About the City of Darebin
Located in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, the City of Darebin is known for its rich cultural diversity, vibrant arts scene, and strong commitment to sustainability. Having a population of over 140,000 people, with individuals from over 140 countries, Darebin prides itself on the importance of fostering inclusivity and community engagement.
Being a leader in environmental initiatives, Darebin was one of the first councils in the world to declare a climate emergency, sparking a global movement with over 2,500 governments now following suit. The City’s parks, recreational facilities, and local business support makes Darebin a vibrant and welcoming community for all.
Lisa Joyce, Lead of Community Engagement at the City of Darebin, shared with us how the City has leveraged Social Pinpoint’s Coaching Sessions to enhance the effectiveness of its ‘Your Say Darebin’ engagement platform for improved community engagement with its residents.
The Goal
City of Darebin consulted with Social Pinpoint on complex projects to ensure information was presented clearly and in a way that was easily understood by community members.
The City of Darebin migrated to Social Pinpoint a few years ago, due to the ease and the functionality of the platform. Since being with Social Pinpoint, the City of Darebin had recently sought advice from our Customer Success Team at Social Pinpoint, regarding two complex projects. This was to ensure that content on each of Darebin’s project pages were not only well organised, but also accessible and effective for members of the community to digest.
By seeking external advice, Darebin aimed to maximise the impact of their projects and ensure they were meeting the diverse needs of their community. Lisa emphasised the critical role that support played in the success of helping to build the City’s project pages to create lasting positive outcomes for its residents.
“We looked to Social Pinpoint for advice because we got to a point where we weren’t sure how to best present the information and best frame our questions to the community and both times we went to Social Pinpoint and that was incredibly helpful.”
The Approach
Darebin participated in two personalised Coaching Sessions with Social Pinpoint to receive guidance and apply recommendations to their project pages, ensuring success.
To assist Darebin with its complex projects, the City took part in two Coaching Sessions with Social Pinpoint. These Coaching Sessions are also designed to help enhance the City’s digital skills and capabilities. For each Coaching Session, our Social Pinpoint’s Customer Success Team conducted a comprehensive review of Darebin’s projects as the first objective.
The first coaching session, was for the City’s project called ‘Your Street, Your Say‘, an initiative that focused on gathering feedback on proposed projects and questions related to speed limits in the area. Darebin had split the project into three different Groups (A, B, and C) which was determined by specific locations for targeted engagement. For this project, Darebin predominately utilised Social Pinpoint’s Social Map engagement tool.
“We really tailored that map a lot,” explained Lisa. “And we’ve got thousands of bits of feedback to that project, which was incredibly helpful.”
The second coaching session focused on Darebin’s consultation regarding its current Council Plan, which spans an extensive project timeline. The goal of this initiative is for community members to revise and provide feedback on Darebin’s 2041 Community Vision and essential strategic Council documents, culminating in the development of the new Council Plan for 2025-2029.
For this project, the City employed Social Pinpoint’s Hotspot tool, allowing residents to visually explore and learn about various aspects of Darebin’s initiatives. Additionally, the City utilised the Form tool’s Paginated feature to pose questions to the community in a visual and interactive format, helping to gain a better understanding of their priorities.
Lisa highlighted the valuable guidance and recommendations provided by the Social Pinpoint Customer Success Team in helping Darebin with its current project.
“Social Pinpoint gave us some really great advice on how to best set up the page and how to use the Hotspot tool to get the most value out of it. The other really nice piece of advice that Social Pinpoint gave us was around accessibility and how to make some changes to make our pages more accessible. So, it was great to be able to do that too. We’ve noticed a big change in the way that project is set out, the layout, and the type of creativity that we can use to ask the community for feedback.”
The use of tabs to split up the content and to advise us away from our typical sort of right hand side approach, helped us present the information in a really clear way. So, if a community member is accessing this page from their phone or device, it’s really clear when they come onto the page where they need to go.”
