e-KNOW Editorial

We salute the City of Cranbrook for finally getting into using social media, in this case Facebook, for helping get the word out to residents about emergency need-to-know information and other city news.

Not only is social media an excellent and cost effective medium to reach out to people in this day and age it only makes common sense as its use is growing faster than pretty much any other ‘new thing’ in the world.

With each passing day, as one generation passes along to the next, the pendulum tilts away from the old means of reaching out to the masses (printed matter such as brochures and newspapers, radio and television) to the new way (cell and smart phones, laptops, Tablets, iPads and home computers). Like it or not, it is a fact of life world-wide and if you don’t get aboard, you’ll find yourself falling farther back.

Pretty much everyone under the age of 45 or 50 now is in some way computer or smart phone literate – with a massive surge of a majority charged with tending to us aged Baby Boomers and tweeners in our old age completely reliant on and in love with such technologies.

It is from this view and reality in which e-KNOW came to life. Ten years from now you will be hard pressed to find a print newspaper anywhere. I say this as someone who was employed in print media for two decades and as an editor loved the craft of creating each issue. Yet, from about the mid 1990s on, I rarely purchased a newspaper, unless I was travelling and bored or curious, because I was getting the information I sought quicker and cheaper online.

Another reason I am pleased that the City of Cranbrook is venturing into social media stems from a press release issued by the city that validates the importance of a strong online and social media presence.

“The catalyst of the creation of a City of Cranbrook Facebook presence stems from the windstorm of July 2012, which knocked out both the City of Cranbrook website and the local radio station for roughly a 24-hour period. During that time, the local radio station Facebook page was the only avenue the city had to get important information out to its residents,” the city release explains.

It was during and after the windstorm of 2012 when e-KNOW, just one year into its life and still trying to reach readers, took off and we haven’t looked back since.

Through the amazing reach of social media such as Facebook and Twitter, our photographs of the storm damage and updates on what was happening gave us access to readers (in the city’s case it will be constituents) that we hadn’t reached yet.

Social media is a brilliant gateway to your own online presence, where you can present much more detail and depth than you want to provide on Facebook etc. because social media is more about quick bites or scans.

The City of Cranbrook will soon come to realize this.

Notably, the city is late to the game when it comes East Kootenay municipalities utilizing social media. The districts of Elkford and Sparwood, Village of Canal Flats Mayor Ute Juras and cities of Fernie and Kimberley have been effectively using social media for several years now, as have many regional community organizations.

E-KNOW will share or re-tweet need-to-know posts by our region’s municipalities. As our social media numbers are much larger than the various municipalities, our share or re-tweet gives them greater reach and range. As each person shares a post or tweet, that range grows and grows and stays active, rather than fade into the sound and view-scape or wind up in a pile in a closet.

With the rapid spread of usage of hand held devices such as smart phones etc., the power grid also won’t be as important as it has been in the past in terms of relaying vital emergency information.

When the power is out, our devices remain alive. In e-KNOW’s case, we’ve operated through storms by keeping people updated even when our computers are cold and dead due to a power outage.

Again, like it or not, social media is the future, at least for the next few decades when some other form of communications means comes along, which I will most assuredly claim to be a spawn of the devil.

In the meantime, welcome City of Cranbrook. You will find that by utilizing the right control measures, social media will become your fastest and best way to get the word out to your constituents when the need arises.

Ian Cobb/e-KNOW

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