Posts Tagged 'Strategy'
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Posted @ 5/16/2013 10:30 AM By Guest Blogger
This guest blog comes from Rebecca Rosenblatt of the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office. Deputy Rosenblatt has been in law enforcement for the past eight years. She previously worked in patrol as a K9 handler for the Millbrae Police Department until the de...
Posted @ 5/14/2013 2:05 PM By Frank Domizio
We often find ourselves giving up something we love. I find myself in that position right now, leaving a job I feel passionately about to the next step in my career. As I write this, I just spent the first day training my replacement. In...
Posted @ 5/9/2013 8:23 AM By Guest Blogger
This guest blog comes from Laura McElroy of the Tampa, Florida, Police Department. During her nine years with the department, Laura has strengthened community relations by developing a proactive approach to the public information office. Her team ut...
Posted @ 5/7/2013 2:10 PM By Dionne Waugh
One of the most common questions we receive as social media gurus/nerds at police departments is: What applications do you use to manage it all?
Just as we explain that there’s no one way for police agencies to use different social media sites, ...
Posted @ 5/3/2013 10:47 AM By Guest Blogger
Today’s guest post comes from Sergeant Dave Norris who has been with the San Mateo, California, Police Department since 1993. After serving in a variety of positions including Field Training Officer, Narcotics and Vice, and Investigations, he is cur...
Posted @ 4/29/2013 11:18 AM By Tracy Phillips
The repeat use of the word “social” in the title is not a typo. Today, we are discussing a new resource to help social media managers connect with like-minded professionals for advice and mentorship.
The IACP, under the auspices of its Disc...
Posted @ 4/26/2013 2:00 PM By Billy Grogan
The use of social media by law enforcement has grown exponentially over the last several years. Overall, that growth has been beneficial for most agencies. In fact, agencies have benefited by improving their interactions with the community, ed...
Posted @ 4/23/2013 2:24 PM By Frank Domizio
Have you ever tried to fit the pieces of your communications plan into a social media sized box? It can be a challenge to say the least. Crafting a meaningful and coherent message in 140 characters or less is not a job for the faint of heart. Having a mis...
Posted @ 3/22/2013 2:43 PM By Mark Economou
One of the main purposes we in law enforcement use social media is to engage our community. Residents, businesses and those that come here to visit our restaurants and retail areas. But sometimes we stop and ask, are those people really getting the messag...
Posted @ 3/20/2013 9:02 AM By Tracy Phillips
The phrases “big data” and “open data” are everywhere these days. So too are online challenges and contests to solve civic problems through technology. Could just be me, because I’m interested in these topics, but they sure s...
Posted @ 3/15/2013 2:57 PM By Guest Blogger
Today's post comes from Chris Hsiung, a lieutenant with the Mountain View Police Department and the social media manager in charge of community engagement and growth through the police department's social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pi...
Posted @ 2/22/2013 10:09 AM By Billy Grogan
As law enforcements use of social media grows, the public’s thirst for more information continues to rise exponentially. Not only does the public want more information, they also want it right now. When should police departments provide information ...
Posted @ 2/13/2013 10:34 AM By Guest Blogger
Today’s guest post comes from Sergeant Dave Norris who has been with the San Mateo, California, Police Department since 1993. After serving in a variety of positions including Field Training Officer, Narcotics and Vice, and Investigations, he is cur...
Posted @ 2/4/2013 10:29 AM By Guest Blogger
Today’s guest post comes from Sergeant Dave Norris who has been with the San Mateo, California, Police Department since 1993. After serving in a variety of positions including Field Training Officer, Narcotics and Vice, and Investigations, he is cur...
Posted @ 2/1/2013 8:19 AM By Dionne Waugh
When it comes to law enforcement, most of us are divided into the sworn and civilian categories. But when it comes to social media, there’s another title that those of us who do the work should consider: community manager.
After reading this arti...
Posted @ 1/28/2013 12:34 PM By IACP Center for Social Media
As we frequently discuss on The Social Media Beat, social media is a key component to a modern community policing strategy. It comes as no surprise that social media is also actively used for criminal purposes and this technology is frequently used in cri...
Posted @ 1/25/2013 1:01 PM By Lynn Hightower
Know anyone who always seems to talk about the same ‘ole thing? And have you ever avoided that person because that’s not what you felt like discussing? How about a politician who only promotes one issue, so when other issues are discussed, tha...
Posted @ 1/22/2013 12:32 PM By Tim Burrows
There is no doubt that we are getting better at using social media as a tool to assist our agencies with messaging, safety information, community building, and general conversations. Many investigations have been assisted and commenced by using tools like...
Posted @ 1/18/2013 8:12 AM By Billy Grogan
Law enforcement’s use of social media is an evolving phenomenon. As it began, the responsibility for posting information and monitoring typically resided with the personnel assigned to Community Outreach or Public Relations. Over the last several ye...
