Going social The internet has become a much more sociable place that makes it incredibly useful for anyone involved in neighbourhood planning, or any kind community based activity. It can help foster a fragmented community, galvanise it into action or just help it rediscover its sense of identity. There are a few dedicated websites designed to help communities get the information they need about councils, planning, and politicians like Digital Democracy (www.digitaldemocracy.org.uk) that help improve accountability, The Place Station, (www.theplacestation.org.uk) which helps connect people with community assets or the support they need, Landshare http://www.landshare.net/ which connects people with land for cultivation to people who want to cultivate it, and Placebook http://www.placebook.org.uk/ (which may only be a writ away from a name change) which is a hub for people in the placemaking industy i.e. you. Below is a list of some of the best known and most useful ways to keep in touch and share information about your projects. You might find some of these come in handy Social Networks Social networks are mostly geared towards an individual s social life, rather than the social good. But social networks can have social purpose and help foster communities of practice. There are networks that allow you to create dedicated and exclusive communities of practice like Ning or SocialGo, the fees vary depending on membership and the kind of facilities they offer. Many of the mainstream, free social networks have the same functionality but are less exclusive, below are a selection of some of the free social networks that you could use. Facebook If you ve never heard of Facebook then you re in a minority. Begun as a way for university students to communicate with each other, Facebook now has over 850 million active users and it is so popular much that it accounts for 1/5 of all internet pages viewed a day. Facebook allows you post short status updates (a bit like Tweets), photos, post on your friend s Walls and link to videos and just about anything else on the web. You can also tag people in photographs.
It s easy to create an account and find your friends, but do you really want the things you share with your friends and family also shared with everyone in your local community? Luckily there s an easy way to get around this by creating a Page rather than a normal account (you ll need an ordinary Facebook account of your own as well) and/or using Facebook Groups which allow you to form groups around specific interests and activities. Facebook Pages have fewer features than ordinary accounts in some ways, but they provide an easy way to post background information and updates, as well as photos and videos, so you might not need a website if you have a Facebook Page and only want to post short updates. Facebook Pages are visible to everyone on the internet whether they have an account or not, unless you change the settings. You can also have more than one administrator which means that you can share the burden of updating. Facebook Groups are slightly different, they provide space to collaborate and talk about specific issues or projects, they can be open to everyone, visible but invitation only, or invisible. It s up to you, but you can only invite people who are already Friends with you on Facebook, so think carefully about whether you want this kind of connection. What are the disadvantages? Facebook is still quite public unless you fiddle around with the settings it s not easy to keep the different parts of your life as separate as you d like, so think carefully about how you decide to use it, and what the privacy settings need to be. Google+ One of Facebook s biggest rivals, Google+ works in a slightly different way. Google+ allows you to set up circles which means you can keep different parts of your life separate, so if for example you want to share some birthday photographs with just your immediate family, you put all of your family contacts into a Circle and then share the photographs with them. Photographs of your community event could be shared with just the people in your community group, or everyone in the world, it s entirely up to you who sees what. Google is smaller than Facebook (it has over 90 million users) but anyone who has a Gmail account is automatically a member of Google+ so, the chances are you already have an account. If you don t they re easy to set up. It also has a well-integrated multi-user video conferencing capacity. What are the disadvantages?
