Communications and Outreach

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The Communications and Outreach Department improves the quality of life for Cabarrus County residents through strategic communication initiatives. The team designs and implements initiatives to educate, inform and engage. They also build mutually beneficial relationships and dialogue between Cabarrus County Government and residents, employees, partner agencies and the greater community.

 

Cabarrus County wants you to know more about our work to serve Cabarrus County residents!

Here are ways you can participate:

✔ Stay up-to-date on the latest news from CabCo

✔ Come to County events

✔ Get Involved

✔ Review Community Survey results

✔ Stay informed on hot topics

✔ Sign up for the weekly CabCo UPDATE newsletter

✔ Watch CabCo TV

The Communications and Outreach office coordinates with County departments to deliver strategic direction and communication support for all County functions, including programs, projects, meetings, services, initiatives, events, deadlines and crises. The department follows best practices to produce relevant and timely information that engages the public in dialogue through education, public relations, marketing, advertising and community outreach strategies. The department supports employee development and work/life initiatives with information, events, training and resources. It also develops content, provides editorial support and maintains standards for the County’s website, media releases, intranet, internal documents and notifications, and other informational materials for the public, news media and employees.

  • Improved on our creative development and distribution strategy, which led to continued increases in online engagement. The initiative also led to more County program features, which has increased visibility of programs that staff may not have fit previous models.
  • Provided ongoing support of the County’s values-based brand “America Thrives Here.” Throughout the year, the department developed related campaigns, revised expired materials to complement the brand, found new opportunities to deliver messages to stakeholders and created new storylines based on the values.
  • Developed new content and updated existing content for the County’s website and performed work on the development of a new website.
  • Expanded access and transparency by livestreaming our Public, Educational, and Governmental (PEG) Access Channel on the County’s website. The enhanced programming capacity has increased our online presence and is growing our reach.
  • Consistently improved relationships among the communications office and other departments, agencies, municipalities and civic organizations.
  • Participated in several high-profile collaborative campaigns and initiatives, including COVID-19 response and community support programs, construction updates and milestone events, American Rescue Plan funding communication, Resiliency Grants, Emergency Rental Assistance Programs, Lockhart Child Development Center, economic development mental health, opioid misuse and recycling/solid waste reduction.
  • Developed a Fiscal Year 2021 Popular Annual Financial Report (PAFR). 
  • Held a in-person groundbreaking for the Cabarrus County EMS Headquarters project, Beam Raising ceremony for the Cabarrus County Courthouse and Government 101 sessions.
  • Reconfigured large-scale annual in-person events, including the Veterans Day Program, Veterans Christmas Breakfast and the County’s Employee Service Recognition, as drive-thru and digital events.
  • Expanded the reach of CabCo TV through livestream broadcasting capabilities and services on OTT broadcast mediums, such as Amazon, Hulu, Adobe, Roku, Verizon and others.
  • Continued to address the demands of building a cohesive team vision and implementing a team-based production strategy while working remotely.
  • As a safety precaution, transitioned to using Microsoft Teams to capture interview videos whenever possible. One episode of the commissioner interview show, “Out & About,” was filmed before face-to-face interviews were postponed. Shows with one on-screen host continued with adequate spacing and outdoors whenever possible.
  • Finding safe and effective ways to connect with and engage the community and our employees.
  • Contending with fast-circulating misinformation.
  • Promoting a large number of complex messages at one time with significant impacts on the health, safety, quality-of-life and future of our residents. The public has a limited amount of time, attention and interest.
  • Continuing our work to establish our website, social media outlets and CabCo TV as the best sources for news about Cabarrus County Government.
  • Addressing general County communications needs while managing emergent issues.
  • Consumers rely more and more on digital media for information consumption, resulting in the need to provide information in more and varied mediums and respond to requests 24-hours a day.
  • Cable subscribership is in continued decline due to culture shifts and rates.
  • Through anecdotal research, we discovered the community is not aware that Cabarrus County administers many of the programs and services they use. Communications and Outreach uses the brand to update materials and connect our public-facing outreach programs back to the core County identity.