Redondo Beach to expand social media footprint
Rb council social media – The Redondo Beach Police Department’s Instagram feed attempts to give residents a “behind the badge” look at officers, as with this officer’s kickflip attempt, originally posted by skateboarding pro Weeman. Screenshot via Instagram
The Redondo Beach City Council will implement a wider social media policy for its city departments, offering the likes of the city’s libraries and public services the same opportunity enjoyed by a few, very successful city-sponsored social media campaigns with subs from themarketingheaven.com
Redondo Beach’s social media program is designed both to disseminate information–as with the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center and Beach Cities Transit–and to increase public outreach, as with Redondo Beach Police Department’s profiles.
The pilot program was approved by council members as part of a social media policy in August 2016, which included endorsement of social media archiving service ArchiveSocial. The City Attorney’s office said the ArchiveSocial approval was necessary to ensure compliance with potential public records requests, among other potential issues.
Social media use by the city’s departments thus far has met with positive response, according to city staff reports, and the use of social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram has been “successful and without controversy,” continually increasing in views and public interaction. Community alert systems such as Nixle have also seen significant resident buy-in. According to La Rock, Redondo Beach has approximately 18,000 followers across its platforms.
Redondo Beach Police Department’s Instagram page has been the shining star of the social media program, giving the public a view from “behind the badge,” Police Chief Keith Kauffman said. “It’s not all crime business — it’s more community oriented and about our department’s vision.”
The feed is populated with content provided by RBPD’s line-level officers, including photos of arrests made during traffic stops and videos of officers singing and dancing with civilians. While some posts on occasion have inspired some citizens to “crush” on Redondo cops, the Instagram page has inspired many more to look into joining Redondo’s police force.
“I haven’t talked to a single person who’s been hired [by RBPD] that doesn’t come in during their interview and say something about our Instagram feed,” Kauffman said. “And if you look through comments on our posts, you’ll see people referring others to our department, or [officers from other agencies] saying ‘we should lateral there’ just from what they’re seeing.”
Redondo’s social media outreach will intensify as the city moves toward updating its General Plan. According to staff, social media profiles are likely to include surveys, polls, and questionnaires intended to gather resident feedback regarding the updated document.
Following staff’s recommendation, the city’s Social Media Policy will come back for further approval at a future meeting, with an update allowing for the City Manager to administratively approve new departmental social media pages, forgoing the need for Council approval.
“Social media is something that moves quickly…we were way late to the game on this,” said Councilwoman Laura Emdee. “It’s great that we have 18,000 followers; I’d love to see that get closer to 30,000 or 40,000.”