Social Media Strategies for Public Safety Technology Companies

The Public Safety Network is excited to announce that Marie Eason has joined our team to focus on digital marketing for public safety technology companies. Marie is a digital marketing consultant who has worked with several different businesses across a variety of industries, including public safety technology. A self-described data nerd, Marie loves tracking and reporting on social and digital insights using tools such as Hootsuite and Google Analytics. Keep on reading for her perspectives and recommendations on social media strategies for public safety tech companies:

Where do you start?

Social media is no longer an optional marketing channel – it’s a necessary one. As a result, more and more public safety businesses are jumping on board with building robust social media strategies that highlight their brand in a digital space.

The first step to creating an effective social media strategy is establishing your objectives and goals. Common marketing objectives for public safety clients typically include goals involving brand awareness, driving website traffic, and recruiting. Once you have goals, you can determine which social platforms will be the best fit. It was a best practice to set up accounts on all the major social media platforms in the past. It is now best practice to focus on the platforms where your customers exist and are searching for information. We have found that Twitter and LinkedIn have the most substantial followers and engagement for public safety industry clients.

What should you post and how should you utilize data to drive your content calendar?

Building out a content calendar is a lot like recipe testing. You have to make a plan, tweak things here or there, and ultimately serve your creation. If you are just starting an account, you will want to test various content types or themes and monitor your engagement with each post style. Post theme ideas can include FAQs, case studies, employee introductions, product demonstrations, celebrations, job posts, customer reviews, videos, and upcoming event information.

At the end of each month or campaign, you will want to monitor key metrics such as reach, engagement, impressions, and click-through rates for each style and theme of the post. All of the major social media platforms have an easy-to-use analytics component to help you organize and make sense of this data.

Utilizing this data will help determine which themes and style posts drive the most engagement. As you build your calendar for the following month, you will want to focus on utilizing this content more often.

What apps and tools should you use?

Hootsuite is an excellent tool for planning out your content calendar, monitoring analytics, and responding to comments. Canva is a free-to-use online graphic design tool. You can use Canva to create posts, stories, videos, etc. Shutterstock is a provider of stock photography and stock footage. You can pull images from their platform to post onto your social accounts. Bitly is a URL shortening service and a link management platform for condensing links within your social posts. Finally, Grammarly is a cloud-based typing assistant that reviews spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity, engagement, and delivery mistakes. This tool is helpful when writing social posts and blogs.

What are some good public safety accounts to follow?

It is crucial to not only follow your competitors to monitor what they are posting, but it is also helpful to follow public safety accounts for content ideas. We recommend following these accounts as a starting point:

Kymeta‘s account keeps followers in the loop with upcoming events and product information, posts consistently, and has a strong social media following.

Sonim‘s account not only posts its own content but also invests time in liking and re-tweeting relevant public safety content from various other accounts. 

Western Fire Chiefs’ account utilizes the Instagram stories function to share their posts further and relevant content in which they are tagged.

FirstNet‘s account is an excellent example of an account that utilizes video content to drive strong engagement.

If you are interested in learning more about utilizing social media marketing to achieve your business goals, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us here.