On October 13 of this year, the Greater Manchester Police force staged a Twitter campaign to educate its community about the nature of policing and raise awareness about the broad range of social issues the force addresses on an average day. The campaign, during which the Manchester Police tweeted every emergency call it handled for a 24-hour period, was a massive success and built support for the force as it faces impending budget cuts.
Watch as Kevin Hoy, Web Manager for the Corporate Communications Branch of the Greater Manchester Police, explains the campaign. In this video he recorded for TWTRCON, he discusses the technical challenges they had to overcome, and describes the impact the campaign has had on the agency’s community outreach efforts:
Some bottom-line highlights:
- The #GMP24 hashtag was a worldwide trending topic during the campaign
- Started a conversation that continued to be active for days after the campaign
- Increased the number of followers for its Twitter account, @gmpolice, from 3,000 to 17,000 in a 24-hour period
- Received 20,000 hits to its Flickr account
- Proved that people want to engage with public services via social media
- Global press coverage built awareness with very little cost
We highly recommend watching the video as Kevin does a great job explaining the campaign!
