How To Use Social Media In Emergency Response Management
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The document outlines a training session on effectively using social media in emergency management, focusing on platforms like Twitter and Facebook to enhance communication during crises. It highlights essential strategies for engaging the public, leveraging real-time updates, and managing online discourse while providing case studies on the successful use of social media in previous emergencies. Key insights include the importance of building a social media presence before a crisis and using it for community engagement and information dissemination.
How To Use Social Media In Emergency Response Management
- 1. The ‘How To’ of Social Media in Emergency Management Response Monday 27th February 9.00am – 12.30pm with Natalie Sisson
- 2. What We Will Cover Today The aim is to provide you with the know-how necessary when the next crisis occurs. • Getting to grips with Twitter and Facebook • What should you be using these tools for? • How do you influence chatter? • What are the tools for emergency management to understand “chatter” • 8 core areas of SMER Planning
- 3. Who is Natalie Sisson? Adventurer and Suitcase Entrepreneur • Social media evangelist for 6+ years and integrated marketer 10+ yrs with international experience • CoFounder of of company that built FundRazr Facebook app • Started my blog in late 2009 and have since gone on to build an online platform of digital products and programs • Author of `The Entrepreneur’s Social Media Workout’ and `BYOB Build Your Online Business’ guide • Featured and contributor to Forbes, Mashable, Huffington Post, Social Media Today, Problogger, Wall Street Journal and more
- 4. How I’ve used Social Media? Social Media sites and my blog have allowed me to: • Gain close to 10,000 visitors per month to my blog • Get visits from almost 600 sources and 150 countries • Build a community of over 3,330 Facebook Fans • Gain almost 16,000 followers on Twitter • Google search accounts for 25% of all website traffic • Twitter accounts for 12% of all visits and 52% are new • >5% of all traffic is RSS subscribers to my blog, 30% new visits. • Facebook accounts for >5% of all website traffic and 55% of new visits.
- 5. What is Social Media? According to Wikipedia sources: “Social media uses internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers.”
- 6. What is Social Media? According to Natalie Sisson: “Social Media is media with a social component that provides a two-way street for communicating.” Social media is produced through self-publishing and user-generated content vs. the professional media outlets such as television, radio, newspapers and magazines used in traditional media.
- 7. Overall Benefits Of Social Media It enables you to: • Demonstrate thought leadership • Generate new leads for your events/ campaigns • Provide real-time support to the public • Drive people to your content and information • Generate and increase word-of-mouth buzz • Increase your online visibility and credibility
- 8. What’s Stopping You Using SM • Failure to appreciate how valuable social media is and its rapidly growing user base. • Lack of experience and actual engagement with SM • Lack of appreciation that your reputation and online identity is at risk of being used and taken by others • Perception that social networks are superficial, inaccurate and unreliable
- 9. What’s Stopping You Using SM • Poor understanding of how social networks operate, and what to monitor. • Time to develop credibility and trust on social media sites before having to use them for crisis or emergency management • Time to train staff to ensure they can effectively engage and manage SM. • Not convinced on using social networking as part of your 'mainstream' approach to any warning and informing strategy.