For each Coaching Session, it began with a 30-minute online meeting, where our team provided detailed feedback to Darabin on both the site’s user experience and the community member experience. The evaluation was focused on ensuring that data collection was effective and making the most of online engagement and content tools. The team also offered recommendations to improve the content, layout structure, and information flow, which empowered Darebin to refine their digital engagement strategies effectively.
After assessing the site, the team documented the recommendations in a Coaching Summary template and held a feedback session with Darebin to discuss key suggestions. This approach ensured a clear understanding of any proposed changes, which reduced the risk of miscommunication. Following the meeting, the team shared the report with Darebin and saved all related documents and recordings to ensure proper tracking for future reference.
Amy Truran, Customer Success Team Lead at Social Pinpoint, emphasised the significance of these Coaching Sessions in helping clients develop impactful projects for successful community engagement.
“Our coaching sessions empower our clients to enhance stakeholder engagement by focusing on key areas: selecting the right tools for project goals, building strategic, informative and meaningful engagement projects, and promoting methods to close the loop with the community. By emphasising these aspects, our clients can cultivate an active and vibrant community that participates in decision-making, fosters a culture of open dialogue and responsiveness, and leads to a more collaborative and effective engagement experience on Social Pinpoint.”
Lisa shared her experience on how valuable the City of Darebin found the Coaching Sessions.
“I found it all really valuable. I think it’s just beneficial to have an extra pair of eyes look over the page from a different angle. Sometimes you can be a bit deep in the project or you’ve been thinking about the project for so long that some things seem obvious to you that might not be obvious to the community. So, I think the angle of having someone look at it from a different pair of eyes is really useful.”
“I also just appreciate the format of the coaching sessions. The way that you have multiple people providing us with feedback and you sort of summarise it all presented to us in a nice report at the end is really actionable for us and something that we can really implement quite quickly.”
The Result
After applying the guidance from Social Pinpoint’s Coaching Sessions, both of Darebin’s projects succeeded, with one project successfully receiving 3,900 contributions in total, by using only two online engagement tools.
After applying the guidance from Social Pinpoint’s Coaching Sessions, Darebin’s projects were highly successful, with the ‘Your Street, Your Say (Group B)’ initiative receiving a total of 3,900 contributions (2,082 through the Survey Tool and the rest via the Social Map Tool), far surpassing previous project participation levels. The initiative also excelled, achieving an impressive 46% attention rate (with users spending more than one minute on the page) and a 34% action rate (with users clicking more than two actions), well above the 20% site-wide average from last year.
Additionally, the City’s ‘Our Darebin (2041)’ initiative had achieved a 15% feedback rate, doubling last year’s average of 6%. The page saw a 35% attention rate, higher than the 30% average across all sites. Additionally, the project gathered 821 contributions via the Quick Poll and Form Tool.
Lisa emphasised the success of these projects, underscoring the significance of receiving over 2,000 survey responses for ‘Your Street, Your Say’ alone.
“We rarely hit 1,000, we might hit it once per year. So, 2,000 was really significant. I think that it was just a project that was interesting to the community, but also using the hotspot tool and the way that they require feedback was quite interactive and engaging for them. So, I think that was it. It was significantly more than we would normally get for any project…We’re getting really good feedback on how the page is flowing and people finding it quite easy to interact with.”
This personalised and collaborative experience not only allowed Social Pinpoint to provide targeted insights but also fostered a strong relationship with Darebin, ensuring they have a clear path forward for improving site functionality and user engagement.
Lisa highlighted the significant impact of these Coaching Sessions, noting how they provided valuable insights and practical strategies that helped improve project outcomes.
“Really appreciate you taking the time to give the feedback. It’s definitely worth any engagement team time to request service from you and set it up. I think the results really speak for themselves. It’s a great service.”
If you want to learn more and explore how our Coaching Sessions can help you, please speak to your Customer Success Manager or contact our sales team today.
