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Your agency is on social media. You’re posting content consistently and trying to engage with the community online. It’s all going well until someone complains or asks a difficult question. The longer you wait to respond, the more negative attention the post gets. What should you do? How should you handle this?

Never fear, this is where customer service comes into play! As we all know from our customer service experience, both from being the customer and from being the provider, the first step is communication, and the most important part of communication is active listening. While we may not be able to provide a satisfactory solution or response in 280 characters, we can start the conversation publicly and start working towards resolving the issue while educating other people who may have the similar questions or concerns. 

This session will discuss when and how we need to use our customer service skills as a first responder agency, including best practices for:

• Handling complaints or difficult questions in a professional and empathetic manner,
• Handling abusive or inappropriate posts directed at you or other commenters,
• Handling the never-ending complaint – when nothing you say or do seems to satisfy the person commenting,
• Handling trolls – when to reply and when to ignore.

Who this session is for: Anyone running the main social media accounts or section/specialty unit accounts for their agency or organization, and anyone who is representing their agency as an individual officer/employee on social media.

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When executed well, videos are an incredible asset to help educate your community and drive citizen engagement. In this session, Renie Dugwyler of Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office will share her recommended tools and an overview of a basic on-the-fly studio setup you can use to broadcast video stories and breaking news. 

Takeaways include:

• Defining the types of videos that work best for your agency
• Learning how to package and push out videos while in the field
• Brand identity tips to keep your video strategy cohesive and consistent
• Tips on how to create a campaign including storyboarding
• Resources, apps, and tools to help with production and editing

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The public information team from the Seattle Fire Department will explore the concept of editorial planning with participants, sharing how to create an editorial planning calendar of content to successfully forge positive relationships with the online community. The team will discuss how to smoothly incorporate seasonal public safety messages with incident communications, along with which types of social media posts receive the most engagement. Finally, a case study of communicating with the public during COVID will be shared with participants, and how the regional and consistent messaging helped to enforce public health guidance.  

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Within crisis communications, social media has become a valuable tool to be able to get out critical information quickly to the right people. This panel will walk through best practices to make sure your team is equipped with the right protocols to help you support your community in a crisis through coordinated, collaborative communications on your social channels. 

Discussion topics include:

• What your agency can do now to prepare for a crisis
• What can be done with little resources and manpower to prepare and manage a crisis
• When to resume normal messaging after a crisis
• Deciding who will manage communications, where and when they will happen, and how they will be monitored
• Understanding what your community expects from you during a critical incident or crisis
• Examples of what not to do

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What's better than putting out rumors? Putting them out before they even start!

You’re not on the road or out in the field every day; you’re not on the other end of a call into dispatch or at the front desk of your agency. Sure, you get the comments, calls, and emails that come in from the public, passed on by others. Maybe you hear about citizen complaints and commendations from Internal Affairs.

But, how do you gauge public sentiment? How do you put out the rumor fires before they start? Oftentimes, people take to social media to vent and share—when they’re happy, upset, and concerned. If you’re not actively listening to what’s going on, you’re missing out big time.

Social listening gives agencies an opportunity to view, analyze and respond to conversations involving their communities and services that may have otherwise been missed.

Meet your audience where they’re at.

In this session:

- We’ll discuss ways for you to better connect with your public online

- We’ll discover social listening tools to help you hear what's being said about your agency in real-time

- We’ll evaluate what happens when you don’t engage in active social listening

Who this session is for: Public Information Officers or Social Media Managers who maintain social communications for their agencies.

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Rather than using digital tools to inform people and elevate civic discussion, some individuals have taken advantage of social and digital platforms to deceive, mislead, or harm others through creating or disseminating fake news and disinformation. This can greatly generate fear within a community and/or harm the reputation of an agency. 

This session will:

• Help participants understand the important distinction between misinformation and disinformation.
• Review relevant case studies that impacted municipalities and law enforcement agencies.
• Evaluate and learn how to implement a number of strategies to promote timely, accurate, and civil discourse in the face of false news and combat disinformation.

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Time is a precious resource for social media managers, and many are working as the only employee at their agency dedicated to social media. This panel will discuss tips to help you optimize your time, leverage the help of co-workers, and some of the best tools to get the job done. 

Discussion topics include:

• Shortcuts, tips, and best practices that help social media managers have time
• Apps and tools can that help save time when creating content
• Ways to get others involved to help one-person social teams
• Communicating with leadership the importance of having more than one person handling social media
• Cross-posting pros and cons, and how to change up images and text to increase reach
• Keeping followers and co-workers happy and how to balance the two
• Keeping your budget lower with mobile/phone accessories

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