No two Neighbourhood Watch (NW) schemes are the same, and no two NW groups communicate among themselves in the same way. Some groups hold regular face-to-face meetings, others converse almost entirely by email, and some use social media platforms to post messages and share information. A few groups even have their own smartphone apps.

 No one way is right or wrong, it depends entirely on what suits the members of your scheme. But if you haven’t ever considered the possibility of using social media to communicate with your group members, it could be worth exploring. Social media is free, convenient, instant, and surprisingly easy to use – most social media platforms are very intuitive and provide clear instructions for setting up pages or groups. It’s up to you whether to make your messages completely public, so that anybody can read them, or only accessible to a select group of people. You can add images or videos, invite comments and start conversations, and connect with other like-minded people and groups if you want to. Social media can be fun! People are naturally social creatures so it’s satisfying to see comments and likes show up on your posts.

As well as providing you with a quick and easy way of communicating among your scheme members, social media offers real-time news and information discovery – a real bonus for spreading the word about things going on in your neighbourhood in a timely fashion.

Having a social media account lets people know that your Neighbourhood Watch scheme is an active and important part of their world. And, having an active account has been shown to generate loyalty and connectedness among your members – it’s another tool to help ensure your NW scheme is a success.