Why We Use Twitter

There has been speculation around the set up of our supporters’ account on Twitter, @FriendsofKSA, which we’d like to address with the facts.

Stoke Poges Parish Council continues to refuse to talk to the school, and so we realise we need to use a number of ways of communicating directly with villagers and families with school-age children.  We also need a means to counter misunderstandings about the school, which we can use to put out facts to clarify matters.

 

The @FriendsofKSA Twitter account was set up to communicate with people in the school area, who may be interested in what the school has to say.  Twitter is an ‘open’ social media platform, in that anyone can read what everyone else writes, and also see who follows whom, unless they elect to make their account ‘Private’.  For most Twitter users, only ‘Direct Messages’ between two participants are private.

In Twitter terms, someone who chooses to read your tweets is called a 'follower'. In practice, you would want the people you are interested in to ‘follow’ your Twitter account so they see what you post there on a regular basis.  It is normal to begin to build a community of 'followers' by searching for existing accounts with common interests, in the area you want to communicate with.  In our case those would naturally include residents of S.Bucks, including parents & children of Stoke Poges and other villages, plus community groups, businesses and others.  Having searched Twitter for accounts mentioning local place names, the FriendsofKSA account has 'followed' them and reviewed who, in turn, 'follows' those accounts.  

The accounts @StokePogesSch and @StokePoges_Yr6, for example, are likely to be followed by parents, teachers and pupils in that year at Stoke Poges Primary School.  This is the very group KSA wants to communicate with directly, to ensure we give them a clear idea of what the school can offer them.  If they choose to follow back and read our messages, they can decide if it might be suitable for their children’s entry to Yr 7 in September 2014, or a subsequent year.   

Users usually receive an email or text from Twitter when they have a new follower.  Lists of followers are openly available for account holders, parents, indeed for anyone to check.  As public information, it is like using electoral rolls to write to people living in a given area.  We wish to make clear that @FriendsofKSA has never initiated a conversation with a child on Twitter, and never would.

@FriendsofKSA was set up and operated by the school’s part time adviser, Tim Douglas.  Tim initially got involved when he saw tweets from both objectors and supporters of the school, clearly with very different views of whether the school should be located in Stoke Poges.  Over time Tim became convinced that the objectors had the wrong idea. He supported the school in a personal capacity for several weeks, before joining our communications team in early November.  Whilst operating @FriendofKSA for the school, Tim continues to operate a number of other Twitter accounts.  Tim is solely responsible for what he posts on his personal account, @TimDouglasHR, which are his personal views.