Another great morning here at the State of Ohio Emergency Operations Center.
Various agencies from all over the state in attendance at today’s social media class.
Special thanks to Ohio EMA Assistant Director Sima Merick for the welcome message.
Now to break down more info and tools on how effective PIOs (Public Information Officers) or PAOs (Public Affair Officers) engage on social media.
Excited to be instructing a bunch of PIOs today.
Made the news in Wisconsin.
Looks like I’m going to owe many many root beer floats when I get back to Ohio.
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14-003: Write for Different Platforms |
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Agency: Rocky Mountain Area IMT |
Topic(s): Social Media Platform Specific Messaging |
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Date: Summer 2014 |
Platform(s): Press Release vs Twitter |
Despite the message being essentially the same, every communications platform is different.
Speed is important, but correctly addressing your audience is critical in the world of public information.
On July 1, 2014, this tweet was posted on the Rocky Mountain Area Incident Management Team’s feed during the Eightmile Fire while deployed in Canon City, Colorado.
“FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE” In all caps? All caps use on social media portrays yelling. Professionals should portray calm/control.
Twitter’s social media platform premise is a fast microblog service focusing on immediate information. This templated press release lingo (FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE) is not necessary. Every tweet is automatically time/date stamped including matching the recipients’ time zone. Do not waste your valuable 140 characters.
To me, this was a cut-and-paste action, or even worse yet, they just linked the agency’s Facebook and Twitter accounts together. No time was spent in addressing the various platforms used to push this valuable information. Remember, PIO actions on each platform in social media are not generic, they are specific. We talk about safety to kids differently than we inform adults on safety right? Likewise, we should address our audiences on social media accordingly to the platform they use.
A more effective tweet could have read:
“Updated information & stats on the #Eightmile Fire ongoing in Colorado can be found here fb.me/6KArLmgFr ”
By phrasing it this way:
Know the differences in mainstream social media platforms because what will work on one old platform (press release) will NOT work on newer platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc…) Know social media and use their amenities to your advantage.
Time is valuable, so post good stuff.
***To download this as a single-page printable format, click this: WriteForDifferentPlatforms-Safety-PIO-SM-14-003
Looks like I’ll be presenting Public Information Officer (PIO) / Social Media stuff at the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) statewide conference in September.
Region-III baby!
http://www.pema.pa.gov/Pages/2014-Conference.aspx
or
http://www.pema.pa.gov/Pages/Default.aspx#.U-D3psJ0xJQ
Will I see you there?
After a quick visit to the White House in July, I realized that August will also be a busy month.
Akron, Columbus, Wauseon, Wisconsin, then back to Columbus and then to Geneva.
So yes, all month I will be in FEMA Region-V.
If all goes well, September will include several trips to Region-III, but I’ll keep you posted.
Keep your head down peeps.
As usual, I always make it a point to stop by FEMA HQ to meet with a few friends and teams working the FEMA magic.
First stop was to see the crew leading the Ready Campaign. Lots to discuss including the measure of preparedness and how we can more heavily promote preparedness digitally within each community. We constantly need to access our information that we are pushing and additionally make sure that the information is specific and actionable…esp during a disaster.
The general public seeks solid information FROM MOBILE DEVICES during an emergency. We cannot convolute the message, it must be clear and concise.
Did you know FEMA’s Ready.Gov program was featured at the White House Innovation for Disaster Response Recovery Event on Tuesday during the presentation by Appallicious? Check out the event and pictures here.
Mobile platforms must be easy to navigate and less cluttered. Almost everything is read on mobile platforms right? Duh! Esp since you can’t take/turn on your desktop computer while you are evacuating to an emergency.
Between meetings, I usually find a moment to take a funny picture with the hard-working FEMA pro, my friend Jana. She. Is. Hilarious.
Short meeting with the Digital Team at FEMA to discuss social media efforts and promoting great programs like FEMA’s SocialHub and Twitter Alerts.
But seriously, make sure you turn on your Twitter Alerts to get pertinent messaging from FEMA. It can be done from your mobile phone and it takes seconds to do.
In the coming months, we will be exploring a few classes that we can help cross promote a few programs. And I hope I get chosen to teach the class at FEMA HQ.
End of the day was spent chilling in the Executive Administration side of the house. And of course trying to catch a few moments with Craig.
Whew…what a day!
Great meeting this afternoon with the leadership at the Department of Homeland Security Bi0Watch program today in the DC area.
I look forward to having more interaction for the conference calls, national conferences, and closed-door workshops showcasing the use of social media as one facet of on intelligence gathering and preparedness information dissemination.
Looking forward to seeing some of you folks later this year!
Special mahalos to Monique for intros.
If you ever thought punctuation doesn’t matter…just ask the Associated Press right now.
In 9 minutes, the Twitterverse went bonkers. AP was forced to respond.
Punctuation matters peeps.
Doing good PIO deeds this morning here at NBC24 (WNWO) in Toledo.
It’s really amazing to see how much a smaller news station can accomplish especially with the right people and the right technology.
Special thanks to Angi Gonzalez (@AnchorAngi) and staff at NBC24 WNWO.
Still in Region-V baby!
Wait a sec…
You can get fired for posting an Instagram picture even without a patient in the picture?
Instagram post (Cort of ABCNews.com)
Apparently Katie Duke (RN) was fired from New York Presbyterian Hospital because of her Instagram post was deemed “insensitive”.
We talk a bunch about this my PIO/Social Media classes right?
Katie Duke on Instagram
Again I ask, can you get fired from your job because of an Instagram post?
Guess so…
Where is @rusnivek? 