The Greater Manchester Police 24-hour tweeting experiment is getting a lot of attention for very good reasons. It’s tapped into the nationwide annoyance about the ineffectiveness of the UK’s public sector services. And then flipped it on its head. The Greater Manchester Police Service have suddenly become national heroes of sorts (at the moment, at least).
Yes, it was clearly a public relations exercise first and foremost, with even the chief constable using words like perception and reality in his remarks. However, what makes it interesting from a social media/PR perspective is that
the campaign has been created from the outset to use the internet to get mass awareness in tandem with conventional, geographically-targeted media like the Manchester Evening News to communicate locally?
It’s a very clever move. The story, for its ingenuity, has gone national – on social networks and offline. At this very moment, Manchester Police is the top trending topic on Twitter (11.30am 15 October), closely followed by Sir Cliff Richard who turns 70 this week.
Interestingly, few of the post analytical comments on Twitter/Facebook have been from people in Manchester. And if the objective of the campaign were to shift the needle in terms of local perceptions of the police service – has it really met its aims?
I’d argue that engaging the ‘wrong’ audience is just a necessary by-product of this sort of campaign. Particularly, at a time when emergency services are getting a lot of stick. By elevating it to a national level, Manchester Police have not only highlighted the sheer variety and number of incidents they have to deal with on a daily basis, but it’s made us as citizens think more carefully about how all the emergency services are under extreme pressure in the face of impending budget cuts. A smart social media experiment, with a clear message at its heart.











1. What is The SocialITe all about?

![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=3ec2518b-25a6-4230-9794-77dbe95aafd5)
Social Media Week takes place around the world next week. Governments are behind it. It’s about stroking the soft underbelly of our creative and media industries for financial gain. We’re hosting a 