Santa Clarita’s Community of Players
An Interview with Joe Harris, Recreation & Community Services Supervisor at City of Santa Clarita
The City of Santa Clarita in Southern California has only been using Agents of Discovery (AoD) since October 2020, but they have created more Missions than most partners. Joe Harris, Recreation & Community Services Supervisor at City of Santa Clarita, talks about his experience using Agents of Discovery, and shares tips to help create a larger community.
Creating Missions
During the pandemic, the City of Santa Clarita team was publishing two Missions per month in different open spaces and parks around the city. However, now that in-person programming is picking back up, they publish new Missions less frequently. Their main focus now is creating engaging Missions that introduce people to new parts of Santa Clarita.
“We wanted to make sure that we were still putting quality out there when we were creating Missions.”
Don’t be scared to step out of the box a bit with your Missions, Joe advises. Santa Clarita’s themed Missions have helped them engage with their users in a whole new way. “Our Harry Potter Mission was our most successful specialty Mission. We did a TikTok. We also had a special event to highlight the launch, and we had staff there, dressed in Harry Potter gear passing out rewards.” Trying out new approaches with your Missions can help you connect with your users, and start to develop a community.
Promoting Missions
Promoting your Mission on social media is a great way to increase your users and create excitement. Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter can help you share your Mission with a broader audience, but Harris has noticed an uptick in users from another platform – TikTok: “We always have some sort of post to update on where the next AoD mission is going to be, but what really increased our engagement was the videos, having staff out there filming short 15-20 second videos advertising the program.” If your social media promotions are fun and engaging, people will want to see what your Missions have in store.
“We use AoD to get people into the outdoors to go somewhere they’ve never gone before.”
Experiencing the App
Joe’s top tip for new Mission Makers was to go out and experience the app as a user. “Being able to experience it on your own and getting it from the user side helps us put things together on the Mission Maker side. Go in and try it somewhere, whether it’s from home or at a location.”
Building a sense of community with your players is a great way to get people excited about your Missions. Whether you try something new in the Mission Maker, promote your Mission on social media, or experience other partners’ Missions as a user, you’re sure to gain some insight about your community.
Follow Santa Clarita on social media to get inspiration for your Mission promos:
Facebook: City of Santa Clarita Government
Instagram: @cityofsantaclarita
Twitter: @santaclarita
TikTok: @cityofsantaclarita
If you want to boost your social media promotions, tag us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, and we can reshare your posts to our audience.