- 10. Top Social Media Tools Reaching 500M Over 200M blogs Over 800M users
- 11. Twitter
- 12. Getting to grips with Twitter Twitter is a micro-blogging service that allows you to send updates of 140 characters or less
- 13. Getting To Grips With Twitter Twitter users are part of a lively 24/7 real-time conversation. For organisations they: • Share their experiences, both good and not so good • Provide feedback on recent events or launches • Discuss product ideas or campaigns • Learn about exclusive offers or deals • Get customer service and feedback • Share breaking news and important events
- 14. Twitter Facts • There are approximately 100 million active users worldwide supporting 17 languages. • 50,000 New Zealanders use Twitter (20K active) • A billion Tweets are sent out every week, compared to 50 million in 2010. • An average of 460K new accounts created daily! • Over the last year mobile use of Twitter has increased 182%
- 15. Why Twitter? • It’s an incredibly powerful search engine that gives you the pulse of what’s going on in the world in real-time. • There are more women than men on Twitter (55%), earning up to $60K pa and aged 25-54. • Every day, millions of people use Twitter as their immediate source of news and updates • This is an audience you need to be in front of
- 16. Benefits of Twitter Marketing: • Give updates on the work your organisation is doing and any new services • Showcase the latest company news via regular updates on blog posts, newsletters or videos Engagement: • Be personable, friendly and build relationships with the public by asking questions and sharing your news
- 17. Benefits of Twitter Engagement: • Quickly share information with people interested in your efforts Customer Service: • Gather real-time market intelligence and feedback • Answer queries, resolve problems or state facts • Rapidly update the public on any issues or improvements in real-time
- 18. How does Twitter work • Twitter lets you write and read messages of up to 140 characters – because less is more • Tweets (messages) are public and you decide which `Tweeters’ you want to receive messages from • You can access Twitter via their website, your phone or manage your accounts from a plethora of applications
- 19. Before you dive in • Spend time listening and observing • Use search.twitter.com to search a topic of interest • Try searching for your organisation and a few key topics • ‘Listening’ to tweets will give you a sense of how you want to engage on Twitter • Observe language used, how conversations flow and information is shared • Take a look at how other related orgs are using it
- 20. How does Twitter work for Emergency Response Management?
- 21. Case Study on East Coast Earthquake
- 22. The Background of August 2011 • A history making earthquake on the East Coast rattled people and property from North Carolina to Boston. • The aftermath of this rare quake showcased the power of social media during an emergency. • In mass, citizens took to Twitter to share their earthquake experiences or got in touch with loved ones and friends.
- 23. Twitter Shakes It Up - August 2011 • The explosive effect on Twitter was obvious
- 24. Twitter Shakes It Up - August 2011 • Spreading rapidly via social networking sites, phrases + hashtags like "5.8" and #earthquake dominated Twitter's trending topics list.
- 25. What Does This Mean For You? “Twitter’s use during the earthquake confirmed that it’s a great situational awareness tool to get a sense of what’s happening within the community. Emergency Managers should take the use of Twitter seriously because it is a fast way to share info with large networks of people.” Cheryl Bledsoe (@CherylBle on Twitter) Division Manager, Emergency Management, Vancouver, WA Source: Energy Communications Network
- 26. What should you use Twitter for? • Posting timely updates of breaking news • Responding to people’s questions and queries • Linking to specific media articles, photos, videos that you want the public to see • Linking to your latest blog post with your key updates and information • Interacting with key media in real-time • Monitoring hashtags and trends to respond to
- 27. Breakout Exercise • If you’re on Twitter take a look at the bio and see whether it’s doing its job • If it’s not write down 140 characters that would best describe the org’s value and role • Identify 5-8 hashtags you could regularly use to relate to your org and emergency response • Take a look at your last 24 hours worth of tweets and report back on what’s being done well and what’s missing
- 28. Christchurch Earthquake Effect February 2011 Image source: NHNE Pulse
- 29. Christchurch Earthquake Effect • Twitter showed its value as the fastest news platform • Information spread spontaneously through the Twitersphere along with images and video • The hashtag most used was #eqnz following on from the September earthquake devastation • #chch was also employed to aggregate quake tweets.
