we try for two months. So our goal is for an event or for a program launch or for something major that's coming up to tell people on social media about it two months in advance, one month in advance, two weeks in advance, one week in advance, two days in advance, and one day in advance. So that just two one kind of rhythm. them works pretty well to make sure that we're getting out regularly. Um sh we might post in between all of that, but just to make sure we're doing that. And then from just a general social media posting, we try to post once a day, at least on Facebook. We have a lot to tell people. Like we we're not just, it's not usually just filler content. There's just so much going on. We've got a comp plan that's in the works right now and a master plan for parks and rec and we're we might be hiring in one department or telling people about a new app for water or something else. And so there's there's always content that we have to share. So once a day seems to be a pretty good fit for us.

SPEAKER_01 44:40

Earlier you mentioned you have two daughters all both going away at school or you mentioned they're coming back. I just I had a problem believing that you had two daughters in college. But but fun stuff that you guys like to do. What's there to do in Wentzville? So I did some background on Wentzville. I'm going to circle back on some things that I really like but I want to get your perspective on what you you folks like doing in Winzville.

Closing Thanks And Listener Action

SPEAKER_00 45:06

So Winzville has this like what people love about it is that it has this kind of small town charm but big city amenities there is there's lots of shopping here and amazing parks. We just acquired about 190 additional acres of parkland in the last year and a half or two years. So we have big plans for growth in the park area. We have new pickleball courts which are a lot of fun. We have a great thriving downtown that is growing we've done a lot we've put a lot per the board of aldermen into downtown revitalization in the last few years. So we've seen you know growth in that downtown corridor because we've added lighting and sidewalks and repaired streets and all that good stuff. So the kids and I have always kind of been when when my kids were little there were lots of opportunities to come down and go to some of the small mom and pop shops and we have some unique restaurants that we don't have everywhere else. Of course we have all the chains but we have some homegrown restaurants that people have been coming to some of which who have been here for 50 plus years. So there's always something going on there's also always some type of festival. So we have Winceville Days in May and we have the Fourth of July festival of course and parade we have a drive-thru holiday night lights and we're home to this the county fair so the county actually has ownership and I'm I'm putting quotations that the audience won't be able to see but has ownership of our biggest park for a certain time of the year because they host their St. Charles County fair there every year. So there's always something going on and because we are one of the fastest growing cities in Missouri and have been for almost two decades we are seeing more and more happen all the time I get that Missouri barbecue.

SPEAKER_01 46:55

Yes my wife tried to make me be a vegan it's it lasted one meal. One whole meal so yeah that's about as she tried to stick it out for a couple of days but that it didn't happen.

SPEAKER_00 47:05

So I was looking and you have a uh Duke's barbecue's barbecue I almost said it when I was talking about the food but yes that's our yeah that's our go-to and they just Duke's barbecue actually just opened like they're in a historic building and so they have gone through the process to open the other end of their building so now one end is barbecue and one is pizza. Oh wow and they have amazing gooey buttercake I don't know what that is but which is a St. Louis staple yeah really toasted ravioli and gooey buttercake and emos pizza those are apparently the things that most Missourians love but I'm not a Missourian.

SPEAKER_01 47:43

Okay you you mentioned a little humor earlier. I was looking at another one Pappy Smokehouse. There's no such thing as too much butt.

SPEAKER_00 47:52

Pappy's is in St. Louis but it's not in Winceville. Yeah they opened in another there's a suburb of of Winzville where they did open a location pretty recently but not here. So we've got we've got Duke's and we have there's another smokehouse downtown but I don't I should know the name and I don't but both of those are like locally owned and operated and actually like the owner of Duke's you know came in he really wanted to be out here he always had restaurants in the St. Louis area but he really wanted to be West came in he sat like on the grass of this property and watched the cars drive by to really make a decision about that was his traffic counts. Wow he was doing his own version of traffic counts and then decided and he's been here for quite a while he's he's done very well here.

SPEAKER_01 48:36

Nice success story I I I love the mom and pop situations.

SPEAKER_00 48:41

Tell me about a few of the organizations you're involved with I would I would love to just talk a little bit about 3CMA too which is an organization that is near and dear to my heart and mostly because I think as a communicator and especially as a public sector communicator I wouldn't be where I am without that group something I kind of fell into when I started in public service at the city of Denton in Texas and something that I've just seen grow the organization's grown but it's just about connecting with people who are in the same and similar roles that really get what you're going through and are able to not just commiserate but then also help you and challenge you and and give you good ideas and we we steal a lot and borrow a lot of ideas from different communicators but 3CMA is where it's at but CPM to CPM so I started my master's in public administration about three years ago I have not completed it yet it's gonna happen but I I put it on pause this last year to go through the certified public management training certificate program through Kansas University. It was something that 13 of us were able to do last year from the city of Wentzville with about six or seven others from other cities in this county and it was it was really transformative something that helped me from a leadership perspective but also just from an insights and practical hands-on type things that I can put into play for the city and for myself as a leader. So I'm really glad I went through that it was a it was really great it was it was a 300 hour program. So it was pretty grueling two full days every month and then a conference and we gave presentations and we went to a graduation ceremony so there was a lot in that mix but it was all good.

SPEAKER_01 50:34

I see your name on a lot of things and you just seem so incredibly busy family and the whole thing.

