5 Tools to Help Simplify Your Police Marketing!

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Starting and maintaining a police recruiting social media page can be a handful. 😰

In addition to trying to figure out what the heck you’re going to say in your posts, you’ve got to also figure out how to make them, where to come up with photos or videos for the posts themselves, and then take on the time-consuming task of posting them every day...if the struggle is real for you, I’ve got the five tools that are going to help simplify your police marketing...keep reading! 👀

Hey everyone, it’s Tom Sye your Police Marketing FTO and this week, I’ve heard you loud and clear.  Running a police related social media account is incredibly time consuming and you need some help to make things easier. 🙏

I got you. 🤜🤛 

Here are my top five tools that will help simplify your police marketing.  🙌

As always, I’m gonna give you a disclaimer first...I’m not affiliated with any of these companies, I don’t get paid to pitch them, I don’t get a referral bonus, or anything remotely close to any of that...in fact, I know exactly zero people who work for any of these companies and these are just legitimately five tools I’ve discovered along the way that make things way easier for me.  👍

Here we go...

1. Canva

I’ve talked about Canva before and I’m gonna do it again because this is such an easy and incredible website to use and even if you have no idea what you’re doing design wise, Canva’s easy plug and play pre-made designs can help anyone’s social media posts, flyers, business cards, stickers, and anything recruiting look legit.  💯

Canva has a free version to use, and you can get by with only having that, but I highly recommend forking over the $120 a year for the pro version as it gives you access to their entire design, photo, and stock video library which pays for itself very quickly. 😎

Again, with this tool, you have the ability to log in, pick out a professionally designed template, change some words and photos to fit your agency and save it all with one simple click in a format that is ready to go right away.  Their design library covers all of the major social media platforms and there’s even a copy and resize feature that allows you to make multiple versions of the same design to fit the specs required for each platform. 🤯

My tip for making things even easier on Canva: utilize the folders features to save designs that you’ll reuse over and over again, like job postings or regular events you host, that way you can just click on a folder to find them again as opposed to scrolling through all the designs you have ever made.  Also, save your agency’s logo in the brand kit tab along the left hand side for the same reasons!  You want to be able to find those quickly! 🧠

2.  Cap Cut

Short form video, which, depending on the source, can be anywhere from zero to ninety seconds with under 30 seconds being the norm, is incredibly popular right now.  It’s why TikTok and Instagram reels rule the social media world and you’re going to want to cash in on that. 🤑

Insert cap cut.  A free app that is loaded with short form video templates that allows you to easily get in on the action by inserting a few photos and saving the video in a multitude of formats.  Cap cut also has a desktop version for you folks who like doing things the old-fashioned way...guilty 🙋‍♂️...and it’s just as easy to use.  There is both a free and paid version, but I haven’t seen a need to pay for cap cut at all, so you should be good to go with the free one.  Definitely sign up for the free account though, as opposed to just using it as a guest.  This way you’ll be able to save your progress and files you’ve uploaded for later use.  😃  

My tip for making things even easier in Cap Cut: hit the 'popular' tab when searching through the templates to make sure you’re using the latest and greatest ones that your audience is craving to see. 🆕

3.  Buffer

If you only utilize one social media platform, scheduling is not that big of a deal...but when you have multiple it can start getting incredibly time consuming to handle the scheduling for all of them.  This is where Buffer comes in.  👋

It’s very similar to Hootsuite, which is the most popular social media scheduler out there, but doesn’t come with the massive cost associated with it which is the biggest plus.  You can schedule up to three social media accounts for free but will have to pay if you have more, but again, it’s only gonna be at a fraction of the cost of Hootsuite to do the same thing. 👯‍♀️

To use Buffer, you simply authorize and connect your social media accounts, click on the new post button, add your photo/video, create your caption, and click schedule.  Pretty simple. 🤓

My tip for making things easier in Buffer: In the name of full disclosure, I now only use Buffer to create my captions and then copy and paste them into each specific platforms scheduling feature.  This takes me a little more time to do, but I feel that I get more engagement when I do things this way and also get to schedule 6 platforms for free by doing it this way. ✌️

Buffer’s emoji library is awesome, and I like how it’s text format seamlessly transfers into each platforms integration when copying and pasting.  Translation – characters don’t go all haywire on you.  If you want to try the same, go for it...otherwise, submit it on Buffer and make things easier! 🤙

4.  Pixabay

If you can’t quite find what you’re looking for in Canva’s stock photo, video, or music library, Pixabay is sure to be able to help you out.  Easy to search with highly relevant results, Pixabay’s stock library is top notch and downloads in awesome HD with one click! 📷

Nothing is going to beat your own photos that you take but this site is especially awesome when it comes time to making holiday related videos as it has some pretty cool clips that Canva just doesn’t have, like dancing skeletons during Halloween, for example. 🎃

My tip for making Pixabay easier: Whenever you search for something, completely ignore the top row.  Those are sponsored results and are going to cost you some big dollars to use.  That top row has gotten me excited more than once about finding something that was perfect, but now I just go straight to row two and let the browsing begin. 😉

5.  Photopea

Looking for a Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator alternative?  Photopea has got you covered and it’s completely free to use!  Doesn’t get much better than that.  I’ll give you fair warning, the program can be difficult to use, even if you have some design and photoshop experience like I do, so if you’re looking to do something quickly and easily, this probably isn’t the site for you. 😵

However, if you’re not afraid to click buttons and do things through trial and error, Photopea can do anything that Photoshop or Illustrator can do, and you’ll learn to love it. 😍

My tip for making Photopea easier: YouTube.  I have yet to find a feature, style, or design technique I’ve been wanting to do that doesn’t have a Photopea YouTube tutorial video.  Typically, they’re only a couple of minutes long, really easy to understand, especially if you’ve used Photoshop before, and once you see how it’s done, it’s pretty easy to replicate it in Photopea. 😌

So, there you have it!  My five tools to help simplify your police marketing.  Don’t be afraid to try them out and start making things easier in your life. 🚀

Now...ready to learn even more about police marketing?

My Road to Better Recruiting course has got you covered.  You can check it out and everything that will be covered by visiting my website at forcopstraining.com/rtbr.

Have a friend at another agency who really needs these five tools?  Give this newsletter a like or share it with them so they can learn too.  It’s going to take all of us, working together, to change the future of police recruiting.  Send it to them!  🤝

Have more questions about police recruiting, marketing, or anything else you're struggling with? Don't hesitate to reach out...I’m always here to help. ⛑

Until next week my Police Marketing Squad, happy recruiting! 😃

Tom

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👋 I’m Tom Sye, your Police Marketing FTO. I founded ‘For Cops’ Training to teach Police Departments how to attract more qualified candidates through the same tried and tested methods I’ve used for the past ten years at my own department to keep up with turnover and stay ahead of vacancies.

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