Congratulations. You finally convinced your department to let you start an official Facebook page! So you set up an account, upload your department’s logo, and start posting. “This is great!” you think to yourself. You get your family to follow you. You get your friends to follow you. You get some of your colleagues to follow you and before you know it, you have maybe 50 people following the department’s page. But then, things start to go flat. The number of followers you get stays the same, or maybe goes up one or two people a month. What happened? You thought if you built it, they would come. Social Media is so hot right now and people should be flocking to your page.

So lonely!

But here’s the rub, hardly anyone besides your initial followers that you encouraged to follow your page even know your page exists! There are millions of pages out there and your page has become a needle in a haystack. So what do you do now?

Sell, sell, sell!

You work in a police department not a car dealership, but you really do need to do some selling and promoting to build an audience for your page. The best way to sell your page is to get your Facebook address out there.

Ideas!

There are literally hundreds of places to post your Facebook page link but here are some suggestions to get you started.

  • On your department’s business cards
  • On your department’s website
  • On your department’s patrol cars
  • In your city’s water bill
  • On your city’s Facebook page
  • On any event flyers your department puts out
  • In your department’s press releases even if it’s just a tagline at the bottom to ask people to follow your page.

And word of mouth helps too.

  • Have your officers mention it in your Citizen Academies and Self-Defense courses.
  • Have your PIO mention it if they do a public service radio interview.
  • Add it to scripts for your community service videos.
  • Call your local media and see if they will do a story on your new page.

The point is building a Facebook page is just the first step in creating a great resource for your community. Advertising that it’s out there is the next and often most important step.

So, what other ways can you think of to promote your Facebook page?