The Bengaluru city police, known to bring its A-game on Twitter with its memes, puns, pop-culture references and witty one-liners, has 1 million followers on Twitter now.
“Here’s to one long standing partnership. One million & counting! A million thanks to each of you who make addressing public grievances through SM a possibility and help us with our vision of citizen-friendly policing,” the polices official handle tweeted on Monday.
Here’s to one long standing partnership. One million & counting! A million thanks to each of you who make addressing public grievances through SM a possibility and help us with our vision of citizen-friendly policing. You are our driving force. Let’s keep this going. #BCP1Million pic.twitter.com/tuAq7oSUfS
— BengaluruCityPolice (@BlrCityPolice) December 16, 2017
We are one Million strong now! Be a part of our celebration. Send us your suggestions, feedback or appreciation through a selfie video or a tweet. The best tweets/videos with the hashtag #BCP1Million will be RT and rewarded. https://t.co/ukfQ5lFUQx
— BengaluruCityPolice (@BlrCityPolice) December 16, 2017
Right now, among metros in India, the Bengaluru police stands second in terms of Twitter following – the Mumbai police has 4 million followers.
The Kolkata police is third with 5.8 lakh followers, and the Delhi police has 1.6 lakh followers. The Chennai police’s handle is followed by 1.3 lakh people, while the Hyderabad police has only 61,000 Twitter followers.
By garnering so many followers, the Bengaluru police has also beaten the New York Police Department (5.01 lakh) and the City of London police (1.04 lakh).
Back in May, TNM had spoken to Crowd Kart, the marketing startup that handles the Bengaluru police’s social media communication. Crowd Kart’s analysis showed that the city police’s social media accounts, on both Facebook and Twitter, was mostly followed by people between the ages of 18 and 30.
That was when the startup decided to use pop-culture references to really speak to this audience. The result was that the police has been able to drive home its messages on safe driving, wearing helmets and drug abuse through quirky puns and memes.
However, in recent times, the handle has chosen to follow a more conservative approach. In September, they said that they wanted to focus more on generating Kannada content and talk about more issues, which is why they were reworking their social media approach now.