Chair Thomas-Henry questions Khan on SBS partnerships with social media influencers
Thomas-Henry asks whether SBS formally partners with social media influencers. Khan describes working with influencer Dandy in the Bronx for the commissioner's appointment announcement and Megan Daly for BID education, and notes the mayor himself partnered with the chair to promote NYC Business Express services.
No problem.
I have a quick follow-up question to those questions before I turn it over to Councilmember Santosuoso.
Does SBS currently partner with any social media influencers in particular in any way?
So we've...
We've leveraged social media influencers, as have some council members and other public figures, in leveraging them as just another form of reaching New Yorkers.
So we've worked with Dandy in the Bronx, who's an influencer in the Bronx, to announce Commissioner Minaya's appointment alongside the formal press announcement and the mayoral announcement.
And so we're thinking of social media influencers as just another way to reach more New Yorkers, maybe.
Not all New Yorkers, maybe many in this room watch New York One a lot, but not all New Yorkers.
My wife certainly does not watch New York One.
New York one.
And so we just want to make sure whatever platform, media, format New Yorkers are consuming, if we can find a way to get in front of more New Yorkers, we want to do that so our services are not just limited to the ones that...
always are accessing these services, but are expanded to all that could be watching it, learning about it on different platforms.
So we've done that.
We've also promoted our business improvement districts network and all the work we do with bids through a partnership
with Megan Daly, who's also a social media influencer that educated New Yorkers that are on her platform on what the bid does, which many folks are aware it's a pretty niche and specialized function.
Most New Yorkers may not know that they have a local community organization trusted by
council members, city government, resourced by property assessments of that community, making decisions for that community on how to improve those commercial corridors.
So is it more ad hoc or is it a formal process within SBS?
Like if you're having, like the big event you guys had in May, do you have a list of partners that you would reach out to and say, hey, can you post this on your...
We wish we had a big list.
We barely have a list.
We've just been whenever we've been pitching aggressively, just like with news media, where press teams across city government, they try their best to get the word out.
We try our best to get the word out through the press core.
And then we've also now started to get the word out, especially since the start of this administration, to get the word out with social media.
Content creators because we know they're reaching audiences that may not be typically accessed through news, New York One or New York Post.
You have one of the most popular influences at your disposal at the moment.
The mayor.
That's right.
And he worked with, and we got him to, and he wanted to work with you in promoting the New York City Business Express service team.
And that was a great partnership of both our agency, you and Mayor Mamdani, and getting a really critical service out to eight plus million New Yorkers that learned about that program just through one video on May 29th.