Posted @ 1/14/2013 11:48 AM By Mark Economou
I constantly hear about what different agencies are doing with their social media. Some tweet their daily call logs, some have tweet-ups, others do live tweets while driving around with officers. Others hold town meetings on Skype, or put out the jo...
Posted @ 1/11/2013 8:09 AM By Tracy Phillips
Social media is a unique form of “business communication.” It is decidedly more personal and less formal than more traditional forms. Posts that read like an official press release or a memo tend to fall flat. The “just the f...
Posted @ 1/7/2013 8:59 AM By Frank Domizio
I became a police officer for several reasons. I wanted to follow in my grandfather's foot steps, I wanted the excitement, I wanted to help people. I never imagined, not in a million years, I would find myself writing a blog post for the IACP while workin...
Posted @ 1/2/2013 11:05 AM By Dionne Waugh
A lot has happened this past year when it comes to law enforcement and social media, and the experience for Richmond Police has been no different.
We’ve used various social networking platforms to solve crimes; communicate better with our communi...
Posted @ 12/3/2012 8:47 AM By Dionne Waugh
As most of us know by now, Facebook is regularly making changes to how the site works and where your content shows up. By the time you figure something out, something else has changed.
Well, we’ve recently discovered one change that has turned ou...
Posted @ 11/30/2012 7:59 AM By Billy Grogan
Black Friday in most communities is a pretty busy day for police agencies. It is especially busy if the community has a lot of retail establishments or a mall. Dunwoody has both. To chronicle this typically busy day, the Dunwoody Police Department decided...
Posted @ 11/21/2012 8:05 AM By Lynn Hightower
Okay, not really stolen, but borrowed with the best of intentions. If you’re not using TrafficSafetyMarketing.gov, you’re missing out on a fantastic resource for free, relevant, timely social media content. Most importantly, the site gives us ...
Posted @ 11/19/2012 9:53 AM By Tim Burrows
How do you know if you are having an impact with your social media efforts? There are multiple ways to measure what you are doing from the simplistic to advanced means. The platforms you are using will provide some insight into your efforts and there are ...
Posted @ 11/16/2012 7:51 AM By Mark Economou
Last blog, I wrote about the presentation at IACP 2012 given by Tampa Police PIO Laura McElroy. Tampa hosted the 2012 RNC and social media played a huge role in the way the police department responded and reacted to incidents. Well, here in Boca Raton w...
Posted @ 11/12/2012 9:35 AM By Tracy Phillips
Lately I’ve been wondering if police departments – or their governing jurisdictions – should be more like e-marketers in their quest to connect with and solicit feedback from citizens. Think about it – every time you order so...
Posted @ 11/8/2012 11:36 AM By Guest Blogger
Today's guest blog post comes from Corporal Frank Domizio. He has been with the Philadelphia Police Department for 16 years and is currently assigned to the Department's Office of Media Relations and Public Affairs where he is the Social Media C...
Posted @ 11/6/2012 8:03 AM By Billy Grogan
Whether your department is a veteran user of social media or has just taken the plunge, the one aspect of using social media that many struggle with is content. This can be an especially difficult challenge when you are just starting out. One might think,...
Posted @ 11/2/2012 9:36 AM By Dionne Waugh
Who has the time for all this social media stuff?
That’s one of the most frequently asked questions we get as law enforcement social media enthusiasts. Though there are many ways and apps you can use to save time, there’s actually one...
Posted @ 10/31/2012 9:52 AM By Tim Burrows
In today’s world everything we say and everything we do is built around faster, better, smaller, more efficient, and easy. We want meals that are quicker to make, cars that go farther on a gallon of gas and computers that are small and light.
To ...
Posted @ 10/26/2012 8:39 AM By Lynn Hightower
Scrolling down the news feed on my personal Facebook page last night, I saw a post from a friend who works for a police agency in Alaska. She had shared a post on the death this week of Nassau County, New York, Police Officer Arthur Lopez tragically and s...
Posted @ 10/16/2012 12:51 PM By IACP Center for Social Media
For the second year in a row, the IACP Conference has featured a "Meet the Bloggers" workshop. It was impressive to see such a well-attended, early morning (and post Host Chief's Night) session! This session provided an opportunity for audience memb...
Posted @ 10/12/2012 6:45 AM By Guest Blogger
Today's guest blog post comes from Dave Roberts, Senior Program Manager for the International Association of Chiefs of Police Technology Center. Mr. Roberts has served as director of a variety of federally-funded justice IT and research projects, and is a...
Posted @ 10/11/2012 2:04 PM By Mark Economou
In my last blog I wrote about how social media is changing the way we respond to large scale events as PIOs. My example was how it was used at the Republican National Convention in Tampa in September. I had the opportunity to help out the Tampa Police Dep...
Posted @ 10/10/2012 8:32 AM By Tim Burrows
Have you ever been to a conference and left disappointed because you just didn’t find the information you were hoping for? Have you ever felt empty because you took time to attend a session based on the description of it and it just didn’t del...
