5 Police Recruiting and Marketing Tools I Can't Live Without & Think You'll Like Too!

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Tired of struggling with what tools to use to help make your online life much easier as a Police Marketer and/or Recruiter? 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♂️

I’ve been there and fortunately for you…I’m about to use that experience to save you a ton of time.  You’re welcome.  Here are the five police marketing tools I can’t live without and think you’ll like too...keep reading! 👀

Hey everyone, it’s Tom Sye your Police Marketing FTO, and when it comes to getting started with police marketing, believe you me…I know firsthand exactly how hard it is to figure out both where to go and what to use to get the job done, let alone make your life easier. 😩

But don’t beat yourself up too bad…it’s simple logic really…when you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s impossible to know what you need, right? Enter…this newsletter. 🙌    

Police Recruiting and Marketing Disclaimer*

Now…before we get started, and because I’m going to be naming products and companies, I’m gonna give you a disclaimer first...I want to make this very clear…I am 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 all of them are just legitimate tools I’ve discovered along the way that make things way easier for me. 💯 

OK?  All right… 👍

Without further ado…here are the five police marketing tools I can’t live without, and I think you’re really gonna like too…

1. Canva

I’ve told you 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 else you need for recruiting look legit. 🤩

While there is a free version you can use, I highly recommend spending the $120 a year on the pro version because it gives you access to Canva’s entire design, photo, and stock video library, as well as an array of new AI tools that do some really cool things, all of which pays for itself very quickly. 🤙

With this tool, you simply log in, pick out a professionally designed template, change some words, photos, or graphics to fit what you want to do, download with one simple click and it’s ready for you to start using immediately.  You can check it out at canva.com or on the Canva app in your favorite app store.    

2.  Cap Cut

Short form video, which for police marketing is a video 90 seconds in length or less, is incredibly popular right now.  It’s why TikTok and Instagram reels rule the social media world and trust me…they’ll outperform you’re super long cookie cutter recruiting videos tenfold. 💪

Capcut is a free tool that allows you to produce video like a pro by simply inserting a few photos or video clips into a short form video template from their massive catalog. 📖

Saving in glorious HD is a breeze with the click of a button and your video even comes complete with a hot music track that your police officer recruit aged audience will love.  Just make sure to prescreen before saving to make sure there’s no cussing or anything offensive.  Learned that the hard way.  Capcut.com or search for Capcut, one word, in the app store. 

3.  Brand Crowd

When you wanna spruce up your social media photos, say for celebrating National School Resource Officer Day, or National Third Shift Workers Day, there’s really not a logo for that kind of stuff…so, let Brand Crowd make one for you. 🤯

This AI powered logo design website lets you type a description of what you’re looking for and almost instantly pops out several logos for you to choose from.  Don’t see one you like?  Simply revise your text and it spits out several more.  It’s a really cool and easy tool to help separate your photos from the others!  Give it a try at brandcrowd.com 

4.  Bitly

If your agency’s job posting website is anything like mine, the address has enough characters to hit the limits on a lot of social media platforms without ever typing anything else into the caption field.  Enter Bitly.  🦸

Bitly is a website link shortener which allows you to customize the back half of the link so it reads any way you want it to.  So, for example, you can use the words 'Police Officer 2025' to create a custom link for your police application.  Or, 'Detention Officer' for your corrections positions…you get the point. 🦄

Bitly will allow you to create up to five different links per month for free, which should be able to cover most agencies, and the next level up is only $10 a month for up to one hundred links per month…that surely will cover you.  You can try this one at bitly.com.

5.  Buffer

If you are only utilizing one social media platform, scheduling is not that big of a deal...but when you have a presence on multiple, it can start getting incredibly time consuming and expensive 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 for anything over that, 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. 😀

Buffer’s emoji library is also awesome and can really help to spruce up your captions! 🧲

Now, for me, I like to schedule directly onto individual platforms myself…I just feel like I get more engagement that way, so I use Buffer to create my captions and then copy and paste them into each specific platform’s scheduling feature.  Yes, this takes a little more time and effort to do, but it’s free, keeps everything in order, and I like doing it this way. 🤷‍♂️

OK, there you have it!  The five police marketing tools I can’t live without, and I think you’ll like too.  Give them all a try and let me know which ones work best for you! 💬

Now…need help deciphering what advertising methods and type of social media posts will actually start getting you those qualified applicants you’ve been searching for?  My Road to Better Recruiting course has got you covered.  You can learn all about it on my website by visiting forcopstraining.com/rtbr and start recruiting like it’s 2025! 

Have a friend at another agency who is struggling with getting started as well?  Give this newsletter a like or share it with them so they can learn too.  Remember, it’s going to take all of us, working together, to change the future of police recruiting.  Send it to them will ya? 🤝

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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