Crisis Communication | Professional Blog Service

New ebook Available: Social Media and Crisis Communication for Government Communicators

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

I just published a new ebook, Social Media and Crisis Communication for Government Communicators. I wrote it after giving a presentation to a public health conference, and realizing that many of them did not even have access to the different social media tools.

So I based it on several blog posts I’ve posted here, as well as some new information. The ebook is free, and there is both a PDF version and a Kindle version available.

About the Author: Erik Deckers
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.

Tags: Crisis Communication, ebook, government agencies, Social Media
Posted in Blogging, Communication, Crisis Communication, Public Health, Public Relations, Social Media, Tools, Twitter | View Comments

Four Ways Government Agencies Should Use Social Media

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

While I’m a frequent speaker about whether government agencies should use social media for crisis communication (they should), I was recently asked whether agencies should use it for non-crisis communication.

Of course they should.

Having worked in public affairs (that’s government talk for “public relations”), I have seen the frustration many agencies experience in trying to get their messages out to the mainstream media, or media representing their particular niche.

The Indiana Board of Animal Health and the Indiana Department of Agriculture have great relationships with the different farm newspapers and radio stations in the state. The Indiana Arts Commission has a tie-in with many of the arts media in the state. And the Indiana Office of Tourism Development’s Visit Indiana initiative works closely with the travel media in the region. (Full disclosure: I am a blogger for Visit Indiana.)

And many of these agencies are using social media, but they’re using it as a broadcast tool, rather than a communication tool. However, I have to applaud these agencies for using social media at all. There are still several agencies within my own state government that are relying on fax machines and emails to send press releases to mainstream media. I’m not saying they should completely drop that method of communication, but rather, they should add social media to their efforts. Part of the problem is the decision makers within these agencies who don’t understand social media, and therefore assume the public doesn’t use it. The other part of the problem is the IT departments who are worried that allowing people to access YouTube or Twitter will open a huge Pandora’s box of ills. (But will never switch to Firefox to combat this problem…)

So if an agency is on the fence about using social media or not, here are five ways they could use it for great benefit.

Use a blog to promote different programs, news releases, announce grants, release official statements, post job openings, and solicit feedback from the public. A blog is the easiest way to communicate with the public, because it’s created specifically for that purpose. No more asking your IT department or web developer to add a new page on your website. Just click the New Post (or New Page button, if you’re lucky enough to have WordPress on your server), add in the appropriate text and photos, click Submit, and voila! you created a new post/page. No programming, no delays, no excuses of “I’ve been backed up with a bunch of requests from other departments.
Create videos to educate the public about your different programs. Government agencies are notorious for starting programs, but often have no way to promote them. With a $200 Flip camera, or even someone’s point-and-shoot digital camera, you can create basic videos that can be uploaded to YouTube, Vimeo, and Viddler. You can even embed your videos in new blog posts.
Use social media as part of your media relation efforts. Post videos of press conferences to YouTube and your blog. Post press releases to the blog, and then announce them on Twitter. Encourage citizen journalists and bloggers to use your content in their own blogs, which will help promote your media efforts.
Maintain a network of professionals or citizens who are associated with your agency. If you’re in public health, maintain a Twitter account of public health professionals. Keep in contact with those professionals and follow what they’re doing. If you’re in agriculture, create a social network of farmers, animal producers, extension agents, and associated vendors. Let them provide support, answer questions, and create new opportunities with each other. If you’re in tourism, create a blog for potential visitors to learn about what your area has to offer.

What are some ways you think government agencies could use social media? How have you seen it done, or how has your agency used it? Leave a comment in the comments section and let us know what you think.

Tags: Crisis Communication, government agencies, Social Media
Posted in Blogging, Communication, Crisis Communication, Facebook, Public Health, Public Relations, Social Media, Social Networks, Tools | View Comments

The Growing Need for Bloggers as Citizen Journalists

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

Two bits of interesting news this past month for bloggers who consider themselves journalists:

The Pew Internet & American Life Project said that 61% of Americans get at least some of their news from an online source.
A PrWeek/PR Newswire study says 52% of bloggers consider themselves citizen journalists.

I’ve been preaching for a while that bloggers are citizen journalists. And now we get confirmation that 52% of us believe it to be true, and that 61% of Americans are possible readers. Plus — and this is a big one — the last-reported numbers from Technorati are that 77% of all Internet users read a blog of some kind.