SPEAKER_00 50:40

You don't even know me that well and people tell me that all the time but I so I know am I wrong I'm getting better I I have always it does it it is it really is it's like an illusion I have always been that way but as my kids have aged and I have aged out of things like PTO and booster club that I was doing also on top of all the other things um I had you have a problem saying no but I I've learned more recently that for every yes you give you sacrificing something else. And so I've tried to really keep that in the forefront of my mind these days and and try to take steps back from different things. But I love what I do and I I'm very passionate about my job and about local government and public service. And so I think that for the most part those yeses have all filled my cup. They sometimes they drain my cup as well but I think I'm I want to make sure that there are there are certain things I'm really passionate about. One of them is to is to continue to get people involved in local government. So I work really closely with our high school intern program and trying to get interns who want to get into local government but don't don't know it yet. And so those those the things that I'm really passionate about that I don't have time sacrificing some of those time but I'm learning that maybe there are times I should probably be saying them.

SPEAKER_01 52:06

Yes, I agree. You mentioned I guess recruiting public sector sometimes suffers in comparison to private sector and I think we do a poor job at communicating the compensation and the work life balance not your work life balance because that's you're a little over the top but nor normal people right and uh that's something that I appreciate. I used to be in construction have my own company uh long story there and then I transitioned to this the money is less but the work life is amazing.

SPEAKER_00 52:36

And so when you're trying I don't I'm gonna say recruiting trying to talk to these folks how are you selling this are you yeah and and some of the things you talked about just now so we're selling the benefits because we we are Winsville has really tried since about 2019 to make sure that we are a top workplace so much so that we've been recognized as a top workplace by the local paper for about five years. But we have really tried to make sure that where we can't meet with compensation and even then we've we have really changed how we look at compensation and and are compensating our employees very well in my opinion but also looking at those other things that where we can make a difference whether that's benefits or some flexibility for working arrangements we do bring a child to work day and other participate in other things like that to really just kind of encourage this whole like we're a family and and make sure that people are respected and that their time is respected. And so we we do when we're selling this to those kids it's about it's more about the things that you get to touch and the difference that you get to make. And so what we can do the best I think is sell them on the community impact and if they have a public service heart which I think you either do or you don't then it's something that is a really easy sell.

SPEAKER_01 54:07

I like that you mentioned you might be leaving Wentzville shortly you also mentioned your masters do you have a plan? Do you have something carved out is there a Roberson LLC coming down the road that communications or something or I don't have a plan.

SPEAKER_00 54:25

I have big ideas.

SPEAKER_01 54:26

I do Windsville okay so I'm gonna stop you for just a second because I don't think you're the type of person that does things without a plan. So I think maybe there's a plan A, B, and C.

SPEAKER_00 54:36

Yeah that's that's probably way way more of a realistic answer. So I think the reason I say I don't have a plan and I have had this conversation a few times lately but is because I don't have like an end date. So I don't have like a I know exactly when I'm leaving and exactly where I'm going exact I don't I don't know any of those things so I don't feel like I have a plan. But my plan is to be in Florida full time and right now or most of the time right now we are back and forth from there a lot. We've had a house there for about going on four years. And now that my kids are both in college it's not as crucial for me to be exactly in the same spot. So my plan is to be spending more time there by the end of this year. And I'm not sure what that looks like from a maybe working remote or maybe working for another city. With my master's I do have a desire to be in that city administration role maybe someday when I grow up so that's that's kind of always there in the back of my mind or as you mentioned some type of consultant is is probably also an opportunity that I would pursue as well.

SPEAKER_01 55:40

So I'm gonna share something with you I had uh Christine Martin on the podcast and she started as a planner she got into she got as far as assistant city manager. She was at a point California girl and they were just looking around I think they decided they purchased a home in Tennessee and they were looking to move. So she happened to be at a conference and she came across to Pepe Smith private sector company and one thing led to another they offered her a position as a director and she said I was lucky. So and my response to her is is it really luck if you manufacture the circumstances of your perceived good fortune and she spent 20 years doing amazing things. She's incredibly intelligent professional everything else and it almost seemed like it was luck but I think it was 20 years in the making. So I think I've been I hate to say this but we we creep on our guests we want to make sure we get the right people on. She calls it professional outreach we call it creeping and stalking but whatever and your name is everywhere and you're doing a lot of great things so I don't think I think you're gonna have options just like Christine I don't think there's gonna be a wrong move support group and not just in Winzville.

SPEAKER_00 56:48

I have a great support group in Winzville but across the country and lots of people in my corner that would would like to see me succeed in some whatever that whatever that looks like. So yeah I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01 57:00

There you go. Maybe maybe it'll be barbecue in Florida.

SPEAKER_00 57:04

I don't know maybe you can steal Duke's recipe maybe my husband my husband's off and he would like to open something so maybe there you go he's pretty good at the grill perfect.

SPEAKER_01 57:15

Kara I want to thank you for being on the podcast today. It was really a pleasure I had a good laugh I think you're an amazing person. I think I've learned lots in terms of communications there's a lot more that I need to learn. I'm a mechanic not a speaker so I'm working on this I'm gonna follow you some more get some more tips and pointers and refine what I'm doing but I really appreciate you being on I hope you I wish you the best because you have a lot of lofty plans coming up well thank you so much I appreciate your time and for asking me to participate I've enjoyed talking about what I love to do and that's both communications and local government so thank you so much for the opportunity very special thanks to Kara Roberson one more time. That was a great podcast great information something that's very important is every podcast, every everything says follow us, subscribe, do all that stuff. If you do that that's great and it's greatly appreciated. But I think more important to me is that you follow and reach out to Kara. Let her know how she did uh she's got some really great posts on her LinkedIn I reposted something she did with ChatGPT and I thought it was absolutely brilliant. So head over there connect with Kara and uh give her a virtual high five in any event I wish you the best take care and hey be careful because Roscoe's coming