Social Hope: Social Media in Disasters

Social Hope:
Social Media in times
of Disaster Relief
#12NTCdisaster

Evaluate This Session!
Each entry is a chance to win an NTEN engraved iPad!

or Online using #12NTCdisaster
at www.nten.org/ntc/eval

The Panel

Wendy Harman, American Red Cross
@wharman

Carie Lewis, Humane Society of the United States
@cariegrls

Dan Michel, Feeding America
@dpmichel

Social Hope Slide 2

Agenda
• Case Studies from 2011 Disaster Season
• Examples
• Learnings
• Future of providing service in times of disaster
• How does social play into that?

Social Hope: #12NTCDisaster Slide 3

2011 Disaster Season by the Numbers

99
major declared disasters by FEMA

73
billion dollars worth of damages

>500
deaths from just the Alabama &
Joplin tornadoes


Feeding America

• Provide 3 billion pounds of food annually
• Serve 37 million people in U.S. each year
• Disaster is a part of what we do – not primary mission

Disaster Services provides our members
with updates on disaster activity, resources
for preparedness, response and recovery
planning, and guidance for best practices.


FA 2011 Disaster Efforts
Deployed national teams (including social media) to:
• Alabama, May
• Joplin, June


What we did well
Communicated the story of hope
Communicated how people (outside the area) could do to help
Became a participant into existing conversations


What we did well
Recognize and mobilize corporate support


What we could do better
Used Social Media to help guide people to services
Connecting people to local food bank/agencies
Get more pictures/facts up faster
Continued the story/check back


Local Efforts
Ozarks Food Harvest


Connecting Victims/Providing Hope

http://youtu.be/ERMQgqEF0yk


The Situation:
• There’s a hurricane coming.
• It’s big. And strong.
• It’s going to affect multiple states.
• We need to warn people.
• We need to save animals.
• There’s no central place for pet owners to get information about
evacuation, resources, and shelters.
• Our disaster approach: Prepare > Respond > Recover

@cariegrls // #12NTCDisaster

What do we do? And how do we do it?
1 – Get the preparation and evacuation messages out
• identify the audience it affects
• Coordinate messaging with PR

2 – Tell our story and disseminate important information
• Put an internal comm infrastructure in place for info gathering
• Coordinate content with web, email, PR, program

3 – Tell people how they can help
• Develop a fundraising campaign
• Coordinate needs on a local level

4 – answer questions and needs from audience
• Step our monitoring game up

5 - Close the loop
• What happened to the animals you saved?
• What did my money go to?


Getting The Message Out
• First: prepare, then: evacuate WITH
your pets
• Who is the audience? Who do we
have as resources in those areas?
• State directors and Care Center
directors in affected areas
• Developed a list of Facebook
page links and admin contact
info
• We helped monitor, respond, and post to those
pages since admins were out in the field
• Targeted posts to our HSUS Facebook fans living
in the affected area
• Messages were taken from press releases and web
pages (pre-approved content) and boiled down
• Made it engaging by asking people to send us a pic of
their disaster kit that included their pets and we gave
them a window cling


Gathering and Disseminating Info
• Internal information gathering
• Put an internal communications infrastructure in place for web
content and up-to-the-minute updates from the field
• What kind of content do we want in order to tell our story of
what HSUS was doing? Bite sized info for Twitter, diaries for the
web, as many photos as possible
• National level = Rescue Team coordinator > Web editor
• Local level = State Director > Community Manager
• Daily meeting to coordinate all content with web, email, social,
PR
• Field responders marked content as external or internal use
• External information gathering
• We followed emergency management orgs like FEMA, Red Cross
in each affected state on Twitter
• Made a list of animal shelters in hurricane’s path and followed
them for updates


The $64k question: what can I do?
• People could help on a national and/or local level
• Developed a fundraising campaign for our Animal Rescue Team’s
efforts
• Integrated across all communication channels
• Created Amazon wish lists for affected shelters
• Took advantage of our large followings and
targeted Facebook posts to help shelters in need


Answering Questions and Needs
• Monitored every @ reply on Facebook
• Monitored hashtags that were being used
• Created our own hashtag #Irenepets (4,500 uses, seen by 8.5 million
people in 3 days)
• Monitored keywords like “flood pet”
• Answer everyone.
• Aggregate info for pet owners from multiple sources on our Twitter feed
(FEMA, shelters)


Closing the Loop
• If you are committing to answer everyone, provide updates.
• If you’re going to individualize an animal in a fundraising or storytelling
campaign, be ready to monitor and report on the fate of that animal.
• Tell people what their money went to.


THIS is why it’s important to always
be listening and answer everyone.

We saved this dog’s life.


THIS is why it’s important to monitor
comment strings and be responsive.

We garnered donations.


Show compassion in times of crisis.


Repost Good UGC to create community.


Give them what they want!


Next Time…
• Keep feeding tweets and adding to photo album
• Find a way not to miss any @ replies on twitter (keep up)
• Research hashtags already in use, start using own hashtag
earlier
• Set up tracking ahead of time and take screenshots as they
happen
• Thank those who donated and shared on Twitter
• Share the credit with other orgs involved – build relationships
• Map of affected shelters – or maybe an app?
• Proactively reach out to Weather Channel, Red Cross, FEMA,
agencies
• Customize email shares to use our hashtag
• Develop communication guidelines for first responders
• We want a WAR ROOM!


Questions?

Discussion?

Other examples?


Social Hope: Social Media in Disasters

Recomendados

Recomendados

Más contenido relacionado

Similar a Social Hope: Social Media in Disasters

Similar a Social Hope: Social Media in Disasters (20)

Más de Carie Lewis Carlson

Más de Carie Lewis Carlson (18)

Último

Último (20)

Social Hope: Social Media in Disasters