What a fire department's page is really for, what to post, what never to post, and how to stop one member carrying the whole thing.
Most fire company pages run the same way. Someone posts photos after a big call, the post does well, and then the page goes quiet until the next one. Meanwhile the carnival needs volunteers, the fund drive letter went out last week, and membership is down again.
Our founder spent a decade in the fire service before starting Social Drive, so this is a subject we care about. Here is the playbook we use.
Decide what the page is for
Incident photos get the reactions, but they are not the job. For most departments, and nearly every volunteer company, the page has three jobs:
- Recruit and keep members.
- Raise money.
- Keep the community safer and informed.
Every post should serve one of the three. If a post serves none of them, it is optional.
Recruitment is a year-round campaign
One “we need volunteers” post a year does not work. People join after they have seen, many times, that the company is active, that people like them belong there, and exactly how to start.
- Spotlight a member every couple of weeks: who they are, what they do outside the station, why they joined.
- Show training night. It answers the unspoken question, “would I know what to do?”
- Say plainly that there are jobs for people who will never ride an engine: fundraising, administration, fire police, auxiliary.
- End every recruitment post the same way, with one simple next step.
Fundraising needs a runway
Promote events on a schedule: a save-the-date a month out, details two weeks out, reminders in the final week, and a thank-you with photos afterwards. The thank-you post is the one that sells next year’s tickets.
Public education, on autopilot
Smoke alarm checks when the clocks change. Burn ban notices. Space heater and chimney reminders in the fall. Water safety in the summer. These are the same every year, so write them once, schedule them to repeat, and let them run. That alone keeps a page active between everything else.
What never goes on the page
Set these rules before you need them, and put one officer in charge of approving posts.
- Nothing that identifies a patient, including faces, vehicles with readable plates, and house numbers.
- Nothing from a scene with a fatality or serious injury until the family has been notified and leadership has approved it — and often not even then.
- Nothing from an active incident that could draw people to it or get in the way of operations.
- No opinions. The page speaks for the department, not for the member holding the phone.
- No photos taken when a member should have been working.
When in doubt, wait a day. Nobody has ever regretted posting incident photos tomorrow instead of tonight.
Stop relying on one person
The usual setup is one dedicated member running the page from a personal phone. When that member gets busy or moves on, the page stops.
Fix it with a little structure: more than one administrator on the page, a shared folder where anyone can drop photos, a short written policy, and an approval step so the chief or PIO sees posts before they go out. That last piece is what our approval portal was built for — one tap to approve from a phone.
A simple weekly rhythm
- One people post: a member, a training night, a station moment.
- One safety post from the evergreen library.
- One community post: an event, a fundraiser, a thank-you.
- Incident posts as they happen, after approval.
That is three planned posts a week, and most of them can be scheduled a month in advance.
If your company wants help setting this up, or wants it run for you, see how we work with fire, EMS and public safety teams.