Four Social Media Strategies for CERT
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Presentation for the December 2016 FEMA Webinar.
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Four Social Media Strategies for CERT
- 1. Four Social Media Strategies for CERT
- 2. 1. Layer your social platforms
- 3. Long Messages Professional Groups Articles Longer Status Updates
- 4. Rapid Info Visual Info Static Boards Shorter Status Updates
- 5. Periscope YouTube Live Facebook Live Live Video
- 7. 2. Build a Content Calendar
- 8. Building the content calendar Publish Date Theme Talking Points Audience Platform Media 1/1/2017 New Years If you can pack a gym bag, you can pack a disaster bag! Non-CERT residents Infographic 5/4/2017 Star Wars You’ll “Try” to prepare a family disaster kit. “Do, or do not, there is no try” ~Yoda Non-CERT residents Photo of Yoda 7/9/2017 National Sugar Cookie Day Get a treat after donating blood Non-CERT residents Photo of CERT decorated cookies and video of a blood drive
- 11. Additional Content Types • Photos • Video • Live Video • Audio • Designs • GIFS
- 13. ********* Something You Know Something You Have **** +
- 14. 4. Accessibility
- 16. Learn More
- 17. Social Media Working Group Department of Homeland Security, Science & Technology Directorate Including Social Media in Exercise Design
- 18. Mary Jo Flynn, MS, CEM EmergencyOperations Coordinator Sacramento County OES Formore information visit About.me/mflynn View these slides Slideshare.net/mjflynn001 Follow Meon Twitter @MaryJoFly
Editor's Notes
- You have to be deliberate in what social media platforms you choose to use, and it is impossible to use all social media platforms without having a full-time person dedicated to social media. However, if you are distributing work throughout your CERT team, you might be able to accomplish managing more than one platform. Think of each platform as a different country, each with its own language and customs. It takes time to learn what makes each platform work well, so start small and go for the low-hanging fruit first, such as the most popular platforms or one targeting a specific audience. Information about use of social media can be found within the PEW Internet statistics that are published annually. This will give you a glimpse at the audience types and how these platforms might benefit your programs. I’ll go into more detail, but on the following slides I’ve grouped these layers into: Longer Status Updates; Shorter Status Updates; Live Video and Geographically Based platforms.
- With Facebook as the most popular social media platform, you definitely want to be communicating here. You can create a page to reach potential new CERT members, but you can also create a closed or secret groups for just CERT members to communicate with one another. LinkedIn may be a place for your volunteers to help share information about your CERT program, especially to promote training classes, membership events, and activities. If you do not have access to a web page, creating a Wordpress blog can be an effective web presence for your team. Here you would host more static information such as training articles, preparedness articles, team calendar, and team videos and pictures. The goal is to have a web presence such as a web page or blog, and have all of your social media point back or refer to that web page. If your team collects donations to mitigate its costs, don’t forget to keep a source to your donations link visible on your web page and social media platforms.
- You will need to determine if these platforms will work well for your team. Twitter is helpful for fast-breaking information and news. As a one-to-many tool, twitter can help you reach various audiences without the barrier of being within a friend network, since public posts are open to all users. Instagram can accomplish similar things to Twitter, but is most effective when you have pictures from the field. When you cannot access pictures, I recommend a tool called Canva where you can design appropriately sized graphics or quotes to post instead of pictures. I prefer Pinterest as a place to store all of my ideas. I will organize topics by disaster type and ways in which to prepare or respond to that type you can visit the Sacramento Office of Emergency Services Pinterest boards to see examples of that organization. The key to pinterest is in the naming and organization of your boards. This enables you to rapidly access stored information when it comes up. For instance we will start seeing heavy rains tomorrow. I can access my flood board, or my rainy day activity board for kids and share those ideas with my community. I can promote preparedness, but be able to rapidly access information and post when I know the audience I want to reach will be searching for those ideas.
- Live video may not be appropriate for all CERT teams, but it is a very popular tool that is becoming more popular with preference for live video shown by many of the platforms. CERTs using live video should be sure their sponsoring agency approves of the use of live video, and those who use live video should have ample practice in front of a camera. It is helpful to use a tripod when using live video as well as an external microphone to improve sound quality for your audience. Audiences will forgive poor quality video, but no poor quality sound. It is important to practice narrating the scene in front of you without panning left or right too much, and to talk your audience through what they are seeing. Look for opportunities for live video that highlight or show some of the special skills your CERT team may have – such as pre-filling sandbags for community members; teaching compression only CPR; guiding your audience what your missing person searches might look like. Think through some of the team activities you would want to highlight in a live video and script out who you would want on camera, what kinds of things they would say – their specific talking points, as well as what background would be most appropriate to showcase your team. Identify if this can be scheduled in advance or if you need to organize a call-list of that video team for situations that come up more suddenly. For live video that isn’t scripted, be sure you are working through your agency’s public information officer so that you don’t release unauthorized information and you are consistent with your agency’s messaging.
