I’ve blogged before as to why social media reviews are a really good idea but I’ve not gone into the tools I use often.
So, here’s a webtool that’s just been published that I’m really taking a shine to.
It’s ONS’s interactive portal for the 2021 England & Wales which you can find here.
This tool will give you astonishingly rich data not just by country but by local authority area, ward and also sub-areas of each ward.
You can use the tool to find age demographics, which of 22 languages is their first language, if they were born in the UK, their national identity, housing, work, education and a pile of other fields, too.
Here’s two key things to look at…
Age demographics
For a social media review, age demographics can be especially useful in building up a picture of how old people are. Use this in conjunction with Ofcom social media data which links age with preferred social media channels. This will give you pointers into which channels people are using. From there, you can tell if you are focusing in the right places.
Nationality and language
Having an idea of nationality and language can help you see if you are talking in the right language to reach people. For example, there’s a big Yemeni community in Dudley who came over in the 1960s. There’s 0.29 per cent who have Arabic as a first language. In Brent, this figure is 3.2 per cent. If you know people’s preferred languages you can better understand if your comms is reaching the right place.
Of course, a conversation with the councils equalities team to understand the best way to reach people would be a next step. But the ONS tool gives you a starting place.
The tool covers England & Wales. It’ll be interesting to see how Scotland and Northern Ireland present their data.