From face-to-Facebook

The rise of the internet and advent of social networking has no doubt changed the way in which we communicate beyond recognition. Many housing organisations are now following suit and using such sites to reach out to their tenants but is this truly the way forward for tenant engagement? Michelle McKenna reports

It seems like only yesterday that tweeting was something that birds did and Facebook was unheard of but like it or not social networking sites are becoming somewhat of a global phenomenon.

The lines between private and public have become increasingly blurred and it is now possible to find out what public figures such as the Housing Minister are up to at any given time by following their Twitter feeds and to interact with organisations through their Facebook page.

There is no doubting that social networking sites are a popular way for people to keep in touch with friends, particularly teenagers who use them as a way to plan their social calendar and share pictures and gossip.

But is it really a suitable forum for housing organisations to communicate with tenants and what possible benefits can it bring?

Housing association Knowsley Housing Trust (KHT) and ALMO Sandwell Homes are among those making their first foray into the world of social networking, through Facebook and Twitter respectively.

Reactions from tenants have been mixed and in some instances the concept has been slow to take off but both organisations believe that these sites will play a big part in tenant engagement in the future.

“It is definitely the way forward in my opinion,” says Phil McNamara, marketing and communications officer for KHT. While Andrew Walton, marketing officer at Sandwell Homes, added: “I don’t think it is a phase.” KHT , which manages 13,000 properties around Knowsley, launched its Facebook page in February following a focus group meeting with residents about the best ways to keep in touch with them.

“The aims and objectives were a new way to interact with younger customers and also to engage with customers who we wouldn’t normally engage with,” says McNamara. “It is really important that we get two-way communication and that is one of the main reasons we set it up. We are really interested in our residents’ viewpoints and really want to find out what they are doing. Also we can tell them easily and quickly what we are doing and any important messages.”

The site has proved a valuable tool for reaching out to those tenants who don’t get involved in formal consultation and McNamara estimates that roughly half of the 47 tenants who have so far signed up as KHT ’s Facebook “friends” are people who don’t get involved in formal tenants’ and residents’ groups.

He cites an example of a young tenant who has not been particularly involved with the organisation who had enquired about KHT ’s apprenticeship scheme through Facebook.

“This lad obviously wants to be an apprentice and has seen the publicity and wants to get involved so it is another way to get in touch with him as he is unlikely to go on our website,” says McNamara.

Sandwell Homes opted to go down the Twitter route in a bid to give tenants a platform to speak to each other, as well as an opportunity to communicate with the company directly.

“We were running a series of initiatives to try to make tenants more environmentally friendly and we were looking at ways we could engage with them and make communication with them a little less formal and thought that Twitter might be one way that we could do that,” says Walton.

Things did not go exactly as planned and the concept didn’t initially take off with tenants, although a training session attended by members of the environmental forum and Sandwell Homes eco champions has since boosted numbers.

But that’s not to say that the Twitter page has been a flop, in fact it has 200 followers, but what was surprising to Sandwell was the number of corporate bodies who joined, giving the site a whole new direction.

“We have been getting more tenants signing up recently and I think it is slowly beginning to have the desired effect but also we have got a lot of other housing organisations that follow us and that we follow and trade press and a lot of green organisations,” says Walton. “It has made it less formal and easier for people to get in touch and it is good for monitoring conversations between housing organisations and the trade press to see what sort of topics are trending and what is getting people talking.”

Walton is able to re-tweet information from other organisations to tenants and has found Twitter useful for promoting green technologies to residents.

While the corporate side of Twitter has taken off the site is slowly but surely being used for its original purpose of communicating with tenants. For example Sandwell Homes was able to liaise with a disgruntled tenant after finding out that he was unhappy with the repairs service through Twitter.

KHT ’s site, while proving useful for engaging with hard to reach tenants also allows the organisation to spread the word about its activities while helping to showcase the work of residents to the wider community and highlights updates and alerts from bodies such as the police.

Social networking is obviously giving media-savvy tenants another way to contact their landlord but what about the older generation who may not be so familiar with the internet?

“I think a lot of the older residents are more comfortable face to face but you can slowly see it progressing as people get more familiar and see photos and events and eventually they will start doing that a little bit more,” says McNamara.

And both organisations have held training sessions to help people become more comfortable with the sites.

Asked what advice he would give to organisations toying with the idea of social networking McNamara says: “I would tell them to go for it because it is the future really, it is what people are going to be doing more and more of.”

Walton added: “It is not the primary way of communicating with tenants at the moment but it gives you another option. In the future it will probably become one of the main ways that you communicate with them so it is good to get a grasp of it before it really takes off.”

So are we entering a brave new world where face-to-face communication between landlords and tenants will fall by the way side? The jury is still out on that one but both McNamara and Walton agree that if they want to stay ahead of the game social networking is going to play a big part in the way they communicate with their tenants.