ORLANDO, Fla. — The city of Orlando is turning to a social media coordinator to get more people into downtown Orlando.
City leaders have been testing the new position, and they now plan to make it permanent.
WFTV's Daralene Jones found out the position is generating revenue for the city.
The city's been tracking ticket sales to events at the Amway Center with a special code. City officials said the social media coordinator promoted one event at the Amway Center on Facebook, giving users a code to use when purchasing tickets, and sold more than 400, bringing in $32,000 in ticket sales.
For the most part, Jennifer Laney sits behind a desk, promoting the city of Orlando's venues through social media. Her position was only supposed to be temporary.
But the City Council just agreed to pay her $43,000 a year for the next two years to update Facebook and Twitter accounts for the Amway Center, Citrus Bowl and Bob Carr Performing Arts Center.
"I don't know of any company that expects customers to find them that is not using any means possible in today's market to get that message out to them," said Allen Johnson, the city's venues director.
WFTV wanted to see just how much work is being done. WFTV logged on and checked the Facebook and Twitter sites for all three venues and found 10 Facebook updates and a total of 27 tweets promoting the three venues since Friday.
Some question why the job can't be done by someone who's already on the city's staff.
"You have to stay on top of it. There are certain things we get messages out that are time-sensitive that you have to have a person that's dedicated to it," said Johnson.
And the city provided proof that this job, in a way, will pay for itself.
Between the three venues, the city has more than 12,000 followers on Twitter, compared to 7,000 before there was someone dedicated to the job.
And the number of "likes" on the Facebook pages have jumped from 22,000 to 43,000.
"I think now, you have to. It's the main communication that everyone uses, and that's something you have to keep up to date," said Orlando resident Nadia Melnacheck.
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