Police Recruiting Insight: Lessons From a Social Media Gaffe!

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…a police agency makes a social media post that didn’t go over so well and now finds themselves in a little hot water.  Yep…it’s a nightmare scenario and is definitely not a fun thing to go through. 😳

But, before you go making any brash policy changes at your agency, let me give you three quick lessons on where your mindset should be with police recruiting related social media pages...keep reading! 👀

Hey everyone, it’s Tom Sye your Police Marketing FTO, and this week, let’s just talk about it.  The LA Sheriff’s Department social media post heard around the world a couple weeks ago that was seen as sympathizing with Iran after the USA’s big bombing mission. 😑

If you missed it…and this is in no way meant to disparage or make fun of the LASD… mistakes happen and it’s important that we all learn from them, but they made a post last weekend that started off by stating ‘our hearts go out to the victims and families impacted by the recent bombings in Iran’ and then provided information that they were monitoring the situation in their community, no known threats were actively being investigated by their agency, and they would keep the public notified if anything changed. 📜 

Social media erupted accusing them of being supporters of the Iranian regime, being against what the United States stands for, and all kinds of other things you would expect from the internet. 😠

The LASD ended up deleting the post and then issued an apology on social media stating the post was inappropriate, didn’t reflect the views of their agency or the Sheriff, and was being investigated.  This led to more backlash as commenters questioned why it was posted in the first place and how the agency didn’t know who was responsible for posting it. 😡

OK…now that you’re caught up on the situation…let’s talk about your potential response to it.  👇

When things like this happen, it’s easy for agencies to simply overreact and say social media is the devil and want to get rid of the whole thing. But before you go doing anything brash, let’s reset your mindset on this whole thing, regardless of where you’re at in the decision-making hierarchy…

1. Police Agencies in general

Whether you’re a PIO, supervisor, head of recruiting, someone from command staff or even the Chief of Police or Sheriff at your agency, the lesson here is not to limit social media or to make sure every post is now approved by some appointed authority.  That’s a great way to have really bad and super predictable (translation = boring) social media. 😴

This is, yet another example, of the importance of ensuring you have the right resources in the right places.  The person or persons running your social media accounts should not only be trusted and proven employees of your agency, not an outside company, but they must also understand what you’re trying to accomplish as an agency and have that mission in mind always.  More on this in a minute. ⏱️

2. Human Resources

I’ve spoken to a lot of agencies across the country who tell me that they would love to have a police recruiting social media account but they can’t get their HR division to sign off on it.  To come to their defense a little bit here, what happened with this post is exactly the reason why. 💯

For HR, it’s all about mitigated risk.  If there’s no social media account, a bad post can’t be made, and they don’t have to deal with any backlash from it. 🤷‍♂️

Now…if you’re in HR or even a part of the executive staff at your agency and are thinking this is the way to go…I’ve got two things for you...stop and it. ✋

Listen, I get it that you are trying to limit exposure to negativity…but you have to also realize that having a police recruiting focused social media page is no longer an option…it is now mandatory in today's recruiting landscape and you cannot win without one. 👌

Like I said in area 1…you can rest easy and will be able to trust that things will be fine when you have the right resources in place. 🧦👟

3. Police Recruiting

This covers just about everyone else in the decsion making process of whether to have social media or not… 😎

Listen, the days of having one social media account to cover your whole department are over and if you are anywhere near serious about filling those vacancies of yours…you absolutely must have a separate social media page for recruiting purposes and recruiting purposes only at your agency.  In the LASD example, having a separate recruiting focused social media page means that recruiting is not put on hold while you wait for the firestorm to stop on the main account. Things keep moving on! 📈 

Secondly, and this is the big lesson here…whenever you are making a post to your police recruiting focused social media page you must always remember that this page isn't a human being with feelings, emotions, cares, or opinions...it is an applicant attracting machine that focuses on that goal and that goal only. 🦾

Every post, picture, video, caption, comment, reply, and private message should be crafted with that goal in mind.  That’s how you win with police recruiting. 🏆

OK…ready to learn even more about how to use social media to build a strong and loyal audience of Police Officer applicants who want to work for you and only you? 🧲👮‍♂️👮‍♀️

My Road to Better Recruiting online training course is enrolling right now and will teach you how to do exactly that. 🙌

You can check it out now, including everything you’re gonna learn by visiting my website at www.forcopstraining.com/rtbr!

Know someone in recruiting who might be overreacting to social media mishaps?  Share this newsletter with them so they can learn too.  Remember…we’re all in this together and need to help each other in any way we can. 🤝

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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