Posted @ 10/9/2012 2:38 PM By Billy Grogan
This session at the IACP Conference was one that I was really looking forward to. As a chief, I am all about engaging in activity that adds value to the organization. rather than wasting the time of my staff. A large audience was in attendance. Lynn Hight...
Posted @ 9/26/2012 9:28 AM By Tim Burrows
I remember when I first started using social media to promote a new way of communication for police and law enforcement agencies I would often say, “What’s not to like about it…it’s free!”
Nothing has changed about that i...
Posted @ 9/20/2012 10:16 AM By Lynn Hightower
You’ve heard the saying, “You create your own luck.” Tampa Police Department (TPD) spent months training and planning, on paper and in the field, for an event held once every four years and historically marked by conflict – a natio...
Posted @ 9/18/2012 8:37 AM By Dionne Waugh
So I'm too old to do social media well, huh?
That seems to be the real headline to this article by a young woman who believes—very misguidedly—that only people under age 25 should manage social media sites.
Wow. Beyond how insulting it i...
Posted @ 9/14/2012 1:44 PM By Billy Grogan
One of the best values for law enforcement agencies who use social media is the interaction that takes place between the agency and members of the community. Unfortunately, many agencies that use social media platforms, like Facebook, have opted to not al...
Posted @ 9/10/2012 8:13 AM By Mark Economou
This past week I had the opportunity to help the Tampa Police Department during the Republican National Convention. PIO Laura McElroy, who will present at IACP 2012 about how she planned for this event, had a terrific plan and team in place. She had every...
Posted @ 9/4/2012 9:21 AM By Tracy Phillips
Two of my favorite Internet sensations of late are Call Me Maybe videos and McKayla is Not Impressed photoshopped images. Near as I can tell, law enforcement has failed to jump on either bandwagon. Maybe I’m the only one who sees the potential&helli...
Posted @ 8/23/2012 9:49 AM By Lynn Hightower
It’s been said, “News breaks on Twitter." But what if the ‘news’ is wrong?
It was last Saturday morning. The first Saturday in several weeks I wasn’t out of town or at a family function. Because I was playing with sprinkle...
Posted @ 8/21/2012 9:34 AM By Dionne Waugh
It seems like almost every day something is changing in the world of social media. There’s a new networking site, a new app or, even more challenging, suddenly new settings on the sites you feel you finally have a solid grasp on.
One of the best wa...
Posted @ 8/17/2012 9:10 AM By Mark Economou
This is probably one of the most asked questions I get when making presentations around the country at conferences. And the answer I give is always very vague: “It depends.”
The reason it depends is because on any given day it could ...
Posted @ 8/13/2012 10:33 AM By Billy Grogan
By some estimates, 49.7% of people in the United States have a smartphone and by 2014, that number could rise to over 70%. As a result of the proliferation of smartphones, the app market has exploded. Consumers would rather click on an app on their phone ...
Posted @ 8/9/2012 3:07 PM By Tim Burrows
Admittedly, I am not a very good chess player in the conventional definition of the game. I know what the pieces can do. I know that you have to play several moves ahead in your mind and consider what the ramifications of your moves will be on your oppone...
Posted @ 8/6/2012 8:11 AM By Tracy Phillips
No bona fide blog would be complete without the occasional obligatory “top five list” or “mythbusters” post. So let’s just knock both out right here. Below are some common mythological laments from police administrators resis...
Posted @ 7/26/2012 8:21 AM By Lynn Hightower
I’m going to start with something that you may have read recently:
“Transparency does not involve divulging privileged information. Instead, being transparent means empowering citizens with information so they can understand, appreciate, an...
Posted @ 7/23/2012 9:44 AM By Dionne Waugh
One of the neatest – and most surprising – things to come from the Richmond Police Department's use social media is the boost in employee morale and camaraderie as well as the increased engagement with officers' families.
To explain, I thin...
Posted @ 7/18/2012 10:42 AM By Billy Grogan
In years past, many police departments operated in almost complete secrecy. The community knew very little about what the department was doing except in the most extreme cases involving terrible tragedies. The culture of law enforcement perpetuated this b...
Posted @ 7/12/2012 8:35 AM By Mark Economou
Most of us that deal with the media and public in law enforcement are called public information officers. But let's face it; we are media relations specialists, crisis communications experts, marketing managers, and advertising executives. We just do it f...
Posted @ 7/10/2012 8:52 AM By Tracy Phillips
You can't control everything that is written on the Web about your department, but you can influence one very important source: Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is a free Internet encyclopedia with millions of articles on almost any topic written and maintained by...
Posted @ 7/5/2012 10:35 AM By Tim Burrows
Have you ever been stuck for a topic to write about? Last week I was trying to come up with a blog post for you and I couldn't decide on the topic. There were several I was considering and every time I got started there was an interruption.
First, a tw...
Posted @ 7/3/2012 12:49 PM By Guest Blogger
Today's guest blog post comes from Corinne Geller, public relations director with the Virginia State Police. A former TV news reporter, she joined the state police in 1999 as a field PIO and now oversees statewide media and public relations. She and her t...
