Proportions may be different, but social and traditional media use balance

Sgt. Tim Burrows, of the Toronto Police Traffic Services, doesn’t just think about “being on social media”—he thinks in terms of communication, the best ways to get his messages across. That’s why his mix of professional and personable is one of the best examples I’ve seen of how to “get” using social media.

Which is why his recent lessons learned about the balance between putting information out both socially and traditionally are well worth attention:

A basic communication principle

The other morning I received a phone call from a friend to tell me that a local radio station was talking about my use of Twitter. The producer of the show was essentially calling me a hypocrite for telling people to not drive distracted but doing it in a forum where people could be reading “tweets” while driving.

I was “called out” publicly. I had no choice; I had to call the station and defend what I was doing. We all know that there are multiple mediums where a person can receive their updates. On a mobile device while driving is just one possibility. There is also sitting at a desk, reading the tweet in a radio station booth on a desktop computer…which is how the host and producer received my tweets.

If I truly believed that everyone who received a tweet from me was doing so while driving, I would never tweet again. However, I find that the “know before you go” philosophy works with what I am doing.

Social and traditional media complement each other

But what happened that morning wasn’t just a great opportunity to get on a soapbox and talk about the danger of distracted driving or continue my push for road safety. What happened was an important reminder of a basic communication principal for me:

As much as I have been concentrating on expanding my influence and voice within social media, probably the same way many of you may be doing, never ignore or overlook main stream media.

It was the use of social media that got the mainstream media radio host and producer talking on the air. It was the mainstream media that gave me an opportunity to advertise what I was doing both on social media and why I was there. I was using both social media and the mainstream media to spread the message of road safety.

I told the host that when I started out using Twitter it was to let the mainstream media know what was happening on Toronto’s streets. In turn, they could let the public listeners, readers and viewers know what was happening. I could pound out a message in less then 140 characters allowing multiple mainstream media outlets get that same message at the same time.

From a time management perspective alone, this is an effective and efficient medium, but it is only 140 characters. If there is a story, at some point in time, you will have to rely on traditional media to carry that message to the many members of your community that are not using social media.

The takeaways

1) What are people saying about you and your department?
2) What opportunities does that give you to educate them (as opposed to defending yourself)?
3) Do you know which tools people are using to listen? How can you use—and integrate—them to best effect?

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This entry was posted on November 2, 2009 at 6:39 am and is filed under Featured, Reputation management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.