The Who and Who of Social Media

The “who” of social media can be divided into two categories for your agency.  Who do we use to work in our social media efforts and who are we going to reach with our efforts.  They are both equally important for an effective out reach into the space.

Who will run our social media effort

This can not only mean who but how many.  Depending on the size of your agency you may end up with several voices adding to your agencies presence.  On the other hand, you may want just one voice.  Regardless of the size of the presence you want, the people will be your greatest asset, or your biggest waste of time…or worse.

Naturally anyone you commit to being in the space has to be adept at the use of the technology and the must want to do it.  A person being forced to do this won’t have an effective presence.  It will be seen in their posts, felt through their words and through their frequency.  But, the most important asset that your social media person must have is a commitment to your agency and professionalism.  The voice you put forward will be the voice of your service.  Your online representative.  Anything less than utmost consideration for your agency goals, mission, values and vision can easily cause reputation damage, mixed messaging and loss of focus.

The next asset that person must bring is a commitment to making your community safer, more aware, educated and informed.  That person needs to be able to get the message out to the masses and in turn, be willing to answer questions, talk with the community and unite other safety organizations, groups and people with the common cause of a better and safer community.

Who will we reach

Sure you can say that we want to reach our entire community, all our citizens and everyone that will be impacted by quality of life issues within our jurisdiction.  That part is obvious.  Just entering into the social space automatically opens that up.

You also need to consider smaller segments or demographics of your community.  Localized crime and disorder issues can be targeted through information streams.  Groups within your city can be found and reached out to using influencers in that community, such as senior groups, youth groups, new citizens and victims’ advocates.

Establishing working partnerships or more succinctly, relationships, with leaders, advocates, groups and individuals can assist you in getting your message to where it needs to be.

Looking for existing channels of information that groups belong to, or use regularly would be an excellent way to get your voice heard within a group.  For example, if your town has a cycling safety issue, find the information streams that cyclist are speaking in, use those same streams to inject your message, ask for help, look for relationships to establish and build.  Do the same with pedestrian groups or driving groups share the information across all the streams to help the others understand the issues and concerns.

So, use a professional, responsible, reliable voice to get your online presence established and have that person (people) not just broadcast general messages, but look to solve problems, increase safety and educate the public through relationships, communication and teamwork.

There you go…all the easy parts are done.

Why, what, when and who.  Only two parts of the complete equation to go.

Up next…where