Official Station Facebook / Instagram Accounts

[Percy]

Hi

Does any brigade have official facebook/Insta pages that are set up for each station to highlight the good work they do and promote campaigns?

I appreciate some stations in the UK have 'unofficial' ones, much to the annoyance of brigade management occasionally as they are outside of their control, but does any stations have fully endorsed pages that the station crew are allowed to use with obvious supervision?

My brigade currently don't have them, the comms and media team are extremely reluctant to allow it, which I am working on as done correctly, it can be a gold mine of news updates and only be a positive for the service and a tool to interact with the community.

Any help will be greatly appreciated. 

[Becile]

Me old mate , you know how tricky this can be...easier to start giving the middle managers authority and get your crews to send you the news items, that way you are personally responsible, at at a level that should know what to and what not to post.

West Sussex have station pages but not sure who run them.

 

[Luminoki]

In West Mids all stations and many departments have their own Twitter accounts, usually run by a firefighter on each watch ( i run ours for my watch at Northfield 😉 ) They are an invaluable tool in many respects, showcasing training, incidents and community work, usually tied in with safety messages and a little bit of fun occasionally thrown in.

Its hit and miss how active they are, some accounts have the bare minimum, some like to keep regular updates. But you’d be amazed at how many private messages these accounts get from members of the public asking a variety of questions, most of which are answered leaving the poster very happy

There is the odd facebook and insta account but the service has thrown its weight behind twitter and they seem happy with the results

[JonnyHolbs]

In Oxfordshire, Eynsham(on-call) have a very well run Facebook page. Run by a couple of FFs on the watch, and supervised by the officers. It’s very popular in the local community.

Eynsham Fire Station Facebook Page

[Rory-495]

London have brought twitter pages. They're run by the BC or maybe delegated to a FF with more tech savviness. Some are great, some are a bit empty

[Matt]

There are many Brigades that are cautious and some have pulled it due to lack of trust from their staff.  They key is to keep the pages up to date and not let them go stale like some of them out there and you will keep the engagement up, show the face rather than just the automated stuff.  Public want to see what is local and relevant to them not the corporate stuff.

Personally I think its a great way to communicate with the public is done properly, certain people have the training and limit it to not a free for all it will work.  If used with proper social media tools to allowed shared access and audit trail of who did what were then there are no issues.  The training side of thigns its quite simple and common sense having done it when I run some of the pages for our group which was linked.  

There was more stations using Twitter but the numbers have equaled out now to Facebook and Instagram too and they are station run but Media do have access to them.

[OscarTango]

Absolutely not here. I don't want to come across more cynical than I am but our Service is extremely protective of its brand image (and refers to it as such). Open days are centrally run by a Customer Engagement team, we can't do our own anymore. 

They are very keen on social media but it's a highly curated thing. It all has to be "on message". They've started doing fire safety TikToks now which to me is high calibre corporate-cringe.  

It all looks very slick (and with our media department I'd hope it would), but it's not big on the "local angle". If a particular station has an interesting shout or community activity it has to be managed centrally and posted on the service wide socials feed.

[Carl]

15 hours ago, Percy said:

My brigade currently don't have them

GMFRS has Facebook / Twitter and Instagram. If you require access to be able to post in the Borough Twitter, you can ask Comms and they will set you up. Its not available at Station level, but certainly is at SM level. 

[Highlander]

I run our station page. It's typically a mix of local activities that the crew's get up to and approved messages from the service. Its more just about being sensible when posting. 

https://www.facebook.com/stonehavencfs

[Percy]

1 hour ago, Carl said:

GMFRS has Facebook / Twitter and Instagram. If you require access to be able to post in the Borough Twitter, you can ask Comms and they will set you up. Its not available at Station level, but certainly is at SM level. 