- 30. What were the effects? • Twitter coverage of the earthquake spiked within the first hours of the event, at nearly 7500 tweets/hour • This is the phase when locals and more distant onlookers are likely to be tweeting and retweeting the first reports in order to get the news out • Government and emergency authorities as well as mainstream media were central sources of information on Twitter. Source: Mapping Online Publics
- 31. What were the effects? • Compared to Queensland, where @QPSmedia led, here it was the NZ Herald, with more than 2X as many @replies • New Zealand government’s official Canterbury Earthquake Twitter account was a major source of info • @CEQgovtnz was more important as a source for the long-term relief and recovery effort, therefore, than for the immediate response to the disaster. • Christchurch City Council (@ChristchurchCC), @NZStuff, @TVNZNews, @NZcivildefe nce, and the @NZRedCross were all important in relaying information too Source: Mapping Online Publics
- 32. What were the effects? Tweets like this were widely RT: RT @TelecomNZ: Please keep ALL calls nationwide to minimum to save capacity for emergency services. Txt instead if you can #eqnz RT @georgedarroch: Incredible image of Christchurch, from the hills, moments after quake http://i.imgur.com/0vZbD.jpg #eqnz RT @anthonybaxter: Google has people finder up for #eqnz #christchurch http://bit.ly/i0aAle please RT widely Source: Mapping Online Publics
- 33. Facebook
- 34. Getting To Grips With Facebook • Facebook is huge, with over 800 million users now it’s the place to be, both personally and for brands and organisations. • There are over 3 million active Pages on Facebook and half of these are local businesses. • According to Facebook the average user `likes’ and joins 4 pages every month. That means exposure for you, your cause, your organization and your business.
- 35. Facebook Facts • 2 million New Zealand users and 37.8% are over 35 • The average user has 120 friends in their network • 100+ million users access Facebook from a mobile • A great platform to build your relationships • Increases your visibility as people share your content • Fan pages are a low cost marketing method • Acts as a real time search engine
- 36. Benefits of Facebook • For a start it’s FREE. With real-time feeds it’s also one of the largest search engines and a fantastic place to monitor the latest trends from real people – your potential customers. • A Facebook page acts as a free mini website. You can share information, links, photos, videos, poll your fans, start discussions, feed your blog and twitter posts to it and more. No technical knowledge required.
- 37. How Does A Facebook Page Work? • Pages are for organisations, brands & public figures • By creating one you essentially have a free mini website that helps further establish your work • Pages allow you to engage and interact with a huge number of Facebook users • People can click on 'Like’ and become connected to your page • They will then see your live news feed in their home page profile and receive updates (message) from you
- 38. Before You Dive In • Build your own personal profile and see how Facebook works from a user’s perspective • Search current and related pages by category and see how similar organisations are using it to interact with fans • Observe what tabs they are using and how they are making use of applications • Notice what they’re posting and how often and the activity and interactions with their fans
- 39. What should you use Facebook for? • Posting daily updates with interesting facts, breaking news or valuable information • Engage and poll your fans using Facebook Questions • Add a discussions tab to get feedback on key topics • Post your blog posts and other related ones • Link to your videos, news articles and photos • Drive people to your website or other social media sites
- 40. Getting To Grips With Facebook
- 41. Breakout Exercise • Identify 5-10 pages you know of right now that you refer to regularly on Facebook • Note down 3 reasons why you liked them in the first place (landing page, design, info) • If you have a Facebook page for your organisation note down 3 reasons why people should visit the page • Look to see if this is obvious!
- 42. The Queensland Police Service (QPS) Case STudy
- 43. The Case Study • The Queensland Police Service (QPS) Media and Public Affairs Branch began a trial use of social media accounts Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in May 2010. Source: Disaster Management and Social Media
- 44. The Aim Of The Campaign • Claim their social media presence • Engage in a two-way conversation between the QPS and the public • Develop an online community of followers before a disaster occurred, in light of international examples such as the Mumbai terrorist attacks where social media dominated mainstream media coverage but authorities were not able to contribute or manage it with their own social media presence
- 45. The Aim Of The Campaign • Claim their social media presence • Engage in a two-way conversation between the QPS and the public • Develop an online community of followers before a disaster occurred, so they could contribute and manage a crisis with their own social media presence
- 46. The Foundation • In November 2010 the QPS had 8000 “likes” on Facebook and 1000 followers on Twitter. • Category 1 Tropical Cyclone Tasha brought significant floods to Queensland on Christmas Day • During this time, Police Media used its established processes to deliver public safety information about the extreme weather events to the media and public. • They issued regular media releases to the mainstream media and posted to the website • It was part of the general process to add these media releases to the QPS Facebook page and on Twitter
- 47. The Crisis • On January 10, 2011 a flash flood described as an instant inland tsunami struck Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley. • Just days later, significant floods hit Ipswich and Brisbane. By the second week of January, 200,000 Queenslanders were flood affected and three- quarters of the state was disaster declared.