Posted @ 6/29/2012 8:53 AM By Lynn Hightower
June 1st was National Doughnut Day.
As a blogger and reader of blogs on this site, I read the piece from Officer Mike McCoy of Houston PD a few weeks ago on the power of using humor - appropriate humor - as an effective way to humanize our agencies thr...
Posted @ 6/25/2012 10:43 AM By Dionne Waugh
Facebook. Twitter. YouTube. Pinterest. How do you manage it all?
Amazingly, there are several applications, both mobile and desktop, that actually make it quite easy to manage your social media accounts.
Two of the most popular are Hootsuite and Twe...
Posted @ 6/21/2012 9:53 AM By Mark Economou
It is very easy to become complacent with social media. Just like a new car or new electronic device, you want to try it out when you first get it but after a while it becomes routine. Social media is getting to that point for many... routine. It's now se...
Posted @ 6/7/2012 1:13 PM By Tracy Phillips
The advent of new Facebook Pages brought with it a host of new features plus improvements and changes to existing features. Until recently I had not taken the time to click around the new admin panel to see what's there. What follows is a quick summary of...
Posted @ 5/30/2012 2:03 PM By Tim Burrows
Last week I met with the Public Information Officer (PIO) for a police agency who has been tasked with a new role for his agency. He has now added, "Social Media Manager" to his portfolio. He asked two very important questions.
1.) What can we do with ...
Posted @ 5/29/2012 1:15 AM By Billy Grogan
This is a question asked often by police chiefs, administrators, PIOs, and others who are charged with the task of either posting information or monitoring the content posted. In addition, many have concerns about liability related to the content posted. ...
Posted @ 5/21/2012 11:37 AM By Dionne Waugh
Ever wonder what's the best time to post certain items to your Facebook or Twitter pages so that the most people see them?
A recent study has come up with some suggestions based on the metrics of several social networking sites. Though I think the real...
Posted @ 4/26/2012 12:26 PM By Dionne Waugh
Earlier this month we talked about the little things you can do on Facebook when it comes to interacting through social media with your community. Now let’s look at Twitter.
Twitter has some restrictions when it comes to communication, but that j...
Posted @ 4/17/2012 8:54 AM By Tim Burrows
One of the most important things we do in life is learn. We learn from our mistakes, we learn from the experience of those around us, we learn from experts. We have an incredible capacity for learning and many reasons for doing so.
I have never met a s...
Posted @ 4/9/2012 7:45 AM By Guest Blogger
Today's guest blog post comes from Senior Office Mike McCoy of the Houston, Texas, Police Department (HPD). Mike has been a police officer since 1982, and has worked in recruiting until 2009. Mike created a successful blog (www.hpdblog.com) in 2007 to hel...
Posted @ 4/6/2012 7:00 AM By Dionne Waugh
Who’s going to monitor it? Are we going to delete comments? Who’s going to post items? What should we post? How often should we post?
The questions regarding social media use could go on and on, and we realize it’s quite easy to get o...
Posted @ 3/12/2012 10:53 AM By IACP Center for Social Media
Some law enforcement agencies choose to assemble a team to take on the responsibility of managing their social media efforts. Chief executives will need to make the ultimate determinations, deciding what works best for their department and their community...
Posted @ 3/9/2012 8:12 AM By Lynn Hightower
When it comes to getting important public safety information out to your community, local media is a good ally. Social media allows law enforcement one quick, easy way to reinforce the important safety messages media shares, and to show them the effort is...
Posted @ 3/2/2012 8:11 AM By Billy Grogan
Change can be difficult for members of any organization. However, change inside police organizations can be even more stressful and difficult for their staffs. Chief Dan Alexander with the Boca Raton Police Department has said “There are two things ...
Posted @ 2/23/2012 8:30 AM By Tim Burrows
What makes one sports team better in the big game than their opponents? Why was the NCAA National Championship Football Game such a blow-out this year when the number one and number two teams met?
Strategy, Timing, Focus, Flexibility and Execution
N...
Posted @ 2/13/2012 11:43 AM By Guest Blogger
Today's guest blogger post comes from Stephanie Slater, Public Information Officer for the Boynton Beach, Florida, Police Department and the City of Boynton Beach. Stephanie is a frequent speaker about law enforcement's use of social media, and has assist...
Posted @ 2/3/2012 8:29 AM By Mark Economou
Last month I was privileged to take part in the IACP Center for Social Media Winter Webinar Series. Fellow blogger Dionne Waugh from the Richmond Police Department and I gave presentations to agencies around the country via the Web. Also last month, I pre...
Posted @ 2/1/2012 10:22 AM By Billy Grogan
I arrived at the FBI Academy for the FBI LEEDS program on Sunday, January 22, 2012. As I looked at the upcoming training scheduled for the program, I was pleasantly surprised to see Nancy Kolb with the IACP scheduled to speak about social media. Nancy spo...
Posted @ 1/17/2012 8:48 AM By Mark Economou
Over the past month or so many of my fellow bloggers have been looking back at the last year and wrote about some of the milestones and changes that took place. Instead of doing the same, I have decided that since we are a couple of weeks into the New Yea...
