The Police Officers Association of Michigan (POAM) is a full-service labor organization formed to provide every labor-related service from negotiations, grievance processing, legal and legislative representation to Act 312 arbitrations.
Since 2008, POAM has entrusted TM with their online presence and it’s been quite the ride!
Our Challenge
Through an entire decade of working together as partners, POAM has entrusted TM with more than just their social media presence:
- Website Design & Development
- Website Maintenance
- Website Redesign & Rebuild
- Marketing Collateral
- Podcast Production
- Email Marketing &
- Blog Writing
We've worked together through thick and thin, gone on trips to Police Week in Washington DC, and attended the POAM Annual Convention since we can remember. It's safe to say that as the POAM and TM business relationship has evolved over the years, so has POAM's social media presence.
Starting anything from scratch is never easy, so when POAM first joined Facebook and Twitter in December of 2009, there was a long road ahead. TM had already rebuilt the original POAM website and created their first email newsletters, so social media management was the logical next step.
When you visit POAM's Facebook and Twitter pages today, you'll see great engagement from union members who care deeply about the issues that POAM works on every single day. From Michigan legislation threatening to take away public employee pensions and healthcare to coming together to help a fallen comrade or a friend who has been diagnosed with cancer, the POAM social media presence is nothing short of a community.
How did this happen? What's our secret sauce? We'll tell you...
- Create a branded Facebook page
- Create a branded Twitter account
- Turn each platform from a zero into a hero!
- Capitalizing on our "unicorns"
- Making the most of an election year
- Posting original content consistently
- Twitter contests
- Posting relevant events and causes
- Hard work and plenty of patience
- Sticking to strict brand guidelines both in design and messaging
- Paying attention to societal and professional trends
Our Solution
We've grown POAM's Facebook following to over 12,000 likes & grown their Twitter following to over 3,000 followers.
How TM grew POAM's social media accounts to 12k+ and 3k+ followers
Okay, we've held you off long enough. It's time for us to spill our secret. We grew POAM's social media following from ground zero to 12k+ and 3k followers through...
- Posting original content consistently
- Paying attention to societal and professional trends
- Creating relevant content, sometimes on a daily basis
- Sticking to strict brand guidelines both in design and messaging
- Being involved in the policing community
- Posting relevant events and causes
- Very carefully selecting which posts or events to boost
- Hard work and plenty of patience
That's it. That's our secret sauce. It truly has been a consistent effort brought on by years of hard work, content creation, and identifying opportunities that we could capitalize on. The last year and a half, POAM's social media presence has grown dramatically, as well. This is a result of a few things:
- Content Creation: Through consistent blog posts, union updates, current events and job postings, POAM does an excellent job of creating relevant content through blog posts and newsletters. This information keeps members informed and engaged, and gives us lots of material to work with on social.
- Capitalizing on an Election Year: The POAM Facebook saw a massive spike in followers when we boosted a video of (soon to be) President Donald Trump accepting POAM's endorsement for President. The video received more than 1.2million views and POAM's Facebook page jumped by over 3k followers in one weekend. In June of 2016, POAM had 7,092 Facebook followers. Today, we have we have 12,112.
- Twitter Contests: Every year POAM holds an Annual Convention in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In an effort to jumpstart our Twitter engagement and gain more followers, we hosted a contest during the Annual Convention in 2017. The results were amazing! Our engagement is now better than it has ever been and we have over 3k followers on Twitter.
- Technology: As technology continues to develop and the "older" generations become more tech-saavy, social media has caught on throughout all age groups. This has benefitted POAM.
- Facebook Demographic: 58% male with 24% of that number ages 35-55 | 42% female with 23% of that number ages 55+
- Twitter Demographic: 59% male | 41% female
- POAM Website Demographic (data from 2008-2018): 69.3% male | 30.6 female, with 25% of all website visitors aged 45-55 & 23% of all website visitors aged 35-44
- Societal Tensions: 2016 and 2017 were volatile years for the policing profession and we saw some intense highs and lows. We continued to share relevant content and events as they happened, always making sure that what we were sharing was tasteful and family-friendly.
As you can see, there hasn't been one silver bullet that's given us overnight fame and fortune. We've had a few posts over the years go viral, we've promoted a few unicorns (posts that do extraordinarily well organically), and overall we've stayed consistent in our posting and content creation.
POAM's membership and social following is also to thank for our overall success. They are extremely engaged and passionate individuals who care about what we post. Without them, there would be no social media presence and really, no POAM!
It has been a great 10 year ride, so far. Here's to the next 10 years of our professional partnership!
Legislative Updates
The years 2016 and 2017 were full of legislative changes and threats to POAM union members pensions and health care benefits. We created and shared content relating to bill updates and proposals, legislator coffee hours, and even rally dates, times, and locations.
Posting Diverse Content
Who doesn't love an adorable police dog? We know we do! In order to break up the monotony of serious posts and events throughout the year, we frequently switch things up on the POAM page and post funny content, as well as pictures of cute K9 units, and inspiring stories. This diversity of posts keeps followers engaged by lifting their spirits and encouraging them to share their own photos or inspiring stories.
Slow & Steady Wins the Race
Through consistent posting, content creation, post diversity, an engaging crowd, and a great professional partnership we've been able to grow POAM's social media presence from zero into a hero. Each one of these different strategies acts as its own piece of the puzzle and when each come together, we're able to enjoy the success we do today.
