As membership secretary, I regularly hear the clarion call  “I’m not on Social Media so I can’t see your posts…”  It’s a popular myth that you must sign up, notwithstanding the fact that our latest Twitter and Facebook postings automatically appear on our home page (have you checked recently..?),  all three “platforms” that we use are publicly accessible to anyone, as are most social media sites.  They will encourage you to sign up, perhaps even boost the myth that you must for obvious reasons, but you can ignore that without missing that much.  However paradoxically it will help our cause if you do sign up and follow us – read on…

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I’ve read concerns about  tracking, cookies, and a good range of urban myths too, but many are outdated.  A number of issues are addressed in our website and accessibility guide and related privacy policy, but in short if you don’t have an account with the platform in question, there’s limited tracking they can do, while at the same time still giving you access to useful local material. Increasingly newer browser versions are closing these avenues of tracking joy, and the effects are often rather more prosaic than perhaps popular hyperbolae might suggest.  You can, of course, always delete browsing data, including cookies, or use the Incognito/inPrivate modes available on all modern browsers to properly eliminate tracking if it still concerns you.

Why follow us on Social Media?

#BernieSanders patiently waits to cross the Bridge

It’s a lot simpler and quicker for us to post short updates, reactions to news, and links to events of interest on these platforms – particularly Twitter – than it is to create longform articles such as this, or physical/pdf newsletters.  One or two of our survey responses have suggested more regular updates, and this is one way to respond.  These postings form a useful complement to our other publishing, as text messages complement email and letters.  We post something almost daily on one platform or another,  so there’s always something new on the website as a result too.

True, Twitter has a certain reputation, but I find it invaluable to keep up with specific / niche news related to our local interests in ways otherwise very hard to achieve – in the borough, more widely across London, in other Civic Societies across the UK, and Worldwide for subjects such as climate change.  The other thing to remember is that our follower count does matter, more followers create momentum to our messages and even governments now respond to that.

I’ve created a regularly updated Hammersmith list of around 200 key accounts we follow in the borough, which anyone can browse or subscribe to (just click on the link to see what’s happening), and this can help keep you up to date too.  On the list there’s only indirect party politics, with the occasional satire leaking in, such as the biting sketches of Coldwar Steve, or Larry the Cat – you might even enjoy it.  We even had a little fun after the US inauguration a month ago with a #BernieSanders meme posting that was well-received and went viral locally on both Twitter and Instagram (largely a photo sharing site with typically a younger & different audience).  Facebook provides room for longer articles and news updates which we post occasionally, but is rather less popular – for our growing band of over 1000 followers at least – and tends to compete with website content.

Survey suggestions have also included Linkedin and Nextdoor;  the former is very business-centric and yields little relevant to our specific interests (that’s unique and not available via those mentioned earlier), and Nextdoor provides very targeted local networks, which better serve our constituent Affiliates and Residents Associations.

I look forward to engaging with you further via our accounts:

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