Canada Day 2012. The day Canucks celebrate the earths 2nd largest country’s 145th birthday. 145 years ago when the great Canadian nation was born the tools for communication were messengers, parchment, quills and ink wells.
Today, computers, wireless, Twitter and Facebook have become the mainstays for communication and in keeping with the times, police from different parts of Canada celebrated the party on Twitter with their communities.
Sarnia, Ontario and Victoria, British Columbia used the micro blogging, instant information platform to connect with their communities in two very different ways.
Tale 1 Sarnia ( @SarniaPolice )
Sarnia set out with the idea of a Tweet-a-thon. An opportunity to tweet the activities of the police agency for their community to virtually tune into and get a taste of what a “Canada Day in the life of” the Sarnia Police was all about.
Heather Emmons, a police constable with the service was the voice behind the majority of the tweets that let the community know what was happening from about 9am to 3pm and in earnest from 6pm to midnight. (The first shift was done by one of Sarnia’s bicycle officers.) Also joining in was “brand new to Twitter”, Deputy Chief Bob Farlow ( @DepChiefFarlow ) with 11 of his 12 total Tweets coming during the day.
According to the Sarnia Police Departments website, one the goal for the tweet-a-thon was to gain more followers. http://www.sarniapolice.com/sarnia-police-hosting-canada-day-tweet-a-thon/
Prior to the event, @SarniaPolice had gone from just over 1300 followers to just over 1500 followers and now, stands at 2353! Congratulations @SarniaPolice…goal set to gain more followers, goal achieved.
The tweet-a-thon meant so much more to the public of Sarnia who were following along on Twitter. Take this example:
@sarniapolice
I had the pleasure to speak to PC Emmons who explained to me what the purpose for the day was and it really went well beyond just gaining followers. A couple of years ago, Canada Day in the park, was problematic for the Sarnia Police and the tweet-a-thon was the extension of showing the community how much work goes into policing their town and making sure that a celebration, or any big event required a lot of work on the part of both the community and the police to make it a memorable, family friendly good time.
@sarniapolice
The tweet-a-thon received a lot of really good attention and many re-tweets from the community and if I could make one suggestion for the next one it would be this…
Engage. Make sure you have the resources in place to not only be able to push your messages out, but when you have a huge audience that is paying attention, make sure you can interact, answer questions and really take the event to the next level.
The final numbers for the Sarnia initiative won’t be in until tomorrow, but by all accounts, it was a success for the department. Congratulations.
Tale 2 ( @VicPDCanada )
Victoria, British Columbia used Canada Day to commit to an exercise that was very exciting for the future of police communications in the digital age. If you followed @VicPDCanada, you no doubt received the lead up messaging for #VicPDHelps.
They decided to answer calls for service on Twitter that came into them using the hashtag which says so much in itself. #VicPDHelps. It isn’t the first time this has been done. PC Mike Russell from Victoria told me the idea came from what happened when a 6.3 magnitutde earthquake struck ChristChurch New Zealand, but it is the first time it’s been done to get prepared for an eventuality before the need arises.
Fail after fail in emergency management communications can be tracked to not being properly prepared or not being able to go from table top to real life. This is a great way to overcome the situation of practice and planing not being realistic enough for real life.
The Victoria PD recognized that they could very well face a similar problem someday where traditional communication methods were knocked down and they may need an alternative.
PC Russell said, “Establishing the hashtag so that our community is aware of it when the need arises will overcome the first challenge people face; where do we go for help?”
I’ll admit, when I first read about the initiative I was more than a little concerned. From a risk management perspective the obvious thoughts come to mind.
- What if a tweet which should be a 911 call comes in?
- What if you miss a call for help?
- What happens three days later when you aren’t monitoring the hashtag?
Victoria had looked at these issues and had addressed them ensuring that they communicated very well to the public that this was for non-emergency issues only and that they had secured the appropriate number of members to help out with the initiative who not only could take part, but also understood the operation requirements of the service and the capabilities and use of Twitter.
Did the public notice? They sure did. According to PC Russell they were able to use the information through #vicpdhelps in 12 successful “helps”. Before you try to dismiss that off as no big deal, consider that is 12 fewer calls to a police call centre on a very busy day and every little bit helps.
#vicpdhelps
Here’s a shot of a few consecutive tweets which will give you an idea of the breadth of what the community and the police were saying.
#vicpdhelps
I encourage you to take a look at the streams that may help you get the big picture of what was happening for both these departments. You can even meet Mike in some videos that he put up during the days events on YouTube.
- @SarniaPolice
- Search – sarnia police
- @VicPDCanada
- #vicpdhelps
Here is a final shot of an analysis of the Victoria information:
Wow
So there you have it . 2 cities, 2 different uses for Twitter 2 raise awareness within their 2 communities 2 their presence and commitment 2 a better city…a tale of 2 Cities.
