Social Media Strategyfor the Public Safety Strategic Plan

Prepared by Katie Pearn, Patricia Pegley & Theresa Rath

The Client: Public Safety Office• The Halifax Regional

Municipality (HRM) Public Safety Officer, Superintendent Don Spicer, is responsible for fostering a coordinated and holistic approach to address the root causes of crime and enhance public safety in our city and communities.

The Strategic Goal

To support the HRM Public Safety Strategic plan in achieving its vision of a safe, inclusive and welcoming community through enhanced dialogic communication and community engagement.

Priority Publics

• Primary Audience – Citizens in HRM who are on-line, social media and/or mobile device users.

• A wide variety of Internal and External publics are listed in Strategy document

Strategic Objectives

1. Create two-way relationships with citizens of HRM.

2. Educate citizens of HRM so they understand their role in public safety.

3. Motivate citizens of HRM to change their behaviour and act upon their knowledge of their role in public safety.

4. Change HRM citizens’ negative perception of the crime rate in HRM.

Strategies

The following strategies correspond numerically with the aforementioned strategic objectives:

1. Use a variety of social media tools to create dialogic communication between HRM and its citizens.

2. Use a variety of social media and online tools to post relevant information about public safety and citizen engagement opportunities.

3. Use social media to promote events or public engagement opportunities within HRM.

4. Use social media to educate citizens of HRM by clearly and accurately communicating the reality of crime in HRM.

Tactics

The following tactics correspond numerically with aforementioned strategic objectives and strategies

1. Facebook; Twitter; Public Safety @ Centre Stage Blog; SafetyNet Mobile App; YouTube

2. Facebook; Twitter; Public Safety @ Centre Stage Blog; SafetyNet Mobile App; YouTube; Crime Mapping.

3. Facebook; Twitter; Public Safety @ Centre Stage Blog; SafetyNet Mobile App; YouTube

4. Facebook; Twitter; Public Safety @ Centre Stage Blog; SafetyNet Mobile App; YouTube, Crime Mapping.

Facebook

Facebook – The Tool

• Facebook is a social networking site that allows users to connect with ‘friends.’

• Social networking services use software to build online networks for communities of people.

• Facebook also allows users to share photos, messages, videos and updates with one another instantaneously.

Facebook – Objectives

• Increase active users by 10% in the first year

• Respond to all posts within 24 hours• Increase the number of ‘fans’ from 2514 to

5000 over one year

Facebook - Measurement

Facebook Insights will measure:• Number of ‘fans’ • Number of comments/likes on posts• Monitoring conversations that take place

on HRP Facebook Wall• Number of links that are shared by ‘fans’• Use Facebook Insights to monitor user

activity

Twitter

Twitter – The Tool

• Twitter is considered a micro-blog, which is a form of blogging that allows users to write short 140 character updates and publish them to a website. These updates can be submitted by mobile devices, MP3, instant messaging or email as well as the web.

Twitter - Objectives

• Increase Klout score from 48 to 75 in one year

• Respond to ‘Tweets’ within four hours• Increase the number of followers from

2010 to 3000 over one year

Twitter - Measurement

• To measure the complex world of Twitter, we recommend the Klout website (http://klout.com/home)

• This measurement tool gives Twitter users a score out of 100 that takes 30 factors into consideration when calculating this number including: ‘retweet rank’, influence levels of your followers and how far your retweets will go, among others

YouTube

YouTube – The Tool

• YouTube is a video-sharing website that allows users to upload and share videos online

• Video-sharing is the most common social media activity today, with 22.1% of Global Internet users using the Internet for this purpose

YouTube - Objectives• Increase traffic to HRM YouTube channel

from 6144 to 7680 (25%) in one year• Produce and upload one new public

safety/crime prevention video per month• Generate 3000 views per video in one year• Generate five likes and five comments per

video in one year• Respond to comments within 24 hours

YouTube - Measurement

• Use YouTube Insights to measure both awareness and engagement

• The Views Report “captures data about your video playbacks, providing chronological and geographic breakdowns, as well as the relative popularity of your videos across different regions”(YouTube Help, 2011).

