Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department officials led an agency-wide social media training session Tuesday at the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station, highlighting digital messaging in all forms and focusing on building interaction.

The training sessions included work on everything from what makes an engaging post, to the basics of headline writing, to creating an effective “native” message, i.e. one tailor-made for each of the various social media outlets the department uses.

“Our focus really is on what is it that the public wants when we message out to them,” said Commander Mike Parker, who led the training session that invited deputies from across Los Angeles County, “and how do they want it.”

“People want photos, they want videos, so they can see what it is we’re talking about,” he added.

The intent is to deliver some of the basic tenets of journalism messaging, clear headlines that alert the audience of the purpose and message. The importance of building a steady engagement comes in the event of a crisis.

“If there’s a brush fire, in the area, they want to know — they want to know: Is this going to tie up traffic; which homes are threatened; if there’s an evacuation,” he said. “This is about emphasizing from the public and the news media perspective, what should we be emphasizing when we message out.”

To that end, Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station officials have had department-leading success at engagement at the station level, according to most metrics.

Twitter appears to be the most popular avenue for digital communication, with the station communicating to more than 17,500 followers, and the handle @SCVSheriff had more than 300,000 “impressions,” or views, of its content in May.

The SCV Sheriff’s Station page was frequently cited as an example during the 4-hour presentation.

The accounts, including Facebook, Nixle and the burgeoning social media outlet NextDoor, have been extremely useful tools for law enforcement officials in the SCV, said Officer Shirley Miller, spokeswoman for the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station, during a recent episode of “SCV Sheriff Talk,” a show Miller co-hosts on KHTS AM-1220 on the first and third Thursday of every month at 10 a.m.

CHP officials, who teamed up with deputies to find the suspect after a fatal hit-and-run collision last month, credited the use of online messaging outlets such as Nixle as helping law enforcement officials arrest a suspect. (Click here to sign up for Nixle.)

The Sheriff’s Department is working to be part of a change in the perception of law enforcement interaction that’s coming from a number of factors, but, ultimately driven by a way to find the best means of increasing community participation, Parker said.

The four-hour class is one of numerous trainings deputies undergo on social media messaging, to make deputies aware of the ever-changing nature of the rules, etiquette and culture — and expectation — in a digital landscape.

“Part of the cultural shift for law enforcement, really globally, is to show ourselves the public expects us to do that — to know what it is we do, how we spend our time, how we’re helping them, how we’re preventing crime,” Parker said. “And because of this change in public expectation, we have to change.”