Author: Jim

When we talk about social media around these parts, we talk about how your agency should do it, or how your executive should do it. Unfortunately, I don’t get around to talking about something that’s equally (or more!) important than either of those things: how you use social media.

Cause you do. You are. Right now, actually.

And if thinking about you using social media isn’t scary yet, read this:

The NMC’s decision to suspend Allison Marie Hopton for comments she posted on Facebook will make sobering reading for some nurses.

…

It is nice to think our work and private life are separate but social media blurs the boundaries and – as the NMC rightly points out – if you identify yourself as a nurse your behaviour has to uphold the standards of the profession.

I often see anonymous comments on our own website that make me anxious about how others will view our profession – not only in terms of the language used but the attitude nurses sometimes adopt towards each other.

I get asked about this type of thing regularly when speaking at conferences. And my answer isn’t very satisfying: the courts are working it out–slowly. And in the meantime? Folks are posting things online and dealing with the aftermath.

So be careful out there. But, don’t go hiding from social media, because there are real benefits, as this blog post about how to hire great candidates:

When I researched them online, I found them engaged in repeated professional conversations
This indicated that they cared enough about what they were doing that they were engaged in it outside of their nine to five jobs. They sought out situations to discuss aspects of their chosen profession both with other professionals and with their clients.

This is why Twitter, message boards, websites, and even Facebook can both prove valuable for professionals. It provides a clear way to demonstrate professional behavior and passion for a topic while also connecting with peers and potential clients.

And now for some personal perspective. Nothing–NOTHING–has been better for my career than my social media work. Not my degrees, not my day-to-day, not how I dress or how late I stay at work. I’ve been invited to speak at conferences across the country, I’ve made friends at health departments, emergency management agencies, government agencies from coast to coast. I can reach out to public health and government heroes that I’ve read about and they not only hear me, but they answer: Laurie Garrett, Dr. Rich Besser, Jack Herrmann, Scott Becker, Wendy Harman.

The risk is real, but the benefits are life-changing. Take hold of it and see how it will change your career, and life.

Gerald Baron had a great post the other day about a study that said that Facebook was found to be a useful tool in a crisis. He reviewed the conclusions and was less than impressed (and rightfully so). Apparently, the researchers took what is good communications work and put it next to poorer communications work and then ascribed the good work to the medium through which it was transmitted. Gerald came away with the following key message:

Direct messages sent in a human voice that provide in-depth information are effective in a crisis.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone who reads me, though, because I regularly talk about being a real person when communicating (from bears to About Us pages).

The thing is, we’re still not very good at it. So when I see stories about a government agency that are all impressed with a minor effort to seem human, I get a huge kick out of it. Like, we’re still learning this?

There are some folks, though, that have taken that engagement, that being human, to another level. They’re no longer including, “Be sure to empathize,” on their checklist of how to deal with the public. The classic example of this is the Los Angeles Fire Department’s @LAFDTalk Twitter account, but a bit closer to home, there’s another success story:

SEPTA has an @SEPTA Twitter account for alerts regarding the whole system. Then there is the Twitter account for SEPTA buses, one for each regional rail line, an account for the Broad Street Line and one for the Market Frankford Line, a Twitter account for each trolley line and one for the Norristown High Speed Line. Each of these shoots out updates about the given line.

The one that is turning heads, though, is the @SEPTA_Social account. Run by the customer service team, @SEPTA_Social is all about engaging with customers, having actual conversations, and at times, even being a little sarcastic.

How?

Now, Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., these customer service reps watch what’s happening on Twitter. They respond to inquiries, complaints and praise directed to the @SEPTA_Social account and watch what people are saying about SEPTA.

The rationale?

“When you think about a traditional call center, that’s me talking to you,” Heinle said. “That works, but social is me talking to you and maybe 500 other people, so the impact or the potential impact, both good and bad, is significantly more.”

What this means is so much more than an “Attaboy!” for SEPTA (though they do deserve one). This is more about your agency. SEPTA is setting the bar for interaction and openness and approach-ability. After the public has a great experience with SEPTA then turns to your agency, are they going to be disappointed? Usually, that’s not a terrible thing. As Ms. Heinle says above, usually it’s just one-to-one; I had a bad experience and now I’m going to stew.

But now? Are they going to be more likely to talk with their friends about their experience with you? Is their unhappiness going to be shared with 500 people or more?

And just think: all of this can be avoided for the low, low cost of being a human being. Dropping the “government automaton” voice, getting over yourself and actually respecting your publics.

Interesting times make for interesting posts, apparently. If you haven’t been following the flu blogosphere, MERS-CoV has been kicking up again in the Middle East (machine-translated gobbledygook). MERS-CoV is something that public health professionals are watching very closely for two reasons. First, our experience with SARS. While MERS-CoV is not SARS, that doesn’t mean that the 2003 outbreak can’t be learned from. Second, we’re concerned about where the outbreaks are taking place due to the upcoming religious pilgrimage in Mecca, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Lots of people from all over the world crowded together, while an infectious agent floats (?) around, and then dispersing to the winds, potentially infecting their home populations. (One only needs to look at the importation of cases to the UK, France and Italy.)

Well, the flu blogosphere is in a bit of a tizzy right now over the most recent release of information from the Kingdom over cases. Apparently, there have been a few reports of hospitals asking people not to go to hospitals due to cases already in the hospitals and unannounced outbreaks. (Caution: more machine translation.) In a country that controls the media and information releases as strongly as the Kingdom, this is a HUGE deal.

The Saudi government has openly prosecuted bloggers and dissidents, maintains strict control over internet content, and in 2012 was listed by the CPJ (Committee to Protect Journalists) as number 8 in the 10 Most Censored Countries. And just this week, KSA passed a law to combat cybercrime, which includes a broadly worded provision to outlaw `the dissemination of ideas that could affect public order or morality.’

The inimitable Mike Coston goes on later:

Whatever the truth is regarding these reports, the fact that they are appearing at all in mainstream Arabic media suggests growing concerns over MERS (and a loss of confidence in the MOH) by the public, and by the media.

I’ve talked about this before, when I was describing the internet rumor mill that surrounded the H7N9 cases in China, and wondered aloud if something similar would ever pop up in Saudi Arabia:

Now imagine the value that a rumor mill like Weibo could be in Saudi Arabia. How much better we all might be protected.

As we talked about yesterday, all it takes is one clever person with a smartphone and a social media account and that secrecy that the Kingdom is so famous for will be as useful as an ice cream cone stand there.

Bruce Schneier, when talking about the Snowden case, details a secondary problem to lies coupled with secrecy, not just the original problem, but something much more dreadful:

All of this denying and lying results in us not trusting anything the NSA says, anything the president says about the NSA, or anything companies say about their involvement with the NSA. We know secrecy corrupts, and we see that corruption. There’s simply no credibility, and — the real problem — no way for us to verify anything these people might say.

It’s a perfect environment for conspiracy theories to take root: no trust, assuming the worst, no way to verify the facts. Think JFK assassination theories. Think 9/11 conspiracies. Think UFOs. For all we know, the NSA might be spying on elected officials. Edward Snowden said that he had the ability to spy on anyone in the U.S., in real time, from his desk. His remarks were belittled, but it turns out he was right.

How will we learn to trust the Saudis again if they’re hiding this? How will the Saudis be able to trust the Kingdom? And while not all rumors are true, in today’s world, all it takes is one rumor to slip out and all hell could break loose. Trying to stop it? Like holding back the tides.