Posted @ 1/3/2012 10:17 AM By Billy Grogan
As I look back on our department’s use of social media in 2011, I believe we have come a long way. At the beginning of the year, almost all of the information being posted online was being generated by one person. As a result, timely information was...
Posted @ 12/19/2011 9:14 AM By Dionne Waugh
The Richmond Police Department will celebrate three years of social media use as of this month so it’s quite an appropriate time to reflect on the year’s social media efforts, what we’ve learned, and some highlights.
We’ve defin...
Posted @ 12/12/2011 8:56 AM By Lynn Hightower
Live streaming news conferences, tweet-alongs, blogging, tweeting during hostage negotiations and active shooter situations, calm yet strong messaging during crisis, making our agencies agency “one-stop-shops” for media with video and sound in...
Posted @ 12/6/2011 10:32 AM By Billy Grogan
Most law enforcement agencies have a Web site. In fact, many have robust Web sites that are informative, educational, and contain a lot of good information of interest to their communities. If you are one of the people who think simply having a department...
Posted @ 11/28/2011 10:58 AM By Dionne Waugh
Think of hashtags as like the “Google” of Twitter. They’re just a new name for the same meaning of “keyword.” Where Google is the way we search the Internet, hashtags are the way of searching the Twitterverse, or Twitter Univ...
Posted @ 11/21/2011 11:48 AM By IACP Center for Social Media
So, you have a Facebook page, or a Twitter account, or YouTube channel, or some other social media spot for your agency. But it isn’t gaining much traffic. You may have started slow but have built up a solid strategy. Maybe you didn’t promote ...
Posted @ 11/11/2011 8:18 AM By Tracy Phillips
I really had no intention of writing three consecutive posts on the value of mobile for law enforcement, but the topic just keeps popping up. Or maybe it’s all just more relevant to me now that I too have joined the ranks of smartphone owners and ha...
Posted @ 11/4/2011 8:00 AM By Mark Economou
This is the second year the IACP annual conference included social media in the PIO Track. Last year in Orlando the response to the couple of social media presentations was overwhelming with standing room only at a couple of classes. One would anticipate ...
Posted @ 10/31/2011 11:51 AM By Billy Grogan
In my last post, we discussed how to respond when the public posts negative comments on your department’s social media sites. But what happens when the department posts material that is offensive to others? How could this happen? After all, most dep...
Posted @ 10/27/2011 11:49 AM By Dionne Waugh
I think unless you live in a huge city, like New York or Boston, at least one media outlet would be interested in its local police agency starting to use social media. No matter when you start, the use of social media by a police agency is still considere...
Posted @ 10/20/2011 8:01 AM By Tim Burrows
One of the most popular questions we’ll receive from new users of any social media platform is, “What is the right way to do social media?”
The first reaction is always to tell people how not to do it. The things to watch out for. The...
Posted @ 10/6/2011 7:20 AM By Billy Grogan
The question about what to do when negative posts are made on your social media sites is a valid question. Although feared by many law enforcement professionals, negative comments are typically not posted as frequently as expected. However, it is importan...
Posted @ 9/30/2011 7:09 AM By Tim Burrows
One of the many benefits that social media has created in everyone’s day-to-day lives is the instantaneous ability to receive and report information. One of the newest trends that I have seen is media agencies using their social media accounts to an...
Posted @ 9/26/2011 7:49 AM By Dionne Waugh
Last month, my colleague Mark Economou blogged about the importance of being prepared to respond via social media during a crisis. Not only do we need to be prepared, we need to actually do it because the public expects it and they need it.
The more in...
Posted @ 9/16/2011 1:09 PM By Mark Economou
As we continue to peel back the layers of the onion, we continue to find more and more uses for different aspects of social media. Remember, social media is not just posting updates on Twitter and Facebook. It goes a lot deeper, like posting press relea...
Posted @ 9/12/2011 9:26 AM By Tim Burrows
This week I had to go to one of the big box building stores. As I was paying for my purchase the cashier smiled and said, “Make sure you like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.”
I said the first thing that came to my mind, “Why?...
Posted @ 9/2/2011 1:28 PM By Tracy Phillips
We recently blogged about mobile recruitment for police.
Googling “police mobile app” will likely get you to an application for the Mobile (AL) Police Department. Truth is, using mobile technologies specifically for recruitment is not tha...
Posted @ 8/26/2011 9:52 AM By Mark Economou
This has been touched upon in blogs here by me and fellow bloggers, but thought a more in-depth discussion was due. Recently at one of my social media presentations to law enforcement, many in attendance were not using Facebook or Twitter to communicate. ...
Posted @ 8/22/2011 10:30 AM By Billy Grogan
A good sense of humor is a valuable commodity in life. This is especially true of police officers. We see people at their worst, committing horrible acts of violence against their fellow man. This can be discouraging to say the least. A good sense of humo...