The time is ripe for bloggers to begin thinking of themselves as citizen journalists. Social media is making it so much easier for us to not only see the news, but report it as well.

Social media is breaking the news before the news.

We’ve seen several instances where social media broke news stories before mainstream media picked it up. The three most notable examples have been:

The first images coming out of Haiti were on Twitter, because mainstream media couldn’t get on the ground. People with cell phones and spotty wifi were sending photos to Twitter and Facebook, and we were spreading them around like wildfire. My family was particularly interested in one set of missionaries in Port-au-Print, and @TroyLiveSay was providing information that we weren’t getting anywhere else.
Moments after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, news was spreading on Twitter before the shots had even stopped.
When the US Airways flight landed in the Hudson last year, news had broken on Twitter 15 minutes before the first news reports hit the airwaves.

While none of these examples show a failing of the mainstream media, they show that in many cases, people reporting on incidents that happened nearby ended up being first just because of the widespread nature of the tools.

I’ve been playing with Posterous as a possible blogging platform for rapid response and crisis communication professionals. You email your blogs to your email address (it’s actually just post@posterous.com), your subject line is your headline, you attach any photos, type and format your content in your text box, and voila! You’ve got a blog post sent from your smart phone.

And I totally geeked out a few days ago, when Chris Brogan showed how you can take photos on your digital camera, and immediately have them uploaded to your favorite file sharing service, with something the size of a quarter and something else the size of a pocket calculator.

My advice? If you have even the slightest inclination of being a citizen journalist, start taking your blogging seriously. You don’t have to change the scope of your blog, your writing style, or even the quality of your writing.

Just do it with intentionality. As hard as it may be to explain (this is the 6th time I’ve written this paragraph), report your news for posterity. Do it with a sense of responsibility and gravitas. When you see something happening, take photos and upload them to Flickr or Picasa. Send tweets. Email news to your blog. Be a source of information to your community. Don’t just repeat what you’ve seen, report on it.

Even something as simple as reporting a small incident you just witnessed can sometimes lead to national or even international stories, or you may be the lone voice that speaks for someone who can’t do it themselves.

While I’m not suggesting we all change our focus and become word slingers, I am suggesting we adopt the mindset that we’re just as good as the professionals who, I’m sorry to say, just aren’t as quick as the “ordinary citizens” armed with nothing more than cell phones and a serious case of Twitter-thumbs.

Tags: blogging, Chris Brogan, citizen journalism, Crisis Communication, earthquake, Haiti, journalism, News, photo sharing
Posted in Communication, Crisis Communication, Social Media, Tools, Traditional Media, Twitter, Writing | View Comments

Image is Everything, Twitter is Forever

Monday, February 8th, 2010

It was a disappointing night in Indianapolis tonight (I’m writing this at 12:00 on a Sunday night/Monday morning). Our beloved Indianapolis Colts lost the Super Bowl to the New Orleans Saints, 31 – 17.

I followed the game with many of my Twitter friends, and we had a good time chatting with each other, and some of our Twitter buddies down in New Orleans. When the game was over, we congratulated the Saints fans, and wished them well. Everyone but one person. They tweeted what was one of the most egregious tweets I had seen in, maybe, ever.

Fine New Orleans. Go back to your stupid flooded shit hole of a city with the trophy.

Our collective jaws dropped. People were offended, and the whole thing created quite a firestorm here in Indianapolis among several PR and social media pros. It even got some serious attention in New Orleans.

This hateful tweet was made by a supposed PR professional — we’ll call them X — who didn’t seem to understand that when you’re in PR, you’re on all the time. If you make public statements, you and your organization will be judged by those statements. And when you make a joke about a city that lost over 1800 people to the country’s most devastating hurricane in a century, that reflects poorly on you, on your company, and even on your city.

We’re sorry, New Orleans

First of all, let me apologize on behalf of the entire city. This one person does not speak for the rest of us. For the most part, we were gracious in our loss, and I saw a lot of tweets congratulating the city of New Orleans for an awesome win. You fans have shown real class and pride over the years. You love your team as much as we love ours. And this was a great game. I’m very sorry one person said something that awful. We don’t think like that, act like that, or talk like that in Indiana. This person’s tweet is not indicative of the entire state’s way of thinking.

A Quick Aside

I have since learned, after I wrote the first draft, that X received death threats for their offending tweet. Totally uncool, people. While what this person did was hateful, death threats will land you in all kinds of trouble with the law. Do not make death threats, or violent threats of any kind. Be better than X, rise above it. Let’s keep our heads.

