Social Media

[Ki3r]

Afternoon all,

Not sure if this is the best place, if it isn't, mods could you move it please.

I work with the police as a Special Constable. I work with part of the traffic team and have access to their Facebook and Twitter accounts to post about what we get up to and answer any questions anyone has. It's also used to inform people of road closures and witness appeals, often just RTs from the main force account.

Facebook we have around 5,000 likes and Twitter has just over 2,000. We'd like to get these up as much as possible, I've got a competition with who runs Facebook to get more followers as well.

We can't pay to get extra followers.

For Twitter I'm being as active as possible. Short updates during the day with what we have done (for example, stop a vehicle for using mobile phone, photo of the car (plate covered up) and how it was dealt with). Also give out freebies in return for following us and retweeting the post.

Facebook isn't too bad, and I don't tend to use it that often (only if I'm working with other Specials to update what we've done). I don't answer/reply to any messages on there as only two of the team are allowed to (make it accountable etc).

I would be very grateful if anyone could offer some advice on increasing our likes/followers.

Many thanks.

[MentalSarcasm]

Make sure you're using relevant hashtags, especially if you can develop a few of your own common theme ones that make it easier for people to track them (i.e. #roadclosureyorks or #roadclosure). If you're giving out local safety advice then see if your region has it's own "business hour", this is where someone in the region has set up a hashtag that gets retweeted for an hour on a specific day (i.e. #DorsetHour may get retweeted on Mondays from 5pm to 7pm). You might find that some relevant safety guidance gets picked up on and retweeted, and draws more people in.

Also occasionally retweet things you've spotted from the local area. Along with things like local fire stations or hospitals, you can also do the occasional "Today PCs Jones and Smith are patrolling with @localvillagefair", and then Retweet the opening hours from the event's own Twitter account. If you include other Twitter accounts then they may Retweet you, such as "Today we're running a safety course in @LocalTown - come and join in from 2pm to 6pm" could see @LocalTown retweet you, and draw in more followers.

If you do it consistently then you should find numbers slowly start to move up. You can also schedule some generic Tweets using sites like Bufferly or Hootsuite, which can go out at times of day when you may not be active yourself, such as "Evenings getting darker, remember to check your car lights" can be scheduled to go out a few times in the autumn.