2. Hi, my name is Wendy Harman and I am the manager of social media for the American Red Cross. @wharman [email_address]
3. social media tools are uniquely valuable before, during and after emergencies
4. same social media tools you’re using for business can be a big part of your plan for staying afloat
5. for next few minutes I’ll tell you our social media philosophy, how we use these tools during disasters, and give you tips and resources for creating your own plan
6. philosophy: use social media tools to execute the mission. help people prevent, prepare for, and respond to emergencies with social media
13. + increase your response – ability before emergencies happen
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16. during an emergency be flexible in the tools you use be ready to offer real time information in the right places
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Editor's Notes
I’m going to be throwing a bunch of information at you today, but don’t worry…you don’t have to write it all down. You can get this presentation from my blog. And a word about the creative commons license in the bottom left-hand corner…
Thanks for having me today.
We’re a little different than most nonprofits – not that others are doing it wrong, but want to share this approach with you. I approached social media as an avid fan of quirky blogs, sharing information, and making friends online that could translate to offline friendships in my personal life. I gravitated toward social media in my personal life before the Red Cross was a glint in my eye because it was a haven from marketing tactics and advertising and was full of real-ness and stuff I could use. So, our philosophy is to use social media tools to execute our mission. We are bringing the mission, which has been around for 128 years, into the 21 st century and into the social web, where millions of people are increasingly spending their time. Our job is to provide reliable information, classes, and resources to the public. Social media platforms give us unprecedented opportunity to do that quickly and to reach more people more easily than we ever have been able to before. Side effect: we’re reenergizing the brand, raising awareness, and yes, raising money!
Disasters are confusing. Our job has several prongs: Explain to the public what ARC is doing in response Explain where the public can get important information, resources and supplies Tell client stories about response. These tools make it easy to accomplish all of these goals with text, video, audio, and photos very quickly. I’m going to show you how today and you’re going to try it out tomorrow.
In today’s news climate, it’s important to be fast and accurate The public is now quicker than mainstream news outlets, so we need to offer reliable info in the place where people are looking for it – the web. We needed a place to quickly aggregate info from the field in a quick and dirty format to help us tell the Red Cross story
Our Online Newsroom is a blog consisting of up to the minute disaster updates. We have a team of public affairs workers who send us items like photos and audio from the field and we compile that information to offer to the media and the public. We pull in photos from flickr, video from youtube, and audio from utterli to multiply our influence across social media platforms. While we keep this populated with content on a regular basis, this site exists and thrives best during major national disasters with high media attention. The goal of this site twofold: as a source of Public Information during a disaster and as a resource for the media. This is the least social of all of our social media spaces
So we created the disaster online newsroom to be our one stop-shop for all Red Cross disaster information – and I do mean all disaster information – not just want we’re saying here at national headquarters but what’s happening in the field – and how a local chapter is helping their community
![Hi, my name is Wendy Harman and I am the manager of social media for the American Red Cross. @wharman [email_address]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)