Back to the Story

So someone publicly tweeted X’s boss “Hey, congratulations on the AWESOME hire.” A follow-up tweet called on X’s boss to fire them. X deleted their tweet, and protected their account (because of the death threats), but the damage had been done. Screen shots were already circulating, and many people were discussing it online.

While I’m not calling for anyone’s resignation, I do think the entire incident was handled poorly this evening. As a PR practitioner, I would hope X would recognize that:

there is no compartmentalizing of personal life and private life when you’re on Twitter and social media.
Google lasts forever. Just because you delete something doesn’t mean it’s gone. The screen shots are out there forever.
Anyone with even a basic understanding of crisis communication should understand that you need to react to the situation with remorse and speed, not hiding evidence or closing down. One would hope that a PR professional would understand this.

This is the kind of PR that no public figure — corporate, government, or otherwise — would ever want. And yet, it’s the kind that someone, who truly should have known better, got.

Think beyond the present moment

Whenever I give social media talks, especially to college students, I always say the same thing: If you don’t want skeletons in your closet, don’t stick bodies in there in the first place.

If you don’t want potential employers to find stupid photos of you on Facebook, 1) don’t do stupid stuff, 2) don’t take photographic evidence of your stupidity and 3) don’t associate with people who post photos of your stupidity on Facebook.

The same is true with Twitter. Don’t tweet things that are hurtful, painful, and just plain wrong. Don’t wave it off as sarcasm. And always, always apologize when you screw up. Don’t hide, don’t cower, don’t turn on your protective force field. Admit your mistake like an adult, and then quit acting like a child in the first place.

(X did apologize for their tweet in their blog post.)

This incident is just one more reason why businesses are loathe to let their people get on social media on behalf of the company. They don’t want someone tweeting, Facebooking, or generally communicating with the world when they shouldn’t be.

Actions like this hurt the social media community as a whole, and they makes our job harder when we try to convince C-level executives to trust their employees to do the right thing. If the people who should know better can’t do the right thing, why would the average employee?

Finally, I hope the person in question will apologize to the people of New Orleans, and follow it up with a donation to their rebuilding efforts. I also hope X’s employer will use this as an educational moment. Use it to learn and grow from.

And quit using Twitter after 5:00 if you can’t be trusted.

Tags: crisis communications, Public Relations, Social Media, twitter
Posted in Crisis Communication, Public Relations, Social Media, Twitter | View Comments

Gmail is the New Black: Why You Should be Using Gmail Right Now

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Do you use Gmail or some other web-based program, or are you still accessing email strictly on your computer, cursing Outlook, and praying for the sweet, sweet release that ~~death~~ a hard drive crash will bring? Do you have a backup of your address book and necessary emails, should that blessed day ever come?

When I give a social media talk, I tell everyone to use Gmail for basic contact management. It has saved my bacon more than once, and I’ve become such a raving fan that I use it as my only email interface. I even forward my work email and other addresses into Gmail, so I have one window, one set of contacts, and the cleanest, least buggy interface I’ve ever had the joys of using. I can send email from any of my addresses, but the interface is all Gmail.

The joys of Gmail

If you’re not using Gmail yet, here are a few reasons why you need to:

Social network building Any social network you join is going to have a way to import your address book into the network so you can see if your friends are on there. Gmail is the easiest one to bring in. Some networks don’t even import web-mail programs like Hotmail. Others are a little more forgiving and will let you import Apple Mail, Outlook and Outlook Express, and comma-delimited CSV files.
Offsite storage of your contact list Let’s say that your work computer crashes, and you lose everything. Or you are, um, no longer allowed to. . . access your work computer due to a new arrangement you have with your now-former employer, and you need to let your friends and colleagues in other companies know about your new work situation. Having a copy of your address book in your control will make this a lot easier. You can even sync Gmail with Outlook, so any time you change or add a record, that is reflected in the other. Warning: some solutions will split up multi-email records, and then sync all those brand new records into Gmail. I had that happen twice, after I spent hours cleaning them up.
Emergency access If you ever need to reach people over the weekend or in the evening, but your computer is at work, you can still do so. This is especially important for people in crisis communication whose organizations are still planted firmly in 1997. If you’re counting on your email server and your email list to be available if you need to do a press release or media alert, you’re totally hosed if that thing ever crashes because of a large-scale disaster. When I was in crisis communication, we had to come up with some plan to work around just that contingency. And if you’re in the middle of an emergency, and you can’t get access to your email server, you need another solution. There are so many workarounds to getting online, as long as you can get there, you can communicate. But if you’re depending on one computer’s data, forget it.
Enterprise email You can even use Gmail for business. For $50 per user per year, you can get 25 MB of storage per user, plus it syncs with Outlook and Blackberry. (For the record, I can also sync my personal email with my HTC Droid.) You keep your corporate identity and addresses, but you have the security and ease of use of Google’s email, calendar, and Docs.

