Effective Community Road Safety Groups tend to have good relationships with their local council, Police and Emergency Services workers, local businesses and community.

Being well connected can encourage people to join your group, generate new ideas, and provide ways for people to learn new skills and increase supporters and partners for projects.  Being well connected also helps build the capacity and well-being of your community.

To find more people who may be interested or want to be involved, it is helpful to consider who would be affected by or interested in the issue or project. This can range from individuals from various demographics, community organisations and groups, local businesses and peak bodies. One way to connect with these people is to keep the community regularly informed about what your group it is doing or wishes to do and invite them to be involved on a regular or project basis.

The Living Neighbourhoods website has helpful tips on how to get people involved in your projects from your local community.

Connecting with young people

The Youth Affairs Council SA (YACSA) is the peak body that represents and advocates for young people in South Australia. If you are looking to engage with young people about a specific road safety issue or project, contact the YACSA for information and support on how to effectively engage or involve them.

Communicating and using social media

Using social media can be a great way to help stay connected with each other and your community wider community.

A few helpful tips on how to best utilise social media are:

• Different social media accounts have different uses. For example Instagram is used mostly for sharing photos with limited conversation; Facebook is for the broad masses. Twitter is good for quick short alerts to attract political or media interest.
• Facebook is recommended as a good place to start. It's used by the highest number of people; it is easy to use and allows for conversation, photos, video and article sharing.
• Focus on one form of social media first e.g. Facebook; once you feel more comfortable you can expand to other forms of social media such as Twitter.
• Allow a small number of group members administration access to the social media pages
• Keep posts short and use basic English.
• Photos and Videos can complement the text in posts and also increase reach and engagement.
• Videos with a punchy start (first 3 seconds) are often more effective at engaging people’s interest than just using photos.
• Videos between 15-30 seconds long are most effective for communicating messages and shouldn’t exceed one minute in length.
• Try to include subtitles for greater impact as videos are often watched without sound.
• MP4 files must be used for uploading videos to Facebook and Instagram as YouTube links no longer work on these mediums.
• Using shortened website URLs is highly recommended, web browser search "shortened website URL" for further information.
• Have someone responsible for monitoring the accounts often. Social media is fast paced and quick responses assist to maintain effectiveness and credibility.
• Social media is public and can quickly damage public reputation, it is suggested that the people running the accounts already have a basic understanding of how social media works.

To learn more about how to use social media, visit the following websites:

• http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-social-media
• https://www.facebook.com/help/