- Geographically based tools allow you to reach a specific group based on their location. CERTS, when organized by neighborhood teams should have a presence on Nextdoor to communicate with their neighbors. You can also create a private group within Nextdoor for your CERT team members to communicate as a group. Use Nextdoor as a way to engage your immediate neighbors. Each CERT should be an ambassador for the CERT program on Nextdoor and be able to share information about training, team meetings, and neighborhood plans after a disaster. In some cases, CERT team leaders within a neighborhood may want to request administrator privileges for the Nextdoor neighborhood to help share key information. Alternatively, Snapchat has a very specific audience that is generally aged 35 or younger. If this is a key demographic to reach for your team, you may wish to try engaging here. Learning this tool will be important, but the ability to use Geofilters that highlight your team’s events or activities around town can make this social media platform more attractive.
- One of the most important steps to starting or maintaining a social media program is to establish a content calendar. Your calendar should include important dates like: Holidays, Local days of significance, National days/weeks/months, National Days Calendar, Events and Training, Pop culture, General media replies. Specific CERT content may include: Training, Volunteer stories, Responses, Behind the scenes, Events, Polls Q&A, Town hall or Ride (Tweet) Along. At your next CERT meeting, facilitate a brainstorming discussion of all of the things your team does, and all of the things your team members would like to share online. This will give you a great start to a content calendar.
- Once you have collected all of your calendar ideas, organize them onto a spreadsheet with the column labels across the top as: Publish date, Theme, Talking Points – or your message, the desired audience, where you are going to post the information and what media sources you need, for example: pictures, audio or video. The more complicated the video, the more time you will need to script out your messages, organize photo or video shoots and editing.
- Most people consider New Year’s day the start of resolutions for the year – and many consider adopting a healthier lifestyle or fitness habit at the top of their resolution list. With resolution driven individuals returning to the gym after the first of the year, this infographic seemed timely to promote a preparedness kit and how what you pack in a gym bag is nearly identical to the minimum needed in a disaster bag. Working backwards from January 1 when I posted this on social media, I was able to develop a timeline for working with a graphic designer who helped create the infographic. The graphic designer happened to be a member of our CERT team – so look internally to your team resources! We met a few times months before we wanted to release this graphic, with final approvals for our agency happening in November, long before our publish date. Know that the more complicated your post, the more time you will need to develop those resources. Don’t expect that your art can be created on the same day.
- This is another example of using the National Days calendar then working backwards to design a social media campaign around that them. These cookies were made for National Cookie Day – published on the National Days Calendar. I looked up blood donation sites for the same day National Cookie Day was held and found a site within our community. Weeks before, I ordered these cookies through a local cookie baker who was friends with one of our CERT team members. A few days before, our CERT team was organized, we communicated which uniforms to wear, and the blood drive host was contacted to confirm that we could deliver the cookies. So, instead of just posting fun cookies for National Cookie Day, we were able to promote blood donations, and our CERT teams in action and in uniform delivering the cookies! Be sure the effort you go through to develop these social media posts can tie back in a meaningful way to the work that your CERT team does on a daily basis in addition to the crisis services they perform.
- Use a variety of apps and design tools to make photos stand out. One of my favorites is Color Pop to turn a photo to black and white except for one colorized portion. I use Soundcloud to host recorded audio files. This might be helpful if you have audio recordings of people giving testimonials about the CERT program. You can also have someone read aloud the CERT training materials, to make the information available to others who need to hear them aloud. GIF maker is a tool to turn videos or a series of photos into a short repeating video. Any moving video tends to attract more attention than a still photo since most videos will auto-play on peoples devices. Using a variety of these tools and content can help you generate more interest in your program.
- All CERT social media leaders as well as CERT team members should be trained in the safety and security practices of social media and the internet in general. They should know how to find trustworthy sources of information, as well as be trained on how to amplify your CERT social media content. One of the best strategies for expanding you message is in having each of your CERT team members share a post created by your CERT social media leader. Your CERT team members should be encouraged to follow your social media accounts, and be made aware of your social media schedule. Ask them at each team meeting to share your posts with their networks on their social media accounts.
- Be sure your CERT team members understand how to select quality passwords, and teach them about two-factor authentication. Two factor authentication relies on two sources of