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County Communications Bureau reports growth, highlights Spanish outreach and emergency role
Summary
County Communications Bureau said it increased earned-media reach and social-media followers in FY2025–26, launched new web tools including a Spanish URL and a chatbot, and urged the board to prioritize Spanish-language outreach and paid analytics for platforms like X for emergency messaging.
The Monterey County Board of Supervisors on Aug. 11 received the County Communications Bureau’s annual report for July 2025 through June 2026, in which bureau staff described growth in earned and digital media and outlined steps to broaden Spanish-language outreach.
An agency presenter told the board that “the county communications bureau, effective communications is more than sharing information. It is essential to public trust, government transparency, emergency response, and community engagement.” The presentation said the bureau released 698 stories this year (15% more than the prior fiscal year), held 55 news briefings and 15 press conferences, and logged roughly 71,600 total mentions — a 4.2% increase over the prior year. The bureau cited Meltwater Analytics for an earned-media value estimate of about $5,590,000.
Staff member Maite reviewed social-media metrics and said county accounts gained 5,643 followers between July 2025 and June 2026 across major platforms (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and X). Platform-specific numbers included a Facebook reach of roughly 4.15 million and Instagram reach of about 1.02 million; YouTube totaled about 27,373 views. The bureau also reported about 9 million paid public-service-announcement impressions and said web sessions were near 2,000,788, with high traffic to pages including adopt-a-pet and libraries.
Board members asked how the county can better reach monolingual Spanish speakers. The presenter highlighted a new Spanish URL and a county calendar launch as tools expected to increase Spanish engagement and said the bureau is training a county chatbot nicknamed “Monty” to help users find services faster. Supervisors asked staff to pursue paid analytics for X to verify whether traffic there is local; staff said such services cost about $4,500 per year and can improve actionable emergency reach.
The board took no formal action on the report; members thanked the bureau for its work and asked staff to return with targeted recommendations on Spanish-language outreach and analytics where appropriate.