What about you? Why do you use Gmail (or your favorite web-mail application)? Why should people switch to web-mail from computer mail? Or, why shouldn’t they?

Tags: Gmail, Social Media, social networks, twitter
Posted in All Posts, Crisis Communication, Social Networks, Twitter | View Comments

Defining Two Types of Crisis Communication

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Crisis communication has two different, distinct meanings. They require different approaches, different ideas, and completely different types of plans. And not knowing the differences between the two can create some problems if you try to use one approach in the wrong place.

There’s corporate crisis communication (CCC), and there’s CERC.

CERC — Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication — is what the government calls communication during a massive emergency, such as swine flu, a terrorist attack, or large-scale natural disaster. (And you can tell the government came up with it, since it’s so much longer and has more words than are truly necessary.)

Both are often called “oh shit PR,” but the difference is that in a CERC situation, a lot of people could die. With CCC, a lot of money could be lost. One type of emergency gives emergency first responders sharp chest pains and indigestion, the other makes the corporate lawyers pull out their hair. But they both say the same two words when something goes down.

Although these two forms have a lot of similarities, there are some important differences. And if you’re talking about social media for crisis communication, you need to know them, because they affect your strategy.

Corporate crisis communication

I’d like to say that it’s important to always tell the truth and to be as open and honest as possible. But the sad truth is that being completely open and honest can ruin a company. I’ve hassled corporate legal departments over their “wrecking” crisis communications, but they’re a necessary part of any response. They just shouldn’t control it. In CCC:

Transparency tends to go out the window. The emergency is usually something that will make the corporation (or individual) look bad, so the first instinct is to hunker down and contain the bad news. This often means trying to keep it under wraps. This hardly ever works.
The negative end result of a corporate crisis is a loss of money. It could be a hit to their reputation, credibility, or branding, but those will all effect the bottom line. And since that can be in the millions or billions, crisis communication is not something that should be taken lightly. Entire companies, like Chi-Chi’s restaurants, have been lost to bad communications. But it’s the attempt to avoid losing money that leads to bad communications.
Communication is about containment. Many corporate crisis PR professionals are focused on keeping their client from being found guilty or negligent. They’re not worried about whether people like them, they just want to win the pending lawsuits. So they’ll put out information that, while is not a lie,
The message is the biggest part of the response. There’s other stuff going on behind the scenes — product recall, legal preparations, brand managment — but the communication is what’s going to affect the public’s perception, and thus, their reaction, lawsuits, vendor relationships, etc. Information may be easy to get if you’re in crisis communication, but it’s not always easy to share.

Social media strategy: Guarded, but present. Correct misinformation, use Tweets and Facebook to communicate with customers in a brand management manner. Put on your best face, but don’t lie. Monitor the gossip sites, but don’t engage.

Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication

This is the area I came from. We wanted as much open communication as we could get. More was better, and there was no such thing as too honest. Our goal was to “prevent panic,” and make sure everyone knew what was going on. With CERC:

Transparency is crucial. This is information people need to know. Information about where to go for safety, supplies, or medication.
The negative end result of a public crisis is a loss of life. When I was at the Indiana State Department of Health, we trained for things like medication distribution during an anthrax attack. The goal was to tell as many people as possible where medication was available. Information has to be gotten out quickly and to as many people as possible.
Communication is widespread. The point of CERC is to get as much information out as possible, and to correct misinformation. There is nothing that should be contained or covered up.
The message supports the rest of the response. It’s the other stuff that’s going on — law enforcement, public health response, rescue/recovery, clean-up — that’s going to affect the public, and communication lets the public know what’s going on. If there’s medicine to be distributed, communication will tell the public where to get it, but it’s the Point of Distribution that will give it out. The problem with this approach is that the public information officers (PIOs) are trying to get information from the busiest people, which means it’s not always readily available or being put out as quickly as possible. This is one reason the PIOs have direct access to the Incident Commander, the person in charge.

