The aim of this workshop presentation is to provide you with the know-how necessary when the next crisis occurs, specifically: 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

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

69. Search.Twitter for #tsunami

70. Search.Twitter for #earthquake

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

74. Hootsuite Facebook Updates

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