It seems like a bit of a ghost town at first as it was only launched last year and because it s taken a more responsible approach to privacy; most of the conversations are happening behind closed doors. Once you ve built up your community though, it could be really useful. Pinterest One of the newer social networks, it works by encouraging you to pin things that interest you to your Pinterest page in categories, which makes it a sort of public scrapbook. It has over 10.4 million registered users and 12 million unique visitors every month. You link to photographs and products that you like, as you might on a pin-board. You can then use Facebook or Twitter to Like or Tweet about them. Unlike the other social networks Pinterest is less of a communication tool, but it can help you create mood-boards and curate websites, stories and photos that you think are worthwhile. It s invite only at the moment, so it doesn t explode. You re limited to what you can find on the web and initially it seems to be chock-full of pictures of kittens, cakes and babies and not much else. Twitter One of the most recent forms of social media, there are over 465 million Twitter accounts and over 175 million Tweets a day. Twitter is what s called a micro-blogging system, it allows users to create Tweets sentences of no longer than 140 characters each (including spaces). You don t get a page, you can have a single image and a line of text to describe yourself/your project. Once you ve created an account you need to find people to follow which is a bit like Friending someone on Facebook. If you re lucky they may follow you back. Tweets are broadcast to followers, and, using what are called hashtags (which look like this: #), you can contribute to other conversations, using someone s Twitter username (for example:
@edenproject) you can also publically message people. There is a function to message people directly in private as well. Most tweets are public so it s best to treat it more like a loudhailer than a mobile phone, in other words, don t say anything you wouldn t want repeated (and on Twitter, you can retweet, i.e. republish something someone else has said in your own Twitter feed, a bit like forwarding an email on). Some people have learned this to their cost; one man has gone to prison for joking about blowing up a plane and politicians have had their careers ruined by inappropriate statements. Twitter offers a really easy way to cascade information to everyone if they have an account, for example, if you have a meeting or event you want people to attend and you have a big enough following, you can tweet about it. It s easy to use and if you have a Smartphone you can Tweet from anywhere, making it easier to update than a website, or write an email to multiple recipients. You can embed Twitter feeds into some blogging software which gives you the best of both worlds. What are the disadvantages? You need everyone in your group (and beyond) to follow you (and each other) for it to be an effective tool. It s text only, if you want to add photos you ll need to link to them. You ll also need to shorten webaddresses using something like bit.ley otherwise you won t have much room for your messages. There isn t an agreed list of hashtags; other people have to adopt them for them to work. Then they order lists together. So if you re having an event and have chosen to promote it on Twitter using #bunfight but no-one takes it up and uses #kneesup instead, you d be better off adding #kneesup to your Tweets instead. Blogs Treat blogs as a kind of newsletter and you won t go far wrong. Web-based blogging software like Blogger or Tumblr are easy to use. Word Press is more complicated but gives you more control, so worth considering. If you can use a word-processor then you can blog. Easy to use and update. You can share most forms of content (photos, videos, web-links, and text) via a Blog.
Less visible the chances are you ll have to promote it so everyone knows it s there. There s limited space to keep background information about your project or neighbourhood and the latest stories are more visible to visitors which makes it great for news but not necessarily the place to hold a lot of background information. You need to update regularly otherwise people will lose interest. Websites Remember these? That s all the internet used to be until social networks came along. A dedicated website for your group or project is still one of the most useful ways of keeping people up-to-date on what s going on and who s involved. You can also integrate some social network features like Twitter posts and Facebook status updates as well as videos etc. A website can help make your activities or group look professional and official it can create a home and an identity for your community or project. With the right management it can provide an important presence and service to your community. It also doesn t usually require anyone to register. Although you can use web-based software to create sites, making a decent website takes time and patience, and money. You need to be prepared to buy a web-address (not expensive) and promote it, and of course update it regularly. This is where the other social network and web services (like blogs) can help. Websites can create bottlenecks though if you re reliant on one person in your community (or the person who built your website for you) to update it. Email Sometimes, simple is best. Email is a straightforward way to share information and encourage feedback.
It s personal, easy to set up and send. If you use web-based software like MailChimp then you can monitor the responses and ensure that no-one gets spammed. Some people might not want their email address to be made available to everyone, so either set up a list in your address book called community contacts or blind copy all the recipients (that means you put all of the addresses in the bcc box and put your own address in the to box. Data has to be kept clean, that means if someone doesn t want to be emailed after all, then you ll have to ensure they don t receive any further email and that will mean maintaining a spreadsheet of addresses (including the people who have said they don t want to receive any more emails from you on a separate sheet). Or, you can use something like MailChimp, which requires a bit of know-how but will keep all of your data sparkling. Sharing Photos and Videos There is no shortage of photo-sharing possibilities online, try Picasa (run by Google) or Flickr (run by Yahoo). For video, try YouTube or Vimeo. Some these services allow you to embed media on Facebook or your blog or website too. A photograph or short film can encapsulate everything you re trying to get across; they can make a concept or theme come alive. Take lots of photos or footage and then edit down. Don t create giant slideshows or epic director s cuts unless you re sure you have an audience for them. You need to make sure you have permission to feature anyone you feature, preferably in writing though if you re making a film you could shoot a bit of film in which they give their permission. Belt and braces though when it comes to children ensure that you have permission from a parent in writing if you want to photograph or film their children before you do it.