- 48. The Social Media Impact • In the 24-hour period following the flash floods, the number of “likes” on the QPS Facebook page increased from approximately 17,000 to 100,000. • This same day the QPS Facebook page generated 39 million post impressions • This equated to 450 post views per second over the peak 24-hour period.
- 49. Growth of Facebook Likes
- 50. The Social Media Policy • There was no directive or policy decision to escalate the use of social media during the disasters. • The team instinctively gravitated towards the social media channels because they were clearly the fastest and best way to distribute important public safety information. • Within days, not only were the media relying on the QPS social media accounts as their key source of information but they were actively referring the public to our social media channels.
- 51. How Did They Use It? • Acting as a centralised clearing house for disaster- related information through Facebook and Twitter as soon as it became available • Live video streaming of the Brisbane-based disaster- related media conferences on the QPS Facebook page with the video later posted on QPS YouTube • Live Tweeting key points as they were made in briefings and in these media conferences uploading dot point summaries of the media conferences to the QPS Facebook page shortly after their conclusion
- 53. How Did They Use It? • Uploading at least daily audio updates to Facebook from local disaster coordinators around the stat • “Mythbusting‟ of misinformation and rumours in the media and community • Tweeting most QPS Facebook posts generally using the #qldfloods, #TCYasi or #mythbusters hashtags • Providing 24/7 moderation of the QPS social media accounts, responding to inquiries from the public
- 55. Social Media Benefits In A Disaster • It is immediate and allowed Police Media to proactively push out large volumes of information to large numbers of people ensuring there was no vacuum of official information • The QPS Facebook page became the trusted, authoritative hub for the dissemination of information and facts for the community and media • Large amounts of specific information could be directed straight to communities without them having to rely on mainstream media coverage to access relevant details
- 56. Social Media Benefits In A Disaster • The QPS quickly killed rumour and misreporting before it became “fact” in the mainstream media, mainly through the #mythbuster hashtag • It provides access to immediate feedback and information from the public at scenes • The mainstream media embraced it and found it to be a valuable and immediate source of information • It provided situational awareness for QPS members in disaster-affected locations who otherwise had no means of communications.
- 57. Lessons Learned From This • If you are not doing social media, do it now. If you wait until its needed, it will be too late • Rethink clearance processes. Trust your staff to release information • Add a social media expert to your team but still ensure shared responsibility for uploading information and moderating social media sites • Do not treat social media as something special or separate from normal work processes. It should be integrated as standard practice
- 58. Lessons Learned From This • Do not use social media solely to push out information. • Use it to receive feedback and involve your online community • Established social media sites are free and robust which can handle volumes of traffic much larger than agency websites • Ensure that information is accessible. A PDF is not the most accessible way to deliver information. • Machine-readable information such as geocoding allows the information to be more accessible and usable for others.
- 59. How Do You Influence Chatter
- 60. How do you influence chatter? • Let the public have a voice – don’t sensor their opinions or comments • Never delete posts unless they are completely corrupt or defamatory • Allow your community to speak up on your behalf and fight your battles • Incorporate their updates and comments into yours to make them feel involved and valued • Monitor and respond to questions quickly so as to put out any potential fires
- 61. Use These Tactics • Allow for 2-way conversation with the public and your supporters so that you can listen to their concerns, and they in turn will listen to yours during times of need. • Make sense of the noise by turning the considerable and often overwhelming data into a form of information that can actually help those in need by directing it to the right people • Lead the public education in what they can expect from your use of social media efforts so that they know how quickly people can be helped in critical times (e.g real-time online is not real-time for response efforts
- 62. Example of Chatter In Action • Two weeks ago KUSA (Denver, CO's NBC affiliate) reporter was covering a story about a dog who was saved from a half frozen over reservoir. • They brought the dog, it's owner and the firefighter in for a 4 minute story on air. • At the end of the story, the reporter bent down and was severely bitten by the dog live on air regional TV. • She was bitten so bad she had to go into immediate reconstructive plastic surgery and can’t speak.
