Saskatoon agencies jumping on social media

Watch the video above: police, fire and the city are turning more to social media to keep the public up-to-date

SASKATOON – Social media has become more than a place to find long lost friends or follow your favorite celebrities; it’s another tool emergency services and community agencies are using to pump out information and interact with residents.

Saskatoon Police Service started using social media channels in 2010 but it wasn’t until Kelsie Fraser was hired almost two years ago as the social media relations specialist that the tool was used more interactively.

“You see something, an accident you want to know how somebody’s doing, we can’t release too many details, we can certainly give you something or at least respond and I think people really respect that,” said Fraser.

Fraser has been in communication with other services around the country and in North America to see how they use social media. She’s also come up with unique ways to show the different areas of the service and what they do.

Police saw a need for social media to improve its service, the city and Saskatoon Fire and Protective Services are now following suit.

In 2011 about 20 per cent of Saskatonians mentioned in an annual civic survey they would like to use social media to find out city information. That number increased to 26 per cent in 2013.

“We’ve recently allocated more resources this year to social media so that we become more of a full time presence on social media and we see growing that even further,” said Catherine Gryba, the city’s corporate performance general manager.

Saskatoon Fire and Protective Services doesn’t have a dedicated person for it yet but has been on social media for the last four months. It’s a tool Assistant Chief Bill Coffin says has been limiting so far.

“We’re trying to find out what are people looking for when we’re doing this, obviously there’s some details we can’t give out and we don’t want everybody rushing to a house fire at such and such an address while our crews are trying to get to the scene, so it’s a real testing out period right now,” Coffin said.

Like technology, social media is always changing and it’s users say they’ll have to evolve along with it.

The more community agencies using social media, the easier it is for questions and concerns to be directed to the right source.