The social media thing

There is a lot of talk about social media as a means of getting people into towers and increasing awareness of ringing in the local community.

If social media isn’t quite your thing, why not delegate this to a member of the band who “gets it” and has the time required to do it properly?

Social media is a vast communications network that is now so intrinsic to our way of being, so embedded in our world that now (especially in and after the Covid-19 pandemic) it is the normal way to find information, learn something new, buy goods, be entertained, look at what your friends are doing and catch up with family. World networks are nothing new they have connected the world for a long time now. First came the telegraphs, telephones and then televisions. Now there is the Internet and wifi.

There are now 4.14 billion people worldwide using ‘social’ every day with 90% accessing it via their mobile phones.

What is social media?

We are social creatures, we need to communicate with each other, gather information and learn from each other. We network naturally with our extended families for support and keep in contact with our friends to nourish and extend our experience and at it’s very basic level ‘social’ facilitates this easily and at lightning speed. Social media is a vast communications network that is now so intrinsic to our way of being, so embedded in our world that, whether you like it or not, for business or publicity you ignore it at your peril.

Imagine, with mirth, now baulking at using a newly invented home telephone ‘when letters have been written for centuries’ or a century later ‘why use my landline when I can use my smart phone and message right now?’ Millions of us use our social media platforms to create colourful pictures, write stories, network, promote business and charities or create communities. Bell ringing can only benefit from social media's ability to make us more visible, more colourful and be more accessible for when we recruit to help our numbers grow. » Intrigued?

Find out more about social media and what it can do

How to guides

If you’re new to social media here are some quick guides to get you started:

» Twitter for bell ringers

» Facebook for bell ringers

Various guides are also available on the Internet, which give more generic, but more detailed information on getting started on social media:

» How to use Twitter

» How to make a Twitter account

» How to make a new Facebook account

» How to create a new Facebook group

» How to create a Facebook fan page

» How to make a YouTube Account

» How to set up a website

Social media flyer

If you need to explain why and how to use Facebook to a social media novice then this 2-page tri-fold flyer could be just right for the job.

» Download flyer

New recruits via Facebook

Looking for new recruits to strengthen our band, we posted on the Facebook Village Noticeboard page. We got 2 responses, both from adults between 35-55 so perfect recruits in that respect (in my opinion anyway). It looks like these notice boards have a lot of traffic (ours is around 1250 users) so very little effort and zero expense.

Nick Hiams

Social media for recruitment

One of our key objectives is to promote and teach the art of change-ringing in our area. We had noticed that we receive a steady stream of enquires through the internet from people wishing to find out more. We set about seeing how we could increase the stream of enquiries and make ourselves more effective at tapping into this source of new ringers.

Roger Booth