According to this article in Burnsville Patch, the Burnsville Police Department is now on Twitter. While social media can be an extremely powerful tool, far too often organizations fail to leverage it properly, especially within the public sector.
The Burnsville Patch article notes Twitter use among Dakota County police departments is non-existent aside from the Apple Valley PD who has been using the social network since July of 2011. They have 51 tweets in that time, most of which aren’t terribly informative, interesting or useful. While a particular organization may want to keep their social media presence dry, it doesn’t do much to build an audience or get attention outside their little world. Seriously? Reminders that it’s the first day of school and to watch for kids or notifications about monthly severe weather sirens? Come on, you can do better than that.
- Take for example Lt. Eric Roeske the Minnesota State Patrol Public Information Officer. His social media presence is dry and boring but it’s incredibly informative. Providing details on crashes as they happen can let you avoid crash areas and know what’s going on in your area.
While not an official public sector Twitter account, Officer Phil knows how to bring some real humor into the difficult work he does. Take for example these more recent gems:
Shots fired, two down. Crowd brings beer to drink while they watch us tend to the victims
For Police Appreciation Day, instead of saying thanks or buying lunch, could all of y’all just… not break any laws today? That’d be sweet.
So, before Burnsville PD jumps into the Twitterverse they should really take a minute to think about how they want to portray themselves online. They could take the the funny police report/Officer Phil track or go with Lt. Roeske’s method instead. As long as they avoid what the AVPD has done so far and makes it interesting and useful this would be an excellent addition to the local twittersphere instead of yet another complete and utter waste of everyone’s time and energy.
Thoughts?
Dakota Complaints Map
Dakota Inmate Dashboard
Loading ...
September 20th, 2012 at 8:11 am
Twitter can be fun AND informative. The problem for public entities is to find a reasonable balance. AVPD might be boring (I think it is) but you can’t tweet by committee. Giving the task to one or two people who have a keen sense of what social media can do is very difficult for a PD. That person will be second guessed constantly – it’s how organizations respond when they perceive a misstep. I wouldn’t want to be the PD Twit.
September 20th, 2012 at 9:18 am
I follow the twitter accounts of almost all of the State Agencies here in Minnesota. Some do a really good job and some are just terrible. The MN Dept of Agriculture (@MNagriculture) does a really good job, I think. They post at least once daily, Monday-Friday, keep on topic, have a little bit of personality, and provide information from many sources. They have YouTube and Facebook sites that post different information. When I was working on a policy for this at my agency, they were the go-to resource.
My agency does not as good of a job. It is less frequent, tends to be links back to our website, and reads more as a lot of press releases.
September 20th, 2012 at 11:31 am
Here’s what I’d like to see:
1. It should look like it’s a real person. Don’t just setup a Twitter account to link to newsletters you’re already sending. Feel free to link to those newsletters, but there should be a person behind it.
2. Respond to followers. Interact. It goes a long way.
3. Keep it to <5 posts a day. You're in a sleepy suburb, there's no way there's so much going on that you need to throw up 3 tweets an hour. Stick to important and funny stuff and if that means you have just 5 tweets a week, so be it.
4. Be honest and transparent. People read through PR b/s easily.
I love Lt. Eric Roeske's feed. They should definitely take notes from him. I'm not sure the "funny" approach would be helpful for a department-wide account since you really want this to represent the department. Keep it informative, keep it interesting, and leave it at that.
September 21st, 2012 at 11:03 pm
Joey nailed it. The key is having a real person behind the account, giving it its voice. You can autopost from other socmed accounts, but that shouldn’t be all you do. I am the twittererer for Ramsey County (@ramseycounty) and seek to provide useful information, while not taking myself all that seriously. I weave in some humor, when appropriate, and make sure that I respond promptly to citizen feedback. I think a lot of government agencies are still stumbling as they try to figure out the brave new world of true citizen engagement. I still hear gov folks say far too frequently that they are blocking comments or locking down interactive features to keep people from posting criticisms. What the heck’s the point, then?
September 22nd, 2012 at 2:24 pm
Another million dollar idea… Start a service being the real person behind government twitter accounts. I’ll start the business, and find all the stuffy shirts that know how to write a memo but not how to dig out the critical information and put it in a entertaining tweet or facebook post. Then I’ll subcontract the stuff to creative types that can write (MSPD?)? I think it could work… forget I told you about this. Now to go register http://www.speakforthegoverment.com.