Social media is invaluable tool if you are a councillor

Brave is the person who jumps into the heart of a volatile Facebook thread - especially if you’re leader of the council. But for Simon Cook the site is an essential way of engaging with the public

I have to confess I’m a big fan of social media. There’s no doubt there’s occasional bad publicity about various sites – from the trolls attacking our MP to more unsavoury activities - but I tend to think there’s more good than bad.

I can easily keep in touch with friends all over the world on Facebook and see what they’re up to. I can follow a cast of wonderful (and weird) people on Twitter. And yes, I can watch 80s kids TV on Youtube, which my daughter finds hilariously puzzling.

But social media is also incredibly helpful for my role as a councillor. In particular, the various local groups on Facebook really allow me to see where people have problems that need addressing.

In many ways they work like a giant town hall meeting – with the added bonus that you can still be in your pyjamas. Things may have been raised by one person but are useful to many more.

Sometimes it’s a issue with parking, or someone wanting to know about a planning issue – all mixed in with posts about mystery bugs and some amazing photography of our beautiful district. The joy of it is, it’s twoway – there are many councillors, from all parties, who dip in and out of threads, offering advice or updating everyone on what is being done about this and that.

It makes us all a lot more accountable – as soon as you put your head above the parapet, there are plenty of people wanting to chip in.

In the main, it’s civilised. The posts can be a bit tetchy – understandable really – but you can quickly learn when things aren’t being done right, or explain that as much as they might wish differently, what happened was done for a perfectly good reason.

There will always be people who get unpleasant. The claims of brown envelopes for all sorts of things are wearily familiar. But that is true in the real world too – and so is the fact that the vast majority of people are understanding that things occasionally need sorting out. And they understand that councillors are people too. The magic wands haven’t been issued yet!

Of course it’s not just the councillors who use social media. Our officers also use it as a vital tool. It’s a great way to pass out information on things that the council is doing like the barrier parking trial, and updat- ing on projects like the Kingsmead development and the Marlowe Kit. Rob Davies works like a Trojan fielding all manner of tweets and posts that come in. It just makes sense for us to communicate in as many ways as everyone else does. The idea that it has to be a letter – or even an email – is long in the past.

The last thing any politician should do is avoid social media - these days it’s an integral part of how everyone communicates. Even if you don’t post, you get a real feel for what the community thinks. Just remember – don’t feed the trolls.