The city of Durango already embraces Facebook and Twitter as a means to connect and communicate with residents. But more recently, the city has begun dabbling with a new social media platform: Nextdoor.
The city has almost doubled the number of residents it has connected with on Nextdoor, a neighborhood social networking site that gives residents a medium to communicate with those who live within a certain vicinity or subdivision, said Mitchell Carter, spokesman with the city of Durango.
In 2017, after the city launched its Nextdoor agency account in an effort to connect with residents, the network had about 700 local addresses associated with it, Carter said. As of early 2019, the city account had 1,300 users, he said.
“The city always tries to make sure that the broadest audience has the most important information about services, events and happenings,” Carter said. “(Nextdoor is) another network, another medium, to help people understand what we’re all about.”
Start the new year off right! Sign up for @Nextdoor and connect with your neighbors to build community and stay updated. Get an invite at https://t.co/pOCMMcxlyX pic.twitter.com/uIEVP1OHAy
— City of Durango (@CityofDurango) January 7, 2019
Residents can register with the city’s Nextdoor agency account by visiting www.nextdoor.com and typing in a city of Durango address. The website will automatically recognize a location of an address and put the user in a group with people who live nearby.
The city can use Nextdoor to target specific neighborhoods with information, Carter said. For example, information about a sidewalk that closed for 10 days earlier this month in the Crestview neighborhood was conveyed to those people who live in that neighborhood.
And while the city can post to any neighborhood, it cannot see what residents post among themselves in their groups, Carter said.
The city still uses its Facebook page, which has more than 5,800 followers, and its Twitter account, which has almost 5,000 followers, to release emergency information because it has a wider reach than Nextdoor, Carter said. Nextdoor notifications are hyper-local, intended for specific areas, giving residents reminders to lock bear trash cans or to shovel a sidewalk after a snowstorm, he said.
bhauff@durangoherald.com
