Social Media. Getting local feedback.

We ran a session the other day with colleagues from around Cumbria who we have identified as "movers and shakers" in the Social Media world.
We brought them together to help us understand the things that work and those that dont
In short a Social media tweet up

We used the Tag #cumbrianetwork

Some of the findings included

Need to get the recent Social Media Research document out to public
Attendees were very much Interested in how networks deliver
There was an Appetite to share and work with social innovators in Cumbria
The County had made use of it's Social Media networks in responding to critical incidents

Some areas our critical friends suggested for the police

Keep having a presence and do it right
Use it for Major incidents
Maximise the use of free sites eg FB Twitter YouTube, Flikr, Audio Boo
We need to accept that most people do not talk about crime on SM. Only 3% of time was spend discussing crime


They recognised the use of SM at Appleby Fair and suggested we had now set a precedent
Our Proactive use was good
Our general Response to issues was good
Felt we could do more more proactive in outlining police operations or activity 
And we also received some helpful feedback about our use of Twitter

In relation to specific feedback we were told that sometimes there are big gaps of 8 or 10 hours in our messaging. This should be reduced
Many People followed us because of the presence of a police badge

But overall there are still few people on Twitter actually but the potential audience must be about 300000


Most of the time people are not interested in policing issues and use SM for it's main. Purpose social interaction.
Many will only be interested if there is an issue
Eg if snow then interested but when it melts not so
The grop suggested we make better use of the many highly connected people to get messages out
One suggestion is that we build othe Cumbria Alert system we set up

In terms of wants and wishes it was clear we could do more to promote stories of good events that we have been involved in
Interesting stories about what we have done and the use of SM to make it work would be well received also stories about how we have resolved specific issues or case studies

Could use the link on our profile to stories about police activity.
It was a valuable lesson in the power of listening ti informed people and their ideas will be used over the next few months to change the way we work.

The most immediate change was to remove some of the negative language In our profile. Don't use Don't


They expressed the importance of Getting accurate messages out

Issue of getting from the connected to the unconnected was DI udder and how we turn links follows and friends to those not online


Need to address issues on FB as well as Twitter. We need to increase the work o our Facebook site to match what we do on other SM sites

A suggestion was made to add an RSS Feed and to State where your next update will appear

We discussed creating a Cumbria 999 feed emergency SM system with other blue light services
With an emergency hashtag for when people needed urgent critical information only


We asked if they felt it would help for us to do a Tweet Day

No don't do it was the response. Simple feedback is always best.

We were encouraged to increase the amount of Road Accident information with perhaps a summary on a Monday

Generally a request for more information about what we do and how we do it, particularly a suggestion we do more to let people know how they cam protect themselves, warnings about hoaxes and frauds, linking with Trading Standards perhaps.

A very valuable experience.

I think it really pays to reach out to those who are already on the pitch

Thanks