Mountain View Police... Add A Tweet

Add A Tweet is a feature that Twitter rolled out late last year. I believed at the time that there could be some great potential uses for it in the world of public safety and emergency management. I wrote about it a previous blog post. 

Katie Nelson, the Social Media and Public Relations Coordinator for the Mountain View Police Department, has just given us an excellent example of one way to use the Add A Tweet feature.

Story Telling

Story Telling is one of the most important and most overlooked things that public safety professionals can do when they share information. 

Obviously in a long form blog post or an audio recording, a movie or a video you can do some really great story telling. You invite someone in, set the scene, and through time action, environment, emotion and relationships you tell the story. 

Images are often over looked in story telling but when you think about it, they can be the best medium for it. 

Coffee table books, historical photos documenting change, even your school pictures... they all tell amazing stories. Sometimes words can be added in for context and other times, the pictures stand alone.

Add A Tweet

Add a Tweet is an excellent way to tell your story as seen by what Katie has done below. 

Lay Out 

Katie could have gone on and on and on about the accomplishments of the Mountain View Police but she choose just a few of the pieces that were great ones to highlight which made you look forward to the next one.

When I got to the last one I thought, "That's all? I want to see more!"

And that is the exact feeling you want to leave people with. Leave them wanting more in a story like this. Give your audience a reason to come back over and over again. 

(Don't do that in an emergency or priority information situation)

Brevity works, boredom doesn't.

I would love to hear your thoughts... just leave a comment.