Supervisors approve $175 monthly fee for Facebook posts

County supervisors will pay a marking firm an additional $175 a month to boost Facebook posts promoting the board’s actions.

Ridgeland-based Strategic Marketing Group handles public relations for supervisors and, among other things, runs the county’s official Facebook page Madison County, MS Government.

SMG proprietor Heath Hall also handles public relations for the Madison County Sheriff’s Department and has managed Board of Supervisors President Gerald Steen’s prior political campaigns.

Hall appeared before the board Monday after District 1 Supervisor Sheila Jones questioned the proposal for the additional $175. Hall said the money was needed to help get more Facebook users in the county to “follow” the page.

“We have been doing what we call field tests for the last several months on Facebook,” Hall said. “We get about 200 views per post on average. But when we put about $25 behind boosting it… we get about 2,000.”

Hall also boasted that SMG has been able to boost the page’s followers by 30 percent over the “past couple of months.” The page currently has 1,350 “likes” and 1,737 followers. 

“I think Facebook does a pretty good job of spreading whatever we put on it,” Jones said. “And we have lots of people in the county already sharing the supervisors’ comments and posts. I’m not convinced we need that.”

When asked for an example of a post the county needed to boost, Hall directed Jones to a June 10 post about three high school seniors in the county that had received scholarships from the Mississippi Association of Supervisors totaling $2,000 that SMG had boosted.

“As of when I checked it this morning, the post had reached 1,999 people right on the dots,” Hall said. “I do like to boost our quick notes, because they boil the actions of the supervisors down to about a page and half, and that’s what we are focusing on right now.”

Finally, Steen interjected to voice his support for the motion.

“I think it’s always important to get the business out in Madison County because we have some great things happening in Madison County,” Steen said. “This way, these are the things that board votes on, so they are facts. They are just totally facts. The truth. And so it’s hard to argue when we put them out being from the board of supervisors being the truth of what we vote on here at the board. So I see that as important to have and to be able to get the out by this information.”

Supervisors then unanimously voted to add the $175 Facebook stipend to SMG’s contract.

The firm has been hired and fired over the last several years but was most recently hired again in July 2019. The company received a $500-per-month increase in compensation from the county when a new contract was renewed in January.

In other action, supervisors:

• Approved the purchase of a new fire engine for the Valley View Volunteer Fire Department near Sharon at a cost of $390,072.

• Approved the purchase of a new pickup truck for the Madison County Engineering Department from Rogers-Dabbs Chevrolet at a cost of $39,164.

• Extended an exception that allows food trucks to operate in neighborhoods without seeking permits from the county for another 30 days.