Simple cross-promotions via Twitter help the Palo Alto PD develop a mutually beneficial relationship with the media
Is Twitter making the relationship between police and the media better than ever? Here at the Palo Alto Police Department (PAPD) in California, the answer is a resounding "yes."
In Silicon Valley, we're in the middle of the sixth-largest television market in the United States. We have four print and online news outlets that cover our city of 65,000 people alone. Virtually every broadcast or print reporter in the San Francisco Bay Area has their own Twitter account and uses it regularly to tweet news and photos. Every television station is active on Twitter, and all have tens of thousands of followers. Reporters and news outlets value "retweets" and "favorites" as much as the rest of us.
We can likely all agree that the widespread adoption of social media has largely put an end to the traditional way police agencies interacted with the media: Put up crime scene tape, direct the reporter to the far side of it, and instruct them to wait patiently until a public information officer has time to provide a prepared statement.
In today's world of news breaking on Twitter, that "command post mentality" does not work—it only invites the reporter to tweet whatever bits of information they can acquire, even if that information may be speculative, or worse still, factually incorrect. Misinformation going out, even in the form of 140-character messages, only creates more work for the police agency later in the form of correcting errors and controlling rumors.
At the PAPD, we use our Twitter account @PaloAltoPolice to form what we view as a social, symbiotic relationship with the media. After all, we both share a similar goal: the timely public release of accurate information. And forging that positive relationship is remarkably simple. When the media reports on our news accurately and fairly, we will tweet a link to their story and mention the Twitter handles of both the reporter and the news outlet. This points our followers directly to their website, and it adds our endorsement of legitimacy and accuracy to their report. We do this for print media, radio and television; for the latter two, we'll go so far as to mention what time our followers should tune in to hear/see the piece. Our tweets give more exposure to the Twitter accounts of both the reporter and the news outlet, and also serve as a way for them to add followers.
For example, a cross-promotion tweet for television might read: "Thanks to @AlexSavidge from @KTVU for covering our tri-city gun buy back yesterday. Here's the video: bit.ly/X6ulWm." A cross-promotion tweet for radio might read: "Listen to @kgoradio 810 AM at 12:32 p.m. to hear an interview about our virtual ride-along."
We will also occasionally include photos of the reporter and camera operator as they interview our personnel, sort of a behind-the-scenes look at the interview process for our followers. And even something as simple as a "favorite" from a police agency on a tweet from the media can go a long way toward building a positive social relationship with them.
A nice side benefit of these practices is that the reporter, and the news outlet itself, will often retweet our message. After all, a mention by a verified police Twitter account with an extensive audience of people interested in crime news is a good endorsement for them. And a retweet by the media, in turn, gives our own account an exponentially broader reach.
Many reporters and news outlets are also embracing this new relationship by independently choosing to mention our Twitter account whenever they report crime news from Palo Alto. For example, a media outlet may tweet, "Auto burglar strikes parking lot at popular restaurant. @PaloAltoPolice searching for witnesses." This, too, increases our account's reach.
Similarly, a retweet from a news outlet is a good thing for us. If every major television station in the San Francisco Bay Area were to retweet one of our news releases, for example, it would reach over a quarter of a million people, and give those people the opportunity to read our news, written with our message in our voice, instantly. What better way to get our accurate information released to the public in a timely manner?
All of this plays directly into one of the major goals of our social media program: to build followers in advance of a crisis. Each individual follower we get on Twitter is one additional person who will receive that accurate and timely first word directly from us when the "big one" hits.
In the contemporary landscape of relations between the police and the media, these simple cross-promotions via Twitter have helped us develop a relationship that is mutually beneficial, and one that is stronger now than it has ever been.