Hot Response and Applause Pour in on Suwon City SNS

[Suwon Ilbo=Reporter Seo Dong-young] 'Suwon City KakaoTalk Friends' and other Suwon City SNS channels are gaining prominence as effective communication channels for Suwon citizens.

The 'Suwon City KakaoTalk Friends' channel, which approximately 450,000 users utilize, demonstrated its usefulness when Typhoon 'Lingling' made landfall on the Korean Peninsula in September. The city provided detailed typhoon preparation guidelines through KakaoTalk messages, reducing damage. Shortly after the decision to scale down the '56th Suwon Hwaseong Culture Festival and cancel the Jeongjo the Great Royal Procession Reenactment,' the city notified citizens through KakaoTalk, minimizing confusion.

The message open rate for Suwon City KakaoTalk averaged 107.1% as of 2018. This means that when messages are sent to 100 people, they are read by 107 people due to further sharing. When the city sent a message in 2018 about a 'Bus Strike Notice,' recipients shared the message with others, bringing the open rate to 157.39%.

Since 2011, the city has been operating various SNS channels including the blog 'Suwon e-Story' (Doran Doran Suwon e-Story), Suwon City KakaoTalk, and Facebook. The city promotes various parts of Suwon through Instagram's 'Our Neighborhood' and Naver Post's 'Rediscovering Suwon.' When users leave comments or questions on SNS, the city provides answers to address their inquiries.

KakaoTalk is the SNS channel with the most enthusiastic response. As of the 12th, Suwon City KakaoTalk Friends has 448,633 followers, the highest among all metropolitan, municipal local governments, and government agencies nationwide. Seoul City has 370,811 followers, the National Police Agency has 241,082, and the 'Republic of Korea Government' has 234,319.

The city stated that the 'KakaoTalk Friends Big Event,' which began in 2016, had a decisive impact on the increase in KakaoTalk followers. The Big Event allows users who become KakaoTalk friends with Suwon City to use major tourist attractions and experience facilities in the city free of charge or at discounted prices.

The Big Event was first held for the '2016 Visit Suwon Hwaseong Year.' The number of KakaoTalk friends grew 34-fold from 5,079 in March 2016 to 173,932 by the end of December that year. KakaoTalk friends exceeded 300,000 in March 2018 and surpassed 400,000 in June this year.

As Suwon City KakaoTalk friends increased, the number of visitors to facilities offering free and discounted admission—Suwon Hwaseong, Hwaseong Haenggung Palace, Suwon City Museum (3 facilities), and Suwon Municipal I'PARK Museum of Art—also increased significantly. Average annual visitors to the six facilities increased by 25.9%, from 1,201,145 in 2014-2015 to 1,512,506 in 2016-2018 when the Big Event was conducted.

The city's first SNS, the blog 'Suwon e-Story' (Doran Doran Suwon e-Story), has accumulated 19.37 million visits. Suwon e-Story provides major city events and tourism information. It also engages actively with users through comments.

The city has been externally recognized for its SNS utilization achievements. In October, it received the Grand Prize in the Municipal Government Category at the '9th Korea SNS Awards,' earning the honor of '4 awards' following grand prizes in 2013 and 2015 and a top excellence award in 2018. The 'Korea SNS Awards,' hosted by the Korea Social Content Promotion Association, is the country's most prestigious award in the SNS field, selecting excellent organizations by evaluating SNS utilization achievements of public institutions and businesses.

Additionally, the city consecutively received the Grand Prize in the Public Sector category at the '2014 Korea Internet Communication Awards,' the Grand Prize in the Public Sector at the '2016 Korea Blog Awards,' the Minister of Science and ICT Award in the Social Promotion Category at the '2017 Korea Internet Awards,' and an Excellence Award at the 2019 Korea PR Awards. Recently, it won the Grand Prize in the KakaoTalk Category at the '5th 2019 SNS Awards of the Year.'

A city official said, "We will actively utilize SNS channels that suit the times and are used by many citizens to communicate authentically with residents."