York St John University Business Management students have been working with North Yorkshire Police on the force’s Twitter campaign around Christmas safety.

As part of their Digital Business Communication module students were looking at strategies to develop effective internal and external operational communications. They explored a range of tools, models and strategies and Tom Stirling, Digital Communications Manager at North Yorkshire Police, came into a student session to look at North Yorkshire Police’s use of social media.

Mark Dransfield, Senior Lecturer in Business Management, said: “One of the unique things about this module is that I engage with several partners in industry in order to give more meaning and a direct relevance to the theories we look at. This year I have worked with Portakabin and North Yorkshire Police (NYP).

“I chose NYP because they have a great social media profile, are very active and have won awards for their social media activities.”

Students were asked to develop a campaign for a tweet chat, a live chat – typically an hour long – held on Twitter. Participants use a hash tag to engage with and follow the conversation and tweet chats are often moderated with moderators asking up to six questions to prompt engagement. (more…)