Social media strategy: Strong social media strategy. More people are getting their news on Twitter and Facebook than they are in their regular media. Put information out on social media at the same time you give it to the mainstream media. Correct misinformation directly, rather than through mainstream media. Monitor the citizen journalists, and engage when it’s appropriate.

Photo: Slworking2

Tags: CERC, Crisis Communication, Public Health, Social Media
Posted in Communication, Crisis Communication, Public Health, Public Relations, Social Media, Social Networks | View Comments

Why Lawyers Shouldn’t Do Crisis Communications

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

It irritates me to no end when the lawyers and MBAs feel the need to get involved in PR and marketing decisions. You can tell when they’ve had their fingers on a press release or written statement, because they come up with such gems as “We feel terrible for our customer. We are grateful that the customer is now recovering.”

This little beauty came from the owner of a KFC in Canada, after 15-year-old Kendell Lakin — heretofore referred to as “The Customer” — burned herself on a serving of hot poutine, after suffering an epileptic seizure and falling into the dish.

(Poutine is a dish of French fries covered with gravy. Not to be confused with “putain,” which is the French equivalent of the F-word. I’m sure French-Canadians have great poutine-putain jokes.)

The new social media society is all about people and relationships. We don’t refer to 15-year-old girls who burn their faces as “The Customer.” They have names, personalities, and pissed-off fathers. Calling them “The Customer” will piss them off more.

If you want to avoid looking like cold-hearted corporate monsters, stop depersonalizing people and reducing them to a genderless wallet.

(Note: I completely understand the need for attorneys. They keep us communicators out of trouble when we’re about to do or say something stupid. But while they do important work, they shouldn’t be in charge of the actual wordsmithing.)

Crisis communication folks need to seize the messaging away from the Legal Department. CEOs need to remember that hiding behind the stacks of legal books will only anger the public, not placate them. The madder they get, the deeper they’ll cut.

People who remember Chi-Chi’s restaurants will also remember what happened to it. After 4 people died and 650 people fell ill from a hepatitis A outbreak in Pennsylvania, the corporate staff avoided all contact with the news media.

In an article on Levick Strategic Communication’s website, they pointed out where Chi-Chi’s made a huge mistake that ultimately led to their bankruptcy and closure.

Right from the start, Chi-Chi’s made a critical communications mistake common among big corporations facing product liability lawsuits. In an effort to minimize risk, Chi-Chi’s top executives avoided direct contact with the news media. All communications with reporters came through antiseptic one-page statements that had a crisp “just-the-facts, ma’am” feel.

When Chi-Chi’s Chief Operating Officer Bill Zavertnik did finally arrive in Monaca more than two weeks after the outbreak was confirmed last November 3, he read a brief statement to reporters, took no questions, and then returned to corporate headquarters.

From that point forward, communications from Chi-Chi’s and its parent company, Prandium, in Irvine, Calif., came chiefly in the form of news releases and prepared statements written in language designed almost solely to avoid exacerbating the class-action lawsuits against the restaurant chain.

To make a long story short, people got madder and madder, and the class-action lawsuits are what killed the restaurant.

In other words, avoid saying stupid things like “We feel terrible for our customer. We are grateful that the customer is now recovering.”

You’re not going to avoid making people mad. But giving your apologies in some sanitized, half-hearted written statement that sound like they were hatched by some corporate lawyer will only make things worse.

In a lot of instances of corporate crisis communication, you’re going to need the lawyers to keep you out of trouble. But keep the pen out of their hands. They can edit, but they shouldn’t be creating. They need to leave it to the pros.

Tags: crisis communications, Marketing, PR
Posted in Communication, Crisis Communication, Public Health, Social Media | View Comments

Five Essential Tools Any Crisis Communication Pro Needs

Monday, January 4th, 2010

Social media is becoming more and more important to an organization’s response to a crisis. While my own crisis communication experience is with public health emergencies, like pan flu epidemics and the threat of anthrax attacks, other crisis comm pros are dealing with reputation management, negative publicity, liability lawsuits, product recalls, etc.

Thanks to social media tools, there is no reason a crisis communication pro shouldn’t have these tools in his or her toolbox, ready to respond to an emergency within minutes, rather than hours, or even days.

Whether you’re a government agency dealing with a massive emergency, or a famous athlete caught with his pants down, you need to be able to respond quickly and truthfully. You need to get ahead of the speculators and talking heads whose grinding of the rumor mill can do more harm than the actual truth.

