Welcome back to the school year kids!!
Photo Credit: Granada Theatre, Dallas
I think now every child in North America is back in school now, sucking in all the knowledge that they can find in hopes of one day supporting parents who have toiled so much to get them where they are going in life.
This has been a great time for police to take to social media and give away every bit of their own knowledge as well to students, parents, drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, etc, etc, etc.
The content that can be created and shared right now is like a bottomless pit of information. Road safety, personal safety, property protection, crime prevention. The list goes on and on.
Law enforcement across the continent have been warning drivers to be careful and asking parents to talk about safety with their kids on that one very special day…the first day of school!
Back to school campaigns using social media should be a content explosion for your community that easily adds value to their lives. You can give, give, give, provide value, value, value for weeks, but….
Back To School is NOT a one day event!
Parents, think about what back to school has meant for you.
- School supply shopping (Did anyone else do Walmart on their super sale days…oh the horror of it all).
- Clothes shopping
- Registration
- Medical Exams
- School visits
- Transportation
- Lunch prep
The whole process lasts a couple of weeks, but for some reason, so many police and law enforcement agencies used back to school to blow everything they had in one day…the actual day that kids were returning. The next day…crickets on back to school safety.
Sure you might be running a week-long enforcement campaign, but what a bout a week-long messaging campaign. And why wait until the day before or the day of to talk about back to school safety or to start enforcement.
Your campaign is not a one day event
Whether it’s back to school or Halloween Safety, Christmas Shopping Safety Tips or New Year’s eve safety, you have an opportunity to get people ready before hand. You can give information away like crazy well in advance.
Why stand in a school zone the day school starts and maybe a few days after? Why not stand there everyday for the week before school. Get drivers conditioned to seeing you enforcing the speed limits.
Talk to parents about walking their kids to school or to the bus stop days before they have to do it the first time and remind them of all the important rules of the road.
Make videos at the end of the school year about personal safety and how to protect their property so that you can use it at the end of summer.
Review cyber safety with your community and provide resources so that parents and kids alike can have them in their minds or print them off just in case they need them later.
Give parents all the tools they can handle with street-safeing their kids. Offer tips on how to deal with bullying, being approached by people they don’t know, drug recognition, victimization prevention. All of this can be happening in the lead up to back to school.
No budget?
Here is one I was told, “We don’t have any money to create campaigns.”
Then curate your campaign. No one said the information has to be yours! You just need to provide the information and give the credit back to the creators.
The Internet is full of information. Facts, figures, research, data…it’s all there. Use it, share it, talk about it, source it back. I’m sure a neighbouring law enforcement agency does have the budget. Share their information.
For some agencies, back to school has been a one day event. In some cases, it’s been a one tweet or Facebook post event.
Back to school is a golden opportunity to create content, share content and give your community so much value over an extended period of time before, during and after the big day. It wasn’t a one day event to get ready for so don’t make it a one day event to message about.
If you’re an agency that talked about back to school before during and after the big day, well done.
Give, give, give…share, share, share.
