Keeping the community informed and involved

Communication

Social media is a great way to communicate information quickly.

Neighbourhood offices across Edinburgh have been quick to get involved, whether it’s setting up a Facebook page or using Twitter to reach out to residents.

The West team joined Twitter in July 2011 and has steadily gained a strong following with local organisations and residents.

Satvinder Kaur helps to send out tweets and keeps track of trends and retweets with a programme called Hootsuite.

“Looking at our past tweets and retweets, we can see what topics our followers want to hear more about and it also helps us to sustain interest in our Twitter profile and encourage new followers,” she said.

Popular tweets over the summer months were for parks, green flags and the Roseburn Park mural, while there is always a big interest in housing issues and community grants.

Satvinder noted that trends changed significantly in September and October towards increased tweets about the Drumbrae hub.

“The excitement of the move was well reciprocated by our followers and we engaged with many of them in Twitter conversations before our Drumbrae move,” she said.

Different departments in the West team office have also been using Twitter to promote their work.

During Customer Service Week, photographs of various events, such as community litter picks, were posted up on the messaging service.

The team has also tweeted live from the last two Western and Almond Neighbourhood Partnership meetings.

“Twitter and Hootsuite allow us the opportunity to promote our services to a wider range of people who may not take the time to look on our website.

“It allows us to send messages promoting current topics and lets us get information out in real time. But one of the best things about Twitter is that we receive a lot of compliments through @mentions on Twitter.”

Need to know

To follow the tweets, go to twitter.com/west_team