Police and Social Media News site – SA Police

ByLaurel Papworth

How do services like the Police engage in Social Media and online communities? Well the South Australian Police force have released a social media news site. In some respects the Police site usurps crime beat reporting in newspapers by using only “if it bleeds it leads” articles, as all the news is about crimes such…

How do services like the Police engage in Social Media and online communities? Well the South Australian Police force have released a social media news site. In some respects the Police site usurps crime beat reporting in newspapers by using only “if it bleeds it leads” articles, as all the news is about crimes such as handbag snatchings. You can subscribe to their feed, the community is distributed (meaning: not “on” their site but on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube) but doesn’t include a social media press room. An excellent entry into the “broadcast” category of social media. I talk about that in more depth:

You can subscribe to these Social Media Business podcasts on YouTube, on Vimeo and on iTunes Laurel Papworth - Social Media Business - Social Media Business or subscribe via RSS (video)

By Broadcast category, I am of course talking about the 7 Steps of Social Media Engagement (more info).

shallow to deep

You can follow SA Police News on Twitter @SAPoliceNews on Facebook or on YouTube

They’ve even bit.ly’d their Emergency URL. http://bit.ly/dY3r9X

If you want to see what other services, other Police forces in other states are doing, check out who SA Police News are following and some of the lists they are on…!

You can subscribe to these Social Media Business podcasts on YouTube, on Vimeo and on iTunes Laurel Papworth - Social Media Business - Social Media Business or subscribe via RSS (video)

18 Comments

  7. Laurel

    On-topic: Local piece on the SA Police initiatives: http://prakky.wordpress.com/2011/04/13/police-have-seized-facebook/

    Slightly off-topic: Is your engagement model (the 7 steps) deliberately focussed on marketing/comms/externally-facing social media? If so, that’s fine (although it should perhaps carry that caveat) – but in a more general sense I think it downplays the value of social media initiatives inside a company (your “shallow” end), for employee engagement, collaboration, knowledge sharing and knowledge discovery.

    1. Actually no, it’s not marketing focussed but an observation of where companies are at, and many of those are marketing focussed. The “eat your own dog food” approach is seen as a risk averse way of extending current collaborative knowledge management systems/intranets with some enterprise social media. The companies themselves see it as a “test” or first step. Not necessarily my opinion 😉 I understand their thoughts though – it’s “shallow” because it’s a first step on the path to reorienting the whole company to providing a platform for all members to work together. In other words, a wiki added to the intranet in a bank is first step, peer to peer lending banks on Facebook is endgame. Does that make it clearer? 🙂
      If you like Enterprise based social media, you might like my post on Gamification and Leaderboards in internal enterprise communities 🙂

      1. I see what you’re saying – I guess my point is that “peer to peer lending on Facebook” is not the only endgame, and Facebook and Twitter are not necessarily the best places to do business if your market isn’t end consumers. There is, perhaps, a parallel and complementary “ladder” with a common starting point but a divergent path and endpoint (there may even be several of them, all of which can use social media principles and tools effectively).

        (and I’m subscribed to your feed, so I see it ALL 🙂 )

        1. Totally agree – but again, the ladder is not my view but the view of organisations I work with. I can’t help but report that the majority of major corporations say “we will start with a blog internally and if it goes well, look at broadcasting in social media”.

          … And p2p lending is an example of an endgame – the key point is to have a holistic (all inclusive) society collaborating together. Staff and customers, staff with staff, customers with customers, all of ’em. That’s why it’s deep engagement. Shallow engagement is just one aspect of that be it staff with staff OR staff with customers.
          We agree, I’m just not articulating it very well 😛

  9. I’ve heard law enforcements have now embrace social media as one of their ways to solve crimes. Great to know some additional information you have here. Most effectively, social media is a good way to disseminate information to the public. I hope some social media related cases would also be solves this problem is mounting now.

  14. I understand their thoughts though – it’s “shallow” because it’s a first step on the path to reorienting the whole company to providing a platform for all members to work together.

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