It’s official, the social media accounts for the former Town of Sackville and Village of Dorchester have been retired today. The new handle for the amalgamated town of Tantramar is @TantramarNB.
Town staff have been using all three handles since the municipality officially came into being on January 1, 2023, with duplicate postings across the three accounts. But as of today, there will be one handle on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The town has also changed the name of its YouTube channel to TantramarNB.
At a January meeting, director of Community and Corporate Services for Tantramar Kieran Miller told council that staff allowed for a six week crossover period between the social media identities in order to allow time for followers to make the change.
“Given the large followings for Dorchester and Sackville social media, especially Facebook, we wanted to make sure that residents had enough notice of the switch and adequate time to follow the new channels,” said Miller.
There’s also a change needed for the new town of Tantramar website. Miller told council the plan is to secure a new domain name for Tantramar, and then update the former Sackville site to reflect the expanded territory of the new municipality. Former Sackville treasurer and now Director of Corporate Compliance Michael Beal told councillors he took the initiative last year to reserve some domain names to choose from: Tantramarnb.com, Tantramarnb.ca, towntantramar.com and towntantramar.ca are all on hold for the town.
The obvious new domains, tantramar.ca and tantramar.com, are already taken, and have been used for years by Tantramar Interactive, a local web consulting, design and hosting business founded by Chris Mackay in 1997. Mackay says he has spoken to Tantramar CAO Jennifer Borne about the possibility of selling the domains to the new municipality, but there’s nothing to report on the topic either way. Mackay says he uses tantramar.ca for his email address, though on the web, both tantramar.ca and tantramar.com addresses currently redirect to his tantramarinteractive.com website.
In the absence of a new domain name, all new councillors have been assigned an email address with the Sackville.com domain, as a temporary measure.
Miller said via email that the goal during the transition is, “to make sure residents know where to find information.” While some things are relatively easy to switch over, said Miller, “other things like a website will take more time and thought.”
In addition to a new web domain, the town will also need a new logo. Miller told council in January that the temporary word mark currently being used in town communications is a temporary solution. “A comprehensive branding exercise is being planned subject to funding,” said Miller.
“There will be growing pains as we transition to Tantramar and staff are working hard to make sure important information is communicated effectively to residents,” said Miller.