by promocymru_admin | 31st Jan 2013

Increasing numbers of youth services and provisions are offering their services online, but getting there can sometimes seem like a daunting task. Starting to use social media is likely to have an impact on your policies, training, budget and way of working, but the benefits can be huge.

Cardiff Youth Service has worked with ProMo-Cymru to successfully design and develop a framework that the whole service can use to improve communication with young people. Through consultations, scoping of provisions and running a pilot they thoroughly investigated the impact that social media could have on their organisation.

Over 95% of the young people consulted with use Facebook and 70% said that they’d like to be able to contact local services and organisations over social networking sites.

Cardiff Youth Council were the first group to take the step to start using social media within their work. The CYC identified that, while many young people use social media to express their thoughts on a number of matters relating to Cardiff, it can be hard to find them amid the sea of tweets and Facebook posts out there. For this reason we created #iSayCardiff: a Twitter hashtag and a Facebook fanpage that allows any young person who has something to say about Cardiff — be it a gripe, a comment, or a question — to add this tag to their message, ensuring that it is seen by the Cardiff Youth Council who can then pass it on to the relevant people.

The CYC are now active on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and have found social media to be an effective way to communicate with young people and are excited about how many opportunities this has opened up.