WordPress Blog

WordPress Blog – The Tool

• A blog is a personal publishing or content management system on the Internet, where an author or multiple authors can publish information on a variety of topics

• Authored by the Public Safety Officer, the Public Safety @ Centre Stage blog will inform stakeholders about public safety endeavours in HRM

WordPress Blog - Objectives

• Engage citizens of HRM in minimum twice weekly discussions about crime prevention and public safety initiatives in our community

• Respond to every citizen question or comment posted on the blog within 24 hours for questions/comments made on weekdays and 72 hours for on weekends

• Solicit input from citizens about public safety, crime prevention and civic pride initiatives in HRM in each blog post

WordPress Blog - Measurement• It is important to gain a sense of

demographics of visitors to the blog as well as blog statistics which can both be achieved through Google Analytics

• This program measures the number of visitors, how long they stayed and where they came from

Crime Mapping

Crime Mapping – The Tool

• Interactive crime mapping allows citizens to become aware of crime and disorder issues and trends in a region and its individual communities

• The HRM Crime Map will educate citizens in HRM about crime and disorder issues and related crime prevention tips to enable them to take steps from similar crimes happening to them or their property

Crime Mapping - Objectives

• Decrease crime rates by 4%  in HRM, which is the same amount it increased in 2010

• Achieve 50,000 unique page views in the first year which is 5% of HRM’s total unique page views over the last year

Crime Mapping - Measurement• Since the objective of decreasing crime

rates involves changes in behaviour, this should be measured through baseline and follow-up surveys

• Use Google Analytics to determine who is visiting the crime map, how long they are staying, what information they are accessing, where they are coming from, number of unique page views, etc.

SafetyNet Mobile App

Putting Public Safety in the Palm of your Hand

SafetyNet App – The Tool

• Apps are end-user software applications that are designed for a cell phone operating system and extend the phone's capabilities by enabling users to perform particular tasks

• The HRM SafetyNet App will offer HRM citizens a free public safety mobile app which gives them anytime, anywhere access to engage with Halifax Regional Police (HRP) and access public safety information by making it convenient and accessible

SafetyNet App - Objectives

• 1,000 app downloads in the first year of launch

• 50% of citizens who have downloaded the app are active users

• Have the app be a source referral for each featured widget, with at least 500 referrals to each tool

SafetyNet App - Measurement• Use Google Analytics to measure the

objectives for the HRM SafetyNet app• This measurement tool has the capacity to

measure total downloads, as well as several measures that can be combined to define an ‘active user’ including: frequency of visits, depth of visit, duration and bounce rate

Budget

• A strategy of this scope is not without budget implications, particularly human resources

• It will take a considerable amount of time to design, maintain and monitor the suggested social media tools if they are truly dialogic

• The implementation of this strategy should be taken on as a major project as opposed to being approached haphazardly

Promotional Ideas

• Use Social Media Releases to promote tools such as crime mapping and app, which can include embedded videos, hyperlinks, photos, audio clips, etc. to make it interactive, functional and easy to share

• Attempt to gather user-generated content through video and photo contests as examples

• Create paid advertising campaign• Devise media launch/walk-through of new social

media tools

Evaluation of Overall Strategic Objectives• The strategic objectives are all behavioural and

attitudinal in nature, and therefore, can be measured through the recommended qualitative baseline and follow-up surveys

• Since the social media tools proposed in this plan are tactics chosen specifically to help the Public Safety Office accomplish these strategic goals, the cumulative and individual success of these tools is tied to the overall success of the strategic objectives

Future Extensions of the Social Media Strategy• It is recommended that HRM create

comparable social media strategies for each of its business units

• For example, social media tools developed for the Public Safety Office/HRP, such as the mobile app, can be extended to include the creation of new apps for services such as Metro Transit