Posted @ 8/18/2011 8:28 AM By Dionne Waugh
You probably go into using social media to connect or communicate with your community and maybe the media, right? One of the last things you’re probably thinking about is interacting with other agencies, police or otherwise, on social media.
I th...
Posted @ 8/16/2011 12:19 PM By Tim Burrows
I was a little surprised the other day when I went to our neighborhood tennis courts and I got a bunch of strange looks from people. I could tell they were whispering about me and in some cases even laughing at me!!
I finally asked someone what the pro...
Posted @ 8/8/2011 12:12 PM By Tracy Phillips
Once upon a time, recruitment in the digital age meant creating a Web page or maybe even using an electronic application. Today, it means creating a Facebook page and a Twitter account. Increasingly, it also means going mobile -- using mobile apps, mobile...
Posted @ 7/29/2011 7:53 AM By Tim Burrows
Managing your reputation begins with putting your best foot forward and the next step is that you have to make sure you are listening to what people are saying.
Ensuring that you are there in the social space to address the community concerns, complime...
Posted @ 7/26/2011 8:33 AM By Dionne Waugh
So you’ve decided to use social media for your agency, whether you want to or not. If it’s hard to wrap your head around everything, just think of it as telling a story… but with better visuals.
That’s one of the ways we teach ...
Posted @ 7/13/2011 8:17 AM By Mark Economou
So you are the social media person for your agency. During the day you monitor tweets and Facebook postings. With dashboards like TweetDeck and HootSuite it’s easy to also add multiple accounts. So it comes as no surprise that over the last few mont...
Posted @ 7/12/2011 9:22 AM By IACP Center for Social Media
Yesterday, Chief Grogan talked about publicizing your agency’s social media efforts. One of the major ways to do this, is to place a social media button on your agency’s main Web page.
Recently, Twitter released the Follow button, which lo...
Posted @ 7/11/2011 1:42 PM By Billy Grogan
If your department uses social media but no one in your community knows about it, what value are you providing them? The answer is none. In fact, you are just wasting the resources you could use more effectively in other areas. That is why it is extremely...
Posted @ 7/7/2011 12:06 PM By Tim Burrows
In the last blog post about reputation management, we talked about you putting your best foot forward by ensuring that you were properly contributing within your social media presence. Managing your words and actions in a manner that let people know where...
Posted @ 7/5/2011 12:32 PM By Dionne Waugh
Every day, you probably hear about different terms related to social media. Thankfully, you have the IACP Center for Social Media to help you define what most of these terms are.
However, what about the technologies you can use to manage your social me...
Posted @ 6/30/2011 9:50 AM By Tim Burrows
The Toronto Police Service has not been shy about its use of social media or its acceptance as a valid tool for communications, community involvement, and as a portal for the public to reach out and interact with its police service. We have also used it a...
Posted @ 6/28/2011 12:23 PM By Tracy Phillips
A recent research report from the Bernard Hodes Group,* a New York-based recruitment marketing firm, offers some good insight into how jobseekers are using social media. The study was conducted during the spring and summer of 2010 and involved nearly 1,00...
Posted @ 6/23/2011 12:45 PM By Mark Economou
One of the top questions I get from agencies around the country exploring the possibility of using social media is how much time does it take? That question usually leads to another, like how many people manage it? Others don't think they have the resourc...
Posted @ 6/21/2011 6:59 AM By Billy Grogan
The Dunwoody Police Department began operations on April 1, 2009. Since that first day, the department has been using social media tools to market our agency, engage our community, and connect more effectively. The department started using Twitter on day ...
Posted @ 6/13/2011 3:41 PM By Dionne Waugh
I would call it a labor of love when it comes to Richmond Police’s social media sites. Why? Because it’s a personal interest of mine that I love being able to use to the department’s advantage and to better inform our community.
Thank...
Posted @ 6/8/2011 11:27 AM By Lynn Hightower
A major responsibility of being a social network author on behalf of a police agency is having the ability to communicate professionally on behalf of the Chief and the entire department. As the Boise Police Department has written in our Social Networking ...
Posted @ 6/6/2011 3:05 PM By IACP Center for Social Media
The IACP Center for Social Media staff has been fortunate enough to travel all over the country to speak with law enforcement personnel about social media. Whether we are in New Jersey or Oregon or one of the many states in between, we hear different vers...
Posted @ 6/3/2011 12:43 PM By Mark Economou
Past blogs by me and my blogging colleagues have touched upon using "dashboards" if you use social media. So what are these "dashboards" and how and why should you use them?
Simply, they are software programs that you download onto your computer and s...
Posted @ 6/1/2011 7:01 AM By Billy Grogan
If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is a video worth? In social media circles, video is priceless. It captures the attention of people in ways a simple photo or story can't do. Although more police departments are using social media platforms lik...
Posted @ 5/27/2011 11:59 AM By Tim Burrows
I remember my mom always telling me that people will know who you are and what you stand for before they ever meet you. It was her way of introducing me to "reputation." As a parent I know what she was saying all too well as I find myself reminding my chi...