- 64. Give The Public A Voice Source: KUSA 9 News Facebook page and Kade Dworkin
- 65. Give The Public A Voice Source: KUSA 9 News Facebook page
- 66. Update The Public Regularly Source: KUSA 9 News Facebook page update
- 67. Tools to measure + analyse chatter Search Twitter • A great tool for tracking keyword mentions of your organisation, campaign etc • An easy way to identify trending stories or monitor hashtags being used around events • A reference tool to monitor other relevant topics, issues or orgs
- 68. Tools to measure + analyse chatter
- 71. Tools to measure + analyse chatter Hootsuite – Social Media Dashboard • Track keyword mentions, twitter retweets, DMS and shares • Monitor Google Analytics and owl.ly URLs • Manage multiple social media profiles • Schedule out updates for best impact • Follow and create Twitter lists
- 72. Tools to measure + analyse chatter
- 73. Hootsuite #emergency #crisis mgmt
- 75. Tools to measure + analyse chatter Nutshell Social Media Monitoring Tool • A tool from Constant Contact Email Management • Allows you to make sense, track and monitor your social networks and respond from within the email • You can choose what you want to see more of, which pages, tweets, LinkedIn groups • Set preferences for frequency for receiving updates
- 76. Nutshell Mail
- 77. Tools to measure + analyse chatter Google Alerts • Free tool from Google to monitor the web for content - your organisation, your name, keywords • You can also monitor trends, competitors, people • You can set it up for as-it-happens, daily or weekly • You can track when and where people are talking about you or an issue • You can then go to where they are and interact
- 78. Google Alerts Monitoring Tool
- 79. 8 core areas of SMER Planning Source: Kade Dworkin
- 80. 8 core areas of SMER Planning 1. Executive Issues (including Board Members) • Criminal • Non-criminal • Health 2. Employee Issues • Employment frustrations • Injury on the job 3. Service Failure
- 81. 8 core areas of SMER Planning 4. Product Failure • Single Product Failure • Product Recall • Compromised Facility 5. Natural Disaster • Burglary • Fire/Explosion • Accidents (falling ceiling tiles, car runs into building etc)
- 82. 8 core areas of SMER Planning 6. Compromised Data • Personally Identifiable Information (social security number, credit card number, health records, etc.) • Non-Personally Identifiable Information 7. Company Decisions • Sponsorships • Downsizing/Off-Shoring
- 83. 8 core areas of SMER Planning 8. Other • Suicide Threat posted to or directed at brand's social media platform • Illegal Workers • Racial Comments • Environmental Activists
- 84. Further Resources • Useful case studies highlighting the successful use of Social Media that have been instrumental in expediting effective crisis communication and information sharing as part of planning for, responding to and recovering from emergencies and disaster situations are regularly discussed on Twitter chats using #SMEMchat or #SMEM Source: Thanks to Caroline Milligan @mm4marketing
- 85. Further Resources • Social Media Crisis Management Process • Customer Service is Social – Red Cross • Technical Communities Redefine Disaster Volunteerism – Emergency Management
- 86. Questions and next steps? • You can reach me on Twitter on @nataliesisson or @suitcasepreneur • Facebook.com/womanzworld • Suitcaseentrepreneur.com is my blog • I offer my Sculpted Social Media 6 week online program to master these tools for business • I also offer Social Media Coaching and Consulting to individuals and organisations • Get in touch via email here: suitcaseentrepreneur.com/contact