Many organizations, especially government agencies, are still using old-school media to get their news out. The problem is they’re trying to reach a newspaper audience with timely news, but it’s changed in the last 30 minutes. Or they’re trying to reach the TV news by 3:00 p.m. for a 5:00 broadcast, while most people are still in their cars. And in many cases, broadcast media only spends seconds on your story, and the newspapers are only devoting a few precious inches to your side of the story.

With social media, you can bypass the media filters, reach the greatest number of people, and in many cases, get the news out before the mainstream media. This is especially useful if you have time-sensitive information, like medication dispensing points, product recalls, hours of operation, etc.

I’m not saying you should ignore the mainstream media (MSM), or quit using the old methods. Rather, consider adding social media to your arsenal.

Blog: A blog is a great way to publish an entire news story. In many cases, the MSM will use your blog as a source. If you’ve done most of the legwork for them, they’re more inclined to use the information you provided. I had one newspaper in Indiana that would reprint my press releases verbatim, I thought about changing my name to “Staff Wire Report” just so I could get the credit.

Strategy: Appoint a blog writer you trust, and give him or her carte blanche in reporting the latest news.

Twitter: Twitter lets you reach people quickly and easily. Create lists of important people who will need to hear your news: journalists, fans, customers, vendors, etc. Don’t just use Twitter for barfing out news though. You can use Twitter to talk with people and establish relationships. If people like you, they’re likely to want to hear your news, making you a trusted news source.

Strategy: Have conversations, provide information, correct misinformation, and answer questions.

Facebook fan page: If you’re a B2C company, nonprofit, or government agency, you need a fan page. If you’re B2B, the debate still rages on. People get their news from different sources, and they get their social media from different tools. So you need to match their information-gathering habits. Since Facebook boasts over 350 million world-wide users, a lot of people are getting their news here.

Strategy: Run your blog and Twitter feeds through your fan page. Follow the conversations people are having on the page, and participate in them.

Analytics: You need to measure your results and see what works. If nothing else, put Google Analytics on your blog, and set up some Google News Alerts. They only updates every 24 hours (Google News can email stories as they appear), but it’s free, and ideal if you’re not trying to monitor events in real time. StatCounter.com is free and up-to-the-minute, although it will only record 500 hits in a day (you can upgrade to the paid version if you need it). We use Yahoo Analytics (paid subscription), because it has real-time updates, and we can graph everything out. To see what people are saying in the social media stream, try something like Radian6 or ScoutLabs.

Strategy: Adopt at least one analytics package, and use it to monitor the success of your social media strategy. Compare it to your traditional methods, and see which tools are bringing you the best results. Plow more time and energy into the successful ones, and see if it’s possible to roll the less-successful ones into your new strategies.

A laptop and wifi network card: I know, this one seems so painfully obvious, it’s ridiculous to even include it. But you’d be amazed at the number of organizations still running on desktops, or laptops without wifi. It’s great to be able to visit any location with free wifi, and logging in — I’m sitting at a Subway restaurant as I’m writing this — but what if you’re in an emergency and you’re in an area without wifi. What do you do if you’re responding to a local emergency, and the fastest Internet connection in town is the dial-up credit card machine at the gas station?

Strategy: Bug your boss until you get a laptop and wifi card (Verizon has the MiFi, a mobile wifi hotspot you carry), and then learn how to use it; these other four tools are useless if you’re ever caught without a laptop and wifi. Use the mobile setup until it’s second nature. If you’re ever caught out during an emergency, you don’t have to pull out the manual just to figure out how to use the wifi card.

There are more tools available than you could ever hope to master, most of them supporting one of these five basics, but these are the ones you can build an entire crisis communication plan around. If you can figure these out, you’ll be miles ahead of those organizations and agencies who are still trying to figure out the fastest way to fax a one-page press release to 500 different newspapers in less than six hours.

Photo: Fire Monkey Fish

Tags: Crisis Communication, facebook, Social Media, twitter
Posted in Blogging, Communication, Crisis Communication, Public Health, Social Media, Tools, Twitter | View Comments

Using Social Media for Public Health: Some Proof

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

I’ve been beating the drum lately about how public health and crisis communication folks can and should be using social media. (Also here and here.)

The problem is most decision makers think this is still just a bunch of kids and out-of-work job hunters playing on FaceSpace and “twittering, twuttering, whatever the hell you call it.” (Note: Playing dumb as a way to denigrate something you don’t understand? Not endearing. Are you that confused, or just trying to be funny?)