Posted @ 5/25/2011 11:54 AM By Dionne Waugh
If you're interested in trying something new to improve your communication and reputation with your community, consider trying a "live chat." Though the mere thought of it - someone asking any question they want of your command staff officer for all to se...
Posted @ 5/19/2011 12:31 PM By Tracy Phillips
Of all the social media platforms out there, Twitter can be one of the most confounding, particularly to the uninitiated. 140 character messages? Who cares, right?
Well, part of the appeal of Twitter is that it fits nicely with our mobile, on-the-go life...
Posted @ 5/17/2011 7:14 AM By Lynn Hightower
Mark Economou from Boca Raton Police Department brought this up last month, but the topic came up here recently as well. To echo Mark's message: make sure social networking is part of any emergency or crisis communications plan.
Mark says, fortunately,...
Posted @ 5/13/2011 8:14 AM By Mark Economou
One of the force multipliers in social media is the "follow" or "like" feature of Facebook and Twitter. The more folks you follow the more that will follow you back. But is this necessary in law enforcement? It's a question that is worth the conversation,...
Posted @ 5/9/2011 8:19 AM By Billy Grogan
On April 8, 2011 starting at 6 a.m. and continuing for 24 straight hours, the Dunwoody Police Department tweeted every single call. This arduous task fell to the day shift Sergeant, Jason Dove and the night shift Sergeant, Jason Witcher.
We wanted to ...
Posted @ 5/5/2011 8:38 AM By Tim Burrows
In 2008 I accepted the position of Communications and Media Relations Officer for the Traffic Services Unit of the Toronto Police Service. In a meeting with the Unit Commander of Traffic and the Staff Superintendent in charge of Operational Services, whic...
Posted @ 4/25/2011 7:40 AM By Lynn Hightower
At Boise PD, we just completed an aggressive driving mobilization. Perhaps your agency did too. NHTSA calls these campaigns "high visibility enforcement," and at BPD, we took full advantage of our social network presence to put more "visibility" into our ...
Posted @ 4/22/2011 6:50 AM By Mark Economou
In the marketing and retail world, companies are always looking for a ROI, return on investment. The push to tell if social media is giving companies a return on investments is a hot topic. While the exact science of how to measure this is still being dev...
Posted @ 4/18/2011 5:43 PM By Tracy Phillips
Facebook recently launched a "Use Facebook as Page" feature that allows page administrators to assume the identity of their page when interacting with Facebook. This allows you to Like, post, and comment throughout the site as your page. Prior to this cha...
Posted @ 4/11/2011 11:59 AM By Dionne Waugh
How much more work is this going to be? That's probably what most people think when they're tasked with creating or running their agency's social media platforms.
The answer is really up to you. The more effort you put into your social media sites the ...
Posted @ 4/8/2011 9:46 AM By Mark Economou
When anything new comes along and it is popular, everyone wants to try it. For example, a new electronic item or that gadget your saw on a late night infomercial. But with anything new, once the novelty wears off, it's often forgotten. This can easily hap...
Posted @ 4/6/2011 11:19 AM By Billy Grogan
You have taken the plunge. You or your department has begun using Twitter. Now what? Of course you can tweet messages all day long but if no one is following you, what benefit is there for you or your community? Here are a few simple ideas to help you gro...
Posted @ 4/4/2011 7:21 AM By Lynn Hightower
Keeping with ideas to help keep your Facebook and Twitter feeds updated, think about sharing the info your community looks to you as experts in - crime prevention and traffic safety.
Content Idea #4 - Update your site regularly with a crime or traffic...
Posted @ 3/29/2011 10:13 AM By Dionne Waugh
Knowledge is power. For the police agency AND the citizen. It's all about what you know, when you know it, and who it's from. At least that's the way it is when it comes to law enforcement using social media.
First, you're empowering your community, f...
Posted @ 3/25/2011 5:21 AM By Mark Economou
Fortunately, here in Boca Raton, we have not had the need to use social media during a crisis. That's not saying when a crisis does occur we won't use it. But, how it will be used will depend on the nature and severity of the crisis. Social media has prov...
Posted @ 3/21/2011 3:09 PM By Billy Grogan
Over the last two years, the use of Twitter has grown exponentially among law enforcement agencies. In most cases, agencies are using Twitter to report on arrests, advertise new programs, and issue community alerts. However, if your agency is not retweeti...
Posted @ 3/18/2011 7:45 AM By Dionne Waugh
I think one of the biggest deterrents for some law enforcement agencies to use social media is the idea that there's only one right way to do it. That's simply not true.
When Richmond Police first started using social media, we started with what we tho...
Posted @ 3/14/2011 12:19 PM By IACP Center for Social Media
Here at the IACP Center for Social Media, we believe all agencies are created equal and we can learn something from all different organizations no matter the size or where they are from. Today, we are going to take a look at what agencies and personnel on...
Posted @ 3/7/2011 9:01 AM By Lynn Hightower
I'm keeping with the theme of my past couple blogs with more ideas to keep your police agency's social networking sites current and relevant... on a day when you have no idea what to post!
