Social media

You can stay up to date with the latest information from us through social media. We provide alerts and updates on service changes and disruptions, live tweet election results and some of our council meetings, publicity campaigns and consultations.

Why do we use social media?

We use social media to interact with our residents, businesses and visitors in a new and innovative way. It's a tool that is widely used by people on a daily basis. From Facebook to Twitter to watching videos on YouTube, it allows us to have an online presence and reach more people when we have important news and updates to share. It also allows people to engage with us in a way which suits them.

When do we respond?

All of the council's social media accounts is updated and monitored during normal office hours, Monday to Friday. We do on occasions schedule posts and messages to go out over the weekend. And during emergency situations we may provide updates and alerts outside of normal office hours.

How we use social media

Social media is a 'social' tool and our approach is no different. We see it as a two way communication tool so whilst we post updates, we also respond where we can. We aim to acknowledge all posts and messages within one working day and try to get back with a response within a reasonable time period. Where applicable, we sign post social media users to where the information can be found, this can be directing people to partnering agencies who also use social media, direct people to the council's website where information can be found or to external websites.

There are also times when we receive reports on various environmental issues such as fly-tipping and street litter. We encourage people to do so, so we can keep our city clean. The best way for this to be dealt with is to report this directly on our website using our online reporting tool. This way we can get all of the information required for it to be resolved quickly and effectively. Once reported, the system also generates a tracking code which you can use to check progress on a report that has been made. When we receive reports of this on social media, our team will refer people to report this themselves.

Social media acceptable use policy

The council's social networks were set up to provide information on news, events and jobs for residents, businesses and visitors. You can find out more about why we use social media.

Most online communities have their own rules and guidelines, which we will always follow. We reserve the right to remove any contributions that break the rules or guidelines of the relevant community, or any of the following:

• Be civil, tasteful and relevant.
• Do not post messages that are unlawful, libellous, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, discriminatory, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented or racially offensive.
• Do not swear.
• Do not post content copied from elsewhere, for which you do not own the copyright.
• Do not post the same message, or very similar messages, more than once (also called "spamming").
• Do not publicise your, or anyone else's, personal information, such as contact details.
• Do not advertise products or services.
• Do not impersonate someone else.

Following on Twitter and retweeting

Our follow policy on Twitter is based on relevance and usefulness to the council but does not mean we necessarily endorse any individual or organisation or any comments they make on Twitter.

We will only Retweet (RT) messages from feeds or share posts on Facebook which the council follows or if we believe it will be helpful or interesting for our followers.

Defamation

Please take care not to make defamatory statements. In law this means a statement that lowers the reputation of a person or organisation in the eyes of a reasonable person. By publishing such a statement we can both get into serious trouble. We will therefore take down any statement that could be deemed to be defamatory.

Pre-election period

In the six week run up to an election - local, general or European - councils have to be very careful not to do or say anything that could be seen in any way to support any political party or candidate.  We will continue to publish important service announcements using social media but may have to remove responses if they are overtly party political.