Category: Uncategorized

If you’re reading this, I’m going to assume you understand that social
media is increasingly becoming a part of all of our lives, whether or
not we hold accounts or participate personally. By the nature of the
social media, others using it influences how they act.

And boy are others using it.

It’s become such a hot topic that, earlier this year, the fine folks
at the National Emergency Management
Association allowed some social media
thought-leaders the opportunity to hold a series of workshops about
social media’s use in emergency management, preparedness and response.
I was lucky enough to have been invited to that day and met folks who
are the drivers of the movement to integrate social media into
emergency work; truly, my heroes.

On that day, there was also a team of researchers from CNA Analysis
and Solutions on site to collect information on
the proceedings and produce a white paper on the subject of social
media and emergency management. That white paper is being released
today.

In an effort to highlight some of the most important parts of the CNA
white paper, a number of emergency management, public information and
homeland security bloggers are posting about parts of the report that
resonate with them. Once those posts go live, I’ll do my best to
update this post and link to them. I, as you can guess, immediately
wanted to talk about how social media affects our messaging in a
positive way. (Beyond teaching PIOs how to think in 140-character
bites.)

The first, and probably most important, improvement to our messaging
as a result of using social media is the ease of developing a constant
media stream. Due to forced character-count limitations, we cannot
dispense messages in a traditional press release format; we’ve instead
got to just push out the update, as directly as possible. I think this
is a good thing for a couple of reasons: first, it expands the
audience for your message. While the media might benefit from the
comprehensiveness of a press release, most of the public can’t read
them, but would appreciate short, two-sentence-long updates explicitly
about the situation or topic. Second, short messaging allows you to
build a timeline of your incident. Outside of actionable
recommendations that should be repeated, updates can be posted once
and referred to. What a great way to supplement your IAP!

Another way social media has changed our messaging is what the CNA
report refers to as “force multiplication.” Due to the ease of sharing
social media messages (which is built into every social media
property), our messaging does not have to reach every single person in
your public first-hand. Every person that does receive your message
and finds it interesting or useful has the opportunity to share it
with their friends, thereby increasing your reach exponentially. Aside
from simple person-to-person sharing, I believe that a certain element
of trust comes into play as well. As fewer and fewer people trust
government messaging, hearing a message from self-selected friends and
close acquaintances increases the chance that people will listen and
integrate the message.

Finally, I think the coolest thing about how our messaging can change
is that we can now talk directly to our publics. Like those
much-maligned direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical commercials that
increased sales, we can now go around the traditional information
gatekeeper (in our case, the media). We now have the opportunity to
put out those supposed non-story stories, we can now avoid what
politicians are calling the “media filter.” We don’t have to depend on
what the news producers feel has “made the cut” for their broadcasts.
We can finally push out those good stories that we wish the public
would know about.

These changes being wrought are the perfect example of a sea change.
Be sure to download the full report here to
learn all about the future of our jobs.

Once you put aside all of the social media and traditional media
stuff, there are really only two things I write about here. What to
say in an emergency, and what to say before an emergency. I’m trying
to explore what makes us successful pre-emergency communicators and
what makes us successful emergency communicators. A lot of times, I
put forward the idea that being successful before the emergency
makes it more likely that you will be successful during the
emergency. I’m still having difficulty teasing out if good
communicators just are good at what they do or if, by dint of their
pre-emergency communication, have laid the groundwork that facilitates
successful emergency communication.

For all of the “be first, be right, be open,” there is one thing,
though, that seems to underpin both situations: trustworthiness.

A trustworthy communicator is someone that people will listen to and
integrate into their lives before an emergency. And while those folks
tend to be trustworthy in general, they also create an environment
where people can believe them in an emergency and accept their word at
face value. Like I said, it could be one or the other reason, but is
probably some combination of both.

Yesterday, TheFireTracker
passed along an article out of the Wall Street
Journal
that I could tell he was smitten with. He rarely gushes, but he did
here, and I can see why. The article was exceptional. While I
encourage you to read the whole thing, here’s a quick rundown of the
five main points:

Show that your interests are the same.

Seems simple enough, but how many times have we heard CEOs publicly
wishing “for their lives back.” Your public needs to know that you’re
working toward a mutually beneficial goal, and for the reasons they
consider to be right. Have goals, “we’re working to…,” and all that.
It goes a long way.

Demonstrate concern for others.

This one is easy. In fact, every single media and public information
trainer out there (even the really bad ones) will tell you that one of
your first statements in an emergency should express empathy. They do
that because it helps build trustworthiness. It shows that you are
concerned about others. Do it.

Deliver on your promises.

If you’re not going to have that fire under control, don’t say it. If
you’re not going to have vaccine ready, don’t say that. For every
promise we make—and break—we lose a bit more credibility. And this one
isn’t just about shoring up before a flood, this is about showing up
to give a promised preparedness talk at the senior center, this is
about following up with a community advocate. If you can prove that
you can deliver brochures on a sunny day, I’m more likely to believe
you’ll deliver sandbags on a rainy day.

Be consistent and honest.

This is another one that media trainers will tell you. If you don’t
know yet, say, “we don’t know yet.” Constantly altering worst-case
scenarios make you look like you’re underplaying a disaster. The Coast
Guard, in a training I attended recently, said that in ship-based oil
spills, they always release the full capacity of the ship to the
media. This is how bad it could be, but we’re working extremely hard
to keep that from happening. And thus, the message is always
consistent and honest. One number, unchanging, grounded in absolute
reality.

Communicate frequently, clearly and openly.

Well, if you haven’t heard me say this a million times, you haven’t
been paying attention. The key to a successful communication effort is
communication. Say the same thing a dozen times to make sure new
folks can get caught up. Integrate new developments into your spiel
and repeat them, too. Be open, be honest, and be sure to be available.
It seems like a small thing, but when your agency is understaffed and
overwhelmed, sometimes you forget that just telling the media
something once doesn’t work. Your spokesperson should not be
operational. It’s okay to have operational folks and SMEs do some of
the talking, but when they go back to the response, someone still
needs to be there pushing your messages out.

Like Jay-Z said, “Trust, it’s a word you seldom hear from us.” But in
reality, it may very well be the most important thing.