But the Pew Internet & Life Project (official motto: “we’re smart, and we can prove it with a ±2% error margin”) is backing this idea as well. Susannah Fox recently spoke at the National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing & Media, sponsored by the National Center for Health Marketing, Coordinating Center for Health Information and Service, and the Office of Enterprise Communication, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, the National Cancer Institute and the National Public Health Information Coalition.

In other words, people who don’t take this stuff lightly. I used to be in the same field, and I know if the CDC and NPHIC are paying attention, then other people need to be paying attention as well.

Some interesting statistics from Susannah’s slide deck:

79% of adults in the U.S. use the Internet. Of those people, how many have stopped getting their news from newspapers, radio, and TV? We had an LP tanker explosion at a major Interstate intersection. I heard about it on Twitter, not TV. And a newspaper would have been useless for up-to-date news.
48% of African Americans and 47% of Latinos go online with a handheld device; only 27% for whites. Since black people also have a very high occurrence of chronic diseases like high blood pressure and diabetes, handhelds could be a great way to have them access important public health information.
Did you know there’s a website called PatientsLikeMe.com? Yeah, me either. But it’s for people who have “life changing conditions.” They’re talking to each other and learning from each other. (Know who that’s going to inconvenience? Doctors. They’re suddenly not the smartest ones in the room, the patients are.)

I could go on and on, but, well, there are only 7 slides in the deck (Rule #1 of good PowerPoint: Don’t use a lot of slides.)

But the moral of the story is that if you’re in public health, look at social media as a way to get your message out. Quit relying on the traditional media. Get out of 1987 and join us up here in the 21st century. A vast majority of the public is, but you’re still putting all your eggs in a newspaper-lined basket. Keep old school media in your toolbox, but quit reaching for it first.

Social Media's Promise for Public Health

View more presentations from Pew Internet & American Life Project, Pew Research Center.

Tags: Crisis Communication, Public Health, Social Media, social networking, twitter
Posted in Crisis Communication, Public Health, Social Media, Social Networks, Twitter | View Comments

How Health Departments and First Response Agencies Can Use Twitter to Monitor Emergencies, Part 2

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

Yesterday, I talked about how local health departments (LHDs) can use Twitter to communicate about and monitor public health emergencies. I also talked about how to set up your own Twitter account. For nearly a year-and-a-half, I was the Risk Communication Director for the Indiana State Department of Health. I dealt with the media during public health emergencies, and took part in several incidents and training exercises.

A tool like Twitter would have been invaluable, and saved a lot of time and energy in getting valuable information to other first responders, the Incident Command structure, and even the media and public.

Be sure to visit yesterday’s post to see how to set up a Twitter account and what applications will make this extremely useful.

Today, I want to show what a Twitter exchange would look like.

A few more issues to take care of first:

1. GroupTweet.com. GroupTweet is a web-based service that lets you send messages to an entire group, rather than sending something to all of your followers, or typing in their names one at a time. If you need to speak to, say, an entire POD or the entire EOC, set up a group in advance, and assign all the members of that group. Then, when you need to send a message to only those people, follow GroupTweet’s instructions.

2. For training exercises and real emergencies, it’s helpful to set up accounts for the different NIMS roles (e.g. ISDH_INCMD is the Incident Commander for the Indiana State Department of Health). As the shifts change, make sure the new people have the username and password to the Twitter account.

3. If you are using a special term or keyword during the incident, like “ISDH” or “anthrax,” you can use a program like Tweetfeed to monitor Twitter traffic. This will pick up all traffic with that keyword, so you may be inundated with more traffic than just your group.

4. Set up a laptop running TweetDeck or Twhirl (or both), with an LCD projector to show the message windows on the wall. Make sure everyone can see it, but try to squeeze as many tweets on the wall as you can. (Use the display settings in the Control Panel.) Everyone working in the EOC is using the EOC software, as well as their own Twitter account, but they will be able to see the Twitter stream on the wall. They will also be able to respond to the messages from their own station.

5. Have the PIO could have a separate, public Twitter account that he or she can use to contact the media and public directly, rather than waiting for the TV news and newspapers. Updates are immediate and can be made as needed. Information given to a TV station could be obsolete 15 minutes after the news van has left.