When you're lacking something local or from your department for...
Posted @ 3/4/2011 9:43 AM By Dionne Waugh
In the beginning, there were press releases. Then there was posting your press releases online, and now you're posting them on your social media sites.
But at some point you need to start creating content specifically for your social media sites. Sure ...
Posted @ 2/24/2011 8:45 AM By Mark Economou
It seems like a complete 180, as law enforcement used to try and avoid the media, we now find ourselves becoming the media.
When I started my career in broadcast journalism nearly 20 years ago, the relationship with law enforcement was much different t...
Posted @ 2/22/2011 2:45 PM By Lynn Hightower
Ideally, content on your agency's social network sites comes from something ongoing and timely within your department. But it's not uncommon in agencies large or small, to have a "slow news day". So how do you keep posts on your sites updated and engaging...
Posted @ 2/18/2011 9:01 AM By Dionne Waugh
Your citizens want to hear from you. Every day. Yes, every day.
They'll probably cut you some slack if you don't post on the weekends since they, like most people, don't log on as often during the weekends. But during the week, they want to know what t...
Posted @ 2/14/2011 11:25 AM By Tracy Phillips
This week we'll take a virtual trip to the land down under - to Victoria, Australia - to have a look at some unique uses of social media for recruitment. (To refresh your Aussie geography, the state of Victoria is in the southeast corner of Australia and ...
Posted @ 2/7/2011 1:28 PM By Lynn Hightower
What do I post? During almost every conversation I have with someone from a law enforcement agency who's thinking of, or already working on a Facebook page or Twitter account, I hear that same question. It doesn't matter if the agency is large or small; t...
Posted @ 2/3/2011 8:22 AM By Dionne Waugh
One of the great things about social media is that there are very few things not to do, and so many things you can do.
You can, and should, try new applications to link your social media sites. You can, and should, use your social media sites to try ne...
Posted @ 1/21/2011 1:13 PM By Tracy Phillips
Dionne's post got me thinking about the further benefits of sharing insight about your department, particularly recruitment and training efforts. While such activities are a great way to educate and engage with the community, they can also pay dividends i...
Posted @ 1/18/2011 1:39 PM By Dionne Waugh
So you've finally decided to take the plunge into social media and it' going well. Now what?
It's important once you know what you're doing and feel relatively confident, that you think about what's next. What are your goals now that you've started usi...
Posted @ 1/14/2011 12:30 PM By Mark Economou
I have written for most of my professional career. I even minored in broadcast script writing in college. Every day, for 15 years, I had to take some facts and turn them into a 90 second story for the news that evening. I once told students that broadcast...
Posted @ 1/10/2011 12:12 PM By Lynn Hightower
A couple things happened this week on the Boise PD social network sites that started the new year off right. The first shows the value of interacting with citizens via social networking; the second illustrates how that interaction can lead to something we...
Posted @ 1/7/2011 9:02 AM By Mark Economou
I get asked all the time, "How much time will this take?" or "I don't have the resources/manpower to do social media." Depending on what you want to achieve, you might already have the resources available. More than likely you can do it with your existing...
Posted @ 1/3/2011 10:12 AM By IACP Center for Social Media
A new year has arrived, and with that comes the age-old activity of pledging to change in the upcoming twelve months. Hitting the gym, kicking a bad habit, or clearing out junk are typical tasks at the top of people's lists. But with the social media revo...
Posted @ 12/3/2010 8:06 AM By Lynn Hightower
Should different precincts or specialty units within the same agency have separate Facebook pages???
Here in Boise, we don't have the separate precincts, but we do have specialized units like crime prevention, school resource officers, traffic, etc. So...
Posted @ 11/24/2010 11:04 AM By Mark Economou
The two words, social media, have scared a lot of people. For newbies it's totally understandable that social media is intimidating. What those people don't realize is social media is just an extension of what they do every day, communicate.
When I ta...
Posted @ 11/22/2010 8:47 AM By Lynn Hightower
With all due respect to the English majors out there, these comments don't have anything to do with grammar, punctuation, or spelling. Although important to the professional image of your agency, this isn't about a check for commas, but rather the importa...
Posted @ 11/16/2010 12:13 PM By IACP Center for Social Media
If nothing else, Twitter has taught us the lessons of brevity and clarity, with their 140 character restriction on all our outgoing tweets. For your Twitter bio you are given the added bonus of 20 extra characters, leaving you with 160 characters to tell ...
Posted @ 11/11/2010 1:36 PM By Mark Economou
Any business has to market their company. From retail to pharmaceutical, companies are always trying to show customers they have a great product. In law enforcement the only difference is the terminology, but we are still in the business of marketing. Our...
Posted @ 11/9/2010 1:48 PM By IACP Center for Social Media
After an exciting week at the IACP Annual Conference, the Center for Social Media staff has returned home from sunny Orlando, Florida. In addition to launching the IACP Center for Social Media Web site, there were several workshops available throughout th...