Alex Coley, former Head of Digital Services at the Metropolitan Police, talks about how the police use of social media has been transformed in the wake of the riots of last summer. As private and public organisations move towards service models in digital, Alex talks about the difficult balancing act the police face in engaging through social media while also monitoring the same channels for intelligence. From Scotland Yard to the Met Special Operations Room, the Home Office and the Foreign Office, social media has been on a journey in the corridors of power over the last year. This is that story.

1. From Engagement to Intelligence:
Striking the Balance in Social Media at the Met

2. Social Media vs The Police

3. Forum grafitti vs National Epic

4. Royal plot vs Royal patronage

5. Pamphleteers vs Petitioners

6. Who do you believe?
Official sources vs Social communities

7. How the crowd handles misinformation

8. Did the media stir things up more?

9. So what happened next?

10. “The MPS accepts that it has been too risk averse
in its use of social media and that this is not a
viable state of affairs to sustain.”

11. “The MPS has undertaken significant work to sharpen its
use of social media and digital communications to
engage more widely with the people of London.”

12. Community policing

13. Specialist policing

14. Corporate and campaign messaging

15. Police stories bringing the brand to life

16. A few twitter stats

32 Borough twitter accounts - 55,490 followers

6 Specialist twitter accounts - 144,297 followers

200,000 total followers

1 central management tool

17. Bring it all together

18. Telling a story with video is good
brand engagement

19. Telling a story with live video during
a protest march is game changing

20. For real change, your leadership
must embrace the future

21. Integrating other media in a
syndicated platform

22. Operations and intelligence

23. “The Home Office have agreed to fund the MPS in
developing social media intelligence”

24. Harnessing your own crowd
1,065 police officers using twitter officially

25. Thank you.. any questions?