Also, use the # hashtag if you’re talking about a more common term AND your timeline is public. This will let other people, like the media and concerned citizens, also monitor what you’re doing. Anyone who is using the #hashtag will show up in the general Twitter timeline through Twitter’s search function at search.Twitter.com or TweetFeed (they show the same feed. There are not separate feeds for each program). This is an important way for the PIO to monitor Twitter traffic on the incident.

Here’s how Twitter can work during an emergency.

Scenario: During a POD deployment in Clark County, you’ve got too many volunteers in one POD, you’re running out of medication at another, and a TV news crew is on site, but the Clark County PIO is not available.

Normally to handle this, the Operations Officer from Pod#1 would have to call the EOC to find out if they need to redeploy the volunteers. Someone else would call to get more medicine. A third person would frantically be trying to track down the PIO, and running around to find her. I’ve been in the scenarios where all these things are playing out simultaneously, and it’s often hard to get an answer because everyone is searching for their own answer, or working on their own part of the incident, and can’t be found.

While Twitter won’t eliminate this problem, it can help alleviate some of this chaos by making information more readily available. Here’s how:

The volunteer supervisor sends a Tweet, followed by a response from the EOC Incident Commander

Clark_VOLSUP: Clark County POD #1 has 12 too many volunteers? Send home or send elsewhere?

ISDH_INCMD: POD #3, First Haven Church, needs new volunteers. Send 8 there. Rest can go home.

Clark_VOLSUP: They’re on their way.

POD#1_OPS:We’re running low on doxycyclin. Will be out in 2 hours. Does anyone have more?

POD#3_OPS:We have plenty. Will send volunteer with 5 cases.

POD#2_OPS:Sorry, we’ve got just enough. Might run short near end of day.

POD#1_OPS:Channel 4 from Louisville is on site. Can’t find @Clark_PIO. Does anyone know where she is?

ISDH_PIO:@Clark_PIO is caught in traffic. I’m on site, and can handle.

POD#1_OPS:We’ve just sent processed our 10,000th person. How’s everyone else doing?

POD#2_OPS:We’ve had 8,000.

POD#3_OPS:We’ve had 12,000.

ISDH_PIO:Can I share this with the media? Any talking points I should give?

EOC_OPS:@ISDH_INCMD says Yes. 30,000 people through PODs, everything running smooth, enough meds for all. All PODs should finish by 10 pm today.

ISDH_PIO:Understood. Will contact @ISDH_INCMD when interview is done.

This short exchange has accomplished a number of things:

They saved a bunch of phone calls, and chasing down different people to get an answer.
It allowed for flexibility of someone else answering for the Incident Commander. The IC could have been standing nearby, unable to type out an answer, so someone else was able to do it for them. By using the @ reply feature, the IC can also see that someone has done this. It’s not lost in the shuffle.
Using the @ symbol also delivered messages to the intended people, but publicly, so others can answer. The person who received a reply answer (@IDSH_PIO) was able to get the information they needed, but so did everyone else. Now, if someone needs to know where the PIO is, they have that information, instead of racing around again, trying to find out.
It creates a record of what happened, which will help write the After Action Report (AAR), plus it gives a written transcript of the conversation, if needed. Just copy and paste all the Tweets into an index as part of the AAR.
Each POD Ops director was able to share the number of people processed through POD with everyone. Best of all, they did it without sending an email. The information was immediately accessible, visible, and available to everyone. Emails tend to get buried and forgotten.
The ISDH PIO was able to pick up some useful information – the number of people through each POD – just by following the general timeline. He would not have found this out otherwise, because the Operations.
The Incident Commander was able to give the most important talking points to the PIO in a matter of seconds, not minutes on the phone. Or worse, the PIO never being able to reach the Incident Commander on the phone.

There are many more ways health departments and first responders can use Twitter. In fact, there are several social media technologies that health departments can use:

Ning social network engine to create a closed social network for all local health departments;

create a blog to give the public quick news updates, post press releases, address any rumors, and serve as a news source to the media. (Blogging can also help you keep the public updated without waiting for news channels;

and, using a a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki_software”>wiki to create and share information (password-protected, of course) among health departments concerning large scale events, such as pan flu.

I’ll write about these technologies in future posts. In the meantime, if you have any comments, questions, or stories about how you’ve used these technologies, leave a comment.

Tags: crisis communications, Indiana State Department of Health, local health departments, public information officer, swine flu, TweetDeck, twitter
Posted in Crisis Communication, Social Media, Social Networks, Tools, Twitter | View Comments

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