The Communications Subcommittee coordinates and oversees the various communication activities of the Glebe Society including the Bulletin, websites and social media (such as Facebook and Twitter). The Communications subcommittee supports the Glebe Society to:
- Expand engagement with Glebe and the wider community (eg by supporting other subcommittees in their communication and by building Facebook and Twitter presence);
- Strengthen our base (including by engaging with new residents and by improving the ease of joining and renewing membership);
- Support effective campaigns (eg by ensuring urgent and important campaigns are quickly and broadly communicated through the website and the various social media channels);
- Support Glebe Society (and others events) (eg by promoting events; where relevant, outside the membership and outside Glebe); and
- Improve the efficiency of the Society’s internal communication.
Below are some of the activities the communications subcommittee has undertaken in the past year.
Our Websites
As well as the Society’s main website, the subcommittee also maintains websites for Glebe Walks (http://glebewalks.com.au/) and for the Glebe Island Bridge (http://www.glebeislandbridge.com/).
The Society’s main website received nearly half a million hits in 2014-2015; that’s an average of around 1,300 hits per day and double the number of hits from the previous year. Remembrance Day (11 November) was our biggest day, with around 2,300 hits. We speculate that the increased traffic on the site may have been due to interest in the Harold Park development, with a lot of potential buyers searching for information about Glebe. We only know the location of about 35% of visitors to the website, but not surprisingly, most visitors to the website were located in Australia (71%) while China came in second at 19%. The peak in usage now seems to have passed.
The Glebe Walks website received an average of 100 hits per day in 2014-2015 – around 37,000 for the year. This is an overall increase of 600 hits over last year. There have been exciting developments for Glebe Walks: some of the Glebe Walks have been adapted into audio format for use in the mobile app, izi.travel (http://izi.travel/en), promoting walks to travellers all over the world. These are: Early Architects of Glebe, Glebe Waterfront Walk and People and Places in Early Glebe.
The Society strongly supports the retention and restoration of the Glebe Island Bridge, so the subcommittee created a dedicated Glebe Island Bridge website, on behalf of the Heritage subcommittee. The website provides a great deal of information about the Bridge and acts as a forum for information and discussion. The website is already proving popular; it comes up as the second hit in a Google search for ‘Glebe Island Bridge’ (after the Wikipedia entry) and has received 3,000 visits in a six-month period.
Our Facebook Pages
The Society maintains Facebook pages for the Society as a whole (www.facebook.com/TheGlebeSociety) and for the Glebe Island Bridge (http://www.facebook.com/GlebeIslandBridge).
This year, by far the most popular post on the Society’s Facebook page was a 1980s music video made in the (then) dilapidated Bellevue; Beautiful People’ by Australian Crawl). This post was clicked 128 times, liked by 42 people and reached an audience of 1,300. As well as being a place for the Society to share information with the wider community, the Facebook page is also acting as a portal for people to contact the society, including requests for historical information.
This music video for Australian Crawl’s Beautiful People,
set in a dilapidated Bellevue, has been the biggest hit
on the Glebe Society Facebook page so far.
The Society continues to tweet and retweet items relating to Glebe – 850 tweets in all. The Society’s twitter following has rapidly grown to over 220 followers. Our twitter feed is an excellent source of up-to-the minute information on matters that affect Glebe; including calls to action such as the Bays Precinct consultations. Interestingly, one of the most popular tweet subjects has been the change from ‘The Glebe’ to ‘Glebe’, as the name for our suburb. WestConnex, the Bays Precinct and other developer topics are also popular.
Other activities
Members will have noticed that the various Glebe Society media now have a fresh look with the adoption of the new Glebe Society logo, fonts and so on.
The online booking site, Eventbrite, is now being used to promote Glebe Society events and as one means of booking for those events. The Communications subcommittee is monitoring the effectiveness and acceptability of this new method of booking events. We will continue using Eventbrite until the end of the year, track the usage statistics of different options and costs, and then create a summary report. Based on that, the Society can decide whether or not to continue using Eventbrite the following year.
The subcommittee is planning a Social Media Education Session focused on the Glebe Society and community matters. Content will include following and contributing to the Society’s Facebook pages, and following the Society’s Twitter account (and creating your own Twitter account), finding out about community events, heritage and history, taking action, etc). The session will be of interest to members who currently don’t use social media but who are interested in finding out what it’s all about.
The current members of the subcommittee are: Virginia Simpson-Young (Bulletin editor), Peter Thorogood (technical coordinator), Phil Young (web content coordinator), Scott Calvert (chief tweeter and assistant web content coordinator), Jan Macindoe (Glebe Walks), Carole Herriman, Bruce Davis and Bill Simpson-Young. At our last meeting Bill Simpson-Young stood down as convenor and Scott Calvert volunteered to take on the role. We meet approximately bi-monthly and welcome other members to join
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