Cheers Carl - sorry my poor explanation. I am aware we have Service and Borough Twitter etc. but we don't have anything from each Station which is why I am leading on the project. We have a massive glaring hole in our ability to update from scene, the drill yard/outside training and exercises of interest, on visits, promoting campaigns 'live' with no delay. Getting Borough or the SM to do it is far too long a wait when time is of the essence. GMP have a superb Twitter, FB and Insta presence which is both centrally supervised and controlled when there is a global message, but one which local teams can update which they do constantly to great effect. The local one here, GMP Leigh, Atherton and Hindleys neighbourhood and response teams is very active with a constant stream of updates to the local community when there has been an arrest of note, vehicle stop, recovered items etc. This is want I want to replicate.

53 minutes ago, Highlander said:

https://www.facebook.com/stonehavencfs

Superb example

16 hours ago, Becile said:

Me old mate , you know how tricky this can be...easier to start giving the middle managers authority and get your crews to send you the news items, that way you are personally responsible, at at a level that should know what to and what not to post.

West Sussex have station pages but not sure who run them.

 

I get the reluctance and this has been the trouble here, but the argument doesn't really have much credibility when we are willing to trust the crews to safely and effectively resolve incidents, potentially risking their lives - yet not trusting them when it comes to social media posts 🤷‍♂️

Obviously there will be training and guidance, and comms/media will still be able to admin them all. But we can have a constant stream from 41 stations raising the profile of the service, promoting each and every campaign (some with more local focus than others such as the one I am involved with due to the huge demographical diversity within Greater Manchester) instead of just relying on centrally controlled.

Twitter isn't as universally used as the two other platforms is,and its these I am concentrating on developing atm.

[Luminoki]

And only having the SM with access lies the rub. Below is an example of a job i was sent to on days, typical garden fire that a flexi wouldnt look sideways at, let alone usually attend. Now we managed to get some pics, post it quickly and also get a safety message out to those viewing it. This was later retweeted by our service twitter account. I doubt a SC with access is going to appreciate me ringing them up everytime i have something twitter worthy to post. And am i going to want to ring the SC to let them know that we’ve been doing combi drills in the yard that day “and could you put it on twitter with the odd emoji and funny byline please”

[Messyshaw]

Thank goodness Twitter wasnt around when I was Watch Manager! I would have fun!

Instead I had a really good relationship with a local reporter who was always desperate for a scoop. So I would help him at every opportunity - even on one occasion when he turned up late for a shout, getting my guys to re-don BA and recreate the scene from earlier for his photographer! I also gave regular proactive information about shouts, sometimes phoning him at home.

In return he would run unattributable stories from me.

One was the LFB deciding that only key fire stations would get standby appliances if delayed out on a shout. It turned out, none of these special stations were in my Borough which I thought might interest the local community rate payers! So a 'FBU member' gave him the story and the 'Officer in charge of the station' was able to give the corporate response. Both were quotes were by me in the same call!!!

He liked to hear about LFB cutbacks and he ran a fabulous story for me when the LFB trialled a helicopter. The aircraft had caused a fair bit of damage during jobs and some bright spark had distributed a hilarious series of hapless Bodget cartoons around stations - based on The Duchess of Yorks' Budgie the Helicopter' books.  My reporter friend ran the story of the helicopters cock ups and got hold of a cartoon which they printed . 

So I know I may have been a bit mischievous if I ran a dodgy FRS Twitter account.  

But there is a serious part in all this. I hate the public being lied to and if there is a way of disseminating the truth to the community who pay our wages, then I am all for it. The problem comes when you get the angry and vicious stuff being published that undermines professionalism. One example is in Surrey F&RS where some comments in an unofficial 'anti management' FB Group have been bordering on libellous - that is regrettable 

[Matt]

Social media is a great tool if used properly and sensiblly, it just needs common sense to go with it and setup correctly with an audit rather than just logging into say a Twitter account with generic credentials then everyone is safe.

If you have to think before posting something then thats when it shouldn't be posted is the key thing we came from the training session we had.

The whole Surrey situation on social media, I get it, I don't know the full ins and outs of it all but it does mean when stuff like this comes around it could all turn very sour very quickly.  

Used properly social media is a great tool, reporters don't even report now they now convert 2 lines of text into a full page so their job has been made even easier.  

In Lincs Twitter started with 1 station getting permission and posting some great content and still do, professioanl videos made by crews getting messages out there to the majority of stations jumping on board with it.  In some professions it can be a place where some will vent on it and it just needs to be handled properly public or professional.

[Luminoki]

The common sense is the perfect way to phrase it. Some accounts are run by an officer, some by a firefighter. A little bit of guidance akin to the media training our officers get would be a good thing ( example as far as i know, a fatal incident is never tweeted by a station account ad hoc, a proper press release is done by our media dept and then posted on the services own social media )

I often have what i think are great tweet ideas but half of the time i run them by the gaffer just to make sure. And yes one or two have been vetoed as they could give the public yhr wrong impression despite having noble intentions. As ive been doing this ive started to quality assure my own musings before tapping on twitter. An example would be a house fire my crew attended where we saved two cats and a menagerie of pets. Now that wouldve been great PR for the service, but the owner was devastated about the damage to her house so i didnt even consider asking permission and now those pictures are relegated to my memories of the job folder. I think im doing something right as im told a fair few senior officers are a fan of our account

[StandPipe]

Credit where it’s due, I believe my Brigade has got its social media pretty spot on. There is a main page for the Brigade which is ran by control, who post notable incident/CFS etc, then every station has a Facebook & Twitter account which is managed by our comms team; our comms teams do not post anything on the individual pages, they simply just monitor what we are posting.

A dedicated member from each watch/station has ‘editor’ rights for the page. At the start of each month we receive an email with ‘post’ ideas and a selection of content to post. All our wholetime stations are expected to post regularly and follow all the national campaigns, and although there is less pressure on our RDS to do so, they all seem to keep their pages very active, some with very impressive accounts. 

As the editor for my watch, I only use social media to promote fire safety and charity events. I will never post anything relating to incidents/training (this is personal choice and I see a lot of stations who chose to do that and it attracts a lot of attention and usually good press). 

One of the biggest pro’s I’ve found with our social media is the connection to the local community. We are part of the local residents forums and I would say roughly 90% of our school visits/CFS events are arranged through social media. 

By giving the watches/stations editor rights, it really allows us and the community to engage with each other, instead of the community engaging with a comms officer who has never visited our area, or a high ranking officer who checks the account weekly and has priorities higher on his/her list.

Further to what @Luminokisaid, anyone who is an editor must have completed our social media training package, and must have read and agreed to our County Councils social media code of conduct. I like to think as Firefighters we are professionals, and should definitely know what is okay to post, and what is absolutely not okay to post. I also know that if I posted something I shouldn’t, I would really be putting my career at risk. 

[Becile]

Social media can be your best friend and your worst nightmare. I've been there with both sides of the coin.You've also got to look at the demographic and what do you actually want it for. I would say having used several they have different reach and audiences.

[Keith]

Somebody once set up a website to promote their station, wonder whatever happened to that??? 🤣🤣🤣

[Matt]

StandPipe, that is a great idea having an ideas page, many comms departments have a social media calendar of what to post when.  Something many may not be aware of but you can schedule posts to the likes of Twitter and Facebook so in the run up to an event you can automate the posts i.e. 5 days before posting at various times to catch different people is the really useful you can schedule stuff and forget about it abit.

As Becile says it can be great but also a pain the back side too.

[Sparkie112]

Oxfordshire, have worked through various iterations and i would say, similar to Standpipe, that we actually have in my opinion a good set up, with trust delegated right down to station level

There is a service facebook, instagram and twitter account that the central team post recruitment, safety messages and more centralised messaging.
Stations once they have some fairly simple training, and do a package to understand the dos and donts, can post straight to this 24 hours a day, but also can have and manage their own station page, which they share the main posts to if needed. The persons involved can be anyone as long as they do the initial input. Often this is the tech savvy younger FF's who can whip up a post whilst sleeping ! This also allows them to interact locally with their own local pages to them!

Stations, tend to have just one outlet - normally facebook, to save having sleepy accounts. The county council media department have access rights and keep an eye, but we accept that mistakes happen, grammer isnt 100%, and sometimes we get it wrong. But we learn from it, without going all out to demonise. If its done in good faith, we will stand behind and learn from it.