OK, lets be honest. I've been little provokative about question of professionals. As we heard in yesterdays lecture, you can recognise professional PR person from his work. Amatheurs are using one way model, and professionals are using two way model... hmmm??
The best way to put two way model into practise is to get close to your audience. That's how you can reflect on their reactions. And who are close our audience (in police "business")? That's our police officer's who works in the field. Not bossess or me myself who are working mostly at the office. And media - as we have heard, massmedia don't actually reach all the people, only those who are using that media... And I, as a professional PR worker, am taking care of that the field officers knows this fact - two way communication is the best way to do PR work, and also the best way to prevent crimes too. Simple as that? All I need to do is teach this fact to our staff. And that should be easy (yeah, right...).
So the best way to do police work and policePR is to be close to our customers - normal people. That's why Finnish Police is at the Facebook, or at the YouTube, or at the IRC... in every place where people are nowadays. And the keyword is.... Social Media!
Good Tuomo, you have obviously been listening on the lecture! ;) And I so much agree with your point about social media. That's the way to get closer to the people.
VastaaPoistaAnd something has definitely been done right, 'cause the Finnish Police has more FB fans than for e.g. FBI :D I find this quite fascinating. YLE comments the situation by telling, that several police forces around the world are very curious about this.
VastaaPoistahttp://yle.fi/alueet/hame/2010/12/suomen_poliisi_teki_maailmanennatyksen_netissa_2189939.html