Customer Stories
Building connections and finding opportunities
How West Kent Housing has used data and strategic insight to transform resident engagement and enhance its social media presence.
West Kent is passionate about the role a housing association can play in society, with a vision to deliver places to live and spaces to grow for current and future residents, while building stronger connections within local communities. By putting residents at the heart of decision-making, West Kent is committed to creating meaningful conversations, building trust and providing communications that are relevant, accessible and engaging.
The challenge
Like many organisations, West Kent’s social media presence had traditionally focused on sharing information rather than creating conversation. While content performed adequately from a reach perspective, engagement levels were relatively low, with routine posts typically receiving between 200 and 500 views and generating only a handful of interactions.
The communications team recognised an opportunity to build stronger connections with residents by creating more engaging, audience-focused content and making better use of data to inform decision-making. While the organisation already monitored industry developments, policy changes and emerging sector issues, it had limited visibility into how residents and local communities were discussing these topics online and what mattered most to them day to day.
Reporting largely focused on standard performance measures such as impressions, clicks and reach. While these metrics provided a useful indication of what content was being seen, they offered less insight into audience sentiment, emerging local issues and the conversations taking place beyond West Kent’s owned channels. The team wanted to better understand the context behind the numbers, identify emerging trends earlier and ensure content reflected the interests and concerns of residents.
The solution
Partnering with Orlo marked an important first step in West Kent’s communications transformation. The platform provided the tools and insight needed to better understand audience behaviour and community conversations, while also supporting a wider programme of change that included a new content strategy, increased focus on video, investment in equipment and staff development.
To strengthen resident engagement, West Kent introduced a new communications approach centred on authentic, video-led storytelling and audience insight. The team developed a structured Flicker, Flash, Flare content framework, helping to balance reactive, day-to-day content with planned campaigns and larger strategic initiatives. Alongside this, investment was made in developing internal skills, improving video production capabilities and introducing new equipment to support the creation of higher-quality content.
To support delivery of the strategy, West Kent worked with Orlo’s Professional Services team to make better use of content planning, scheduling and measurement tools. Custom tagging and reporting enabled the team to categorise content within its Flicker, Flash, Flare framework and understand which types of content were generating the strongest engagement.
- ‘Flicker’: Frequent, low-effort content designed to respond quickly to local events, trends and community conversations.
- ‘Flash’: Medium-effort content delivered through planned campaigns and regular content themes.
- ‘Flare’: Large-scale, high-impact campaigns focused on strategic priorities and key organisational objectives.
Alongside changes to content planning and creation, West Kent implemented Orlo Insights to enhance its understanding of resident and stakeholder conversations. Three dedicated social listening streams were established to monitor brand mentions and stakeholder conversations, hyper-local conversations affecting communities across Kent, and housing sector discussions, policy developments and emerging industry themes. This advanced social listening setup filtered out the noise, transforming raw digital chatter into five structured, automated intelligence reports.
These included:
- Housing industry themes – analysing industry-wide themes and sentiment to inform high-level strategic comms and PR efforts.
- Kent topic mentions – tracking candid regional conversations to identify service spikes such as damp and mould, and deploying the necessary resources.
- Competitor mentions – in order to benchmark West Kent’s public sentiment and campaign reach against regional peers like Moat and Golding Homes.
- Organisation and stakeholder health – evaluating brand health, executive reputation and public perception of specific new housing developments.
- Inbox service areas – breaking down direct customer contact themes to alert leadership to immediate service backlogs.
The results
The combination of a new content strategy, greater focus on authentic storytelling, investment in video content and improved use of audience insight led to a significant improvement in social media performance. By moving away from a predominantly broadcast-led approach and focusing on content that reflected the interests, experiences and concerns of residents, West Kent saw substantial increases in reach, engagement and video consumption.
The introduction of social listening also gave the team a deeper understanding of local conversations and sector sentiment, helping identify themes that could inform future communications activity. This allowed West Kent to plan content more proactively, respond to emerging issues more effectively and ensure communications remained relevant to the communities it serves. Importantly, the organisation moved beyond simply measuring outputs and began using data to better understand audience interests, perceptions and engagement behaviours. This has helped strengthen communications planning, support decision-making and provide greater confidence that content is aligned with resident needs and expectations.
Outcome
280%
increase in monthly organic Facebook reach
Outcome
261%
increase in video views between month 1 & 2 using Orlo
Outcome
72,180
video views generated across just 5 authentic, community focused video posts
Solution
1,040+
listening mentions analysed and categorised with first month
