Information nation

Once the domain of teenagers, social networking seems to have spread to the establishment. Last month, a Twitter campaign in response to a Tory MEP’s NHS-bashing demonstrated the speed and efficacy of using online communities to get a message across.

Within hours, thousands of users - including prime minister Gordon Brown - had posted their support for the NHS across the internet. Labour has now appointed a ‘Twitter tsar’, Bristol East MP Kerry McCarthy.

Peter Marsh, chief executive of the Tenant Services Authority, recognised the power of new social media at July’s annual Tenant Participation Advisory Service conference when he spoke of ‘new ways of finding information, or lobbying open to people’.

Mr Marsh was referring to the success of a musician whose YouTube campaign embarrassed a major airline into compensating him for a broken guitar. The TSA head has been known to blog for the Chartered Institute of Housing.

Companies such as Dell and General Motors have already jumped onto the bandwagon. There is an impressive roll-call of blogs, chat forums, applications and share facilities to choose from: Twitter, Bebo, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, YouTube, LinkedIn, Wordpress, Ning, Reddit, Shozu and Zensify, to name just a few.

Engaging with tenants

Using social media isn’t just fashionable, increasingly it’s being used to gather data, as a campaign tool or to reach a different user demographic.
Everybody else is doing it, so why shouldn’t the housing sector?

Social landlords are making tentative steps, mainly into Twitter and Facebook. Even so, a cursory search on the social networking site reveals that those who have joined up, such as Forum and Broomleigh, only have a handful of Facebook fans. There is no agreed way that social networking should be used by organisations. So is social media necessarily the most appropriate method of engaging with tenants? Or is it just another tool in the communications armoury?

‘Social networking is a big, big buzzword in the industry right now and it’s the way that communications is going,’ says Paul Armstrong, social media director at public sector consultancy Kindred. ‘The government is a very good example using it.

‘Twitter is the media darling at the moment and you can see why, it’s very easy to get information out quickly. Businesses definitely see a business value in social media - the great thing about it, is that a lot of it is free.’

Mr Armstrong says it’s not necessarily about numbers of fans but how influential those fans or users are.

Neither the Homes and Communities Agency nor the TSA has a firm position on the use of social media. Even so Lisa Pickard, assistant director of tenant standards at the TSA, says: ‘It’s beneficial for landlords to consider a range of communications tools - including social media - so that they can reach their tenants and establish good relationships, so that tenants genuinely feel listened to, empowered and involved.’

Angela Lomax, director of housing practice at consultancy Tribal, agrees: ‘Facebook is a very open method of engagement, you have 24/7 accessability and it’s another tool in the box for communications.’

Ms Lomax says the fact that social landlords are increasingly housing young single people - the technology savvy generation - suggests that social networking might work with their demographic. ‘It seems sensible that housing providers start to look at new technologies as a method of communicating.’

Among the benefits, she feels, are that sites such as Twitter cater for people’s increasingly short attention spans and deliver clean, attractively presented snippets of information. ‘It’s a way of getting a message across and it’s less prescriptive than a survey.’

Long-term prospects

However, she points out that there may be a faddy element to social networking. ‘Last year, MySpace and Bebo were all the rage and no one’s using those now.’

Ms Lomax also warns that there is a risk that tenants could inadvertently log on to unofficial sites after doing a Facebook search, such as those for disgruntled former employees or tenants. One such site has been set up for people to complain about a number of housing associations and homefinder services in the south west of England, which contains some vitriolic comments.

Then there is the time investment needed to keep the pages looking fresh and active. ‘Because it’s so easy, people set it up and suddenly your organisation’s got a Facebook page,’ says Joanna Sedley-Burke, business development director at consultancy Sovereign Business Integration.

‘There’s the risk that it will just sit there with nothing on it, which has the potential for being worse than not having anything at all because it demonstrates that you’re not communicating very well with your residents.’

Ms Sedley-Burke reserves enthusiasm on the success of social networking: ‘I don’t think it is working particularly well, I’ve yet to see evidence - I haven’t seen any resident surveys saying this is a communication method that would work for us,’ she says.

‘Why would you want to join or be a fan of your landlord? What is it you’d like to share, because most dealings with landlords are around arrears or repairs, so there has to be a hook - as there should be with any resident involvement.’

Ms Sedley-Burke says there is also often a lack of co-ordinated strategy around its use within an organisation: ‘I’ve seen examples where the housing department has set up on Facebook and then told IT, so there’s a risk that control and management may not be taken into consideration fully.’

‘Who’s going to take ownership of this? With websites you have someone constantly updating them, putting news on them. What’s the business case for doing it? Is it worth the effort and resource putting into it?’ she asks.

Michael Gelling, chair of the Tenants’ and Residents’ Organisations of England, warns that landlords shouldn’t rush into using new technology at the neglect of traditional communication. ‘It’s good if it’s additionality but not if it disenfranchises people,’ he says. ‘For example, I don’t sit in my house looking at the computer, I like hard copies I can read on the train. Landlords need to use all avenues to communicate.’

Housing associations, then, in their enthusiasm to embrace new ways of communicating, could do well to consider all aspects to these new channels before wholeheartedly joining the twittering classes.

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