I read a number of blogs that have nothing to do with law enforcement: the ones that teach social media as a business tool, as a community relationship tool. One of my favorites is Successful Blog by Liz Strauss, who challenges more creative and less analytical thinking (and I do mean challenge, because I am…
Monthly Archives: July 2009
Stretching resources for social media
A recent (June 16) Twitter post from @MountainViewPD caught my eye: “MVPD Followers: Please do not do @replies to the MVPD tweets. We do not have the resources to respond to them in a timely manner.” Yowza. Twitter is a conversation medium; how can you want to avoid conversation? Yet a look at MVPD’s Web…
Blending professional and personal in Aurora (Illinois)
I recently blogged about “expert branding” and how it could help a police department’s overall mission by drawing on officers’ experience and taking some of the informational weight off the PIO’s shoulders. Around the time I was writing the post, I noticed Lt. Kristen Ziman (@Lt_KZ on Twitter) was tweeting some pretty funny stuff. I…
Experts: Branding opportunities in disguise
Much of the focus on law enforcement use of social media is on police departments as a whole. From a community-relations standpoint, this is important—but police departments may be missing out on a valuable opportunity to brand themselves and law enforcement in general. For that, they might consider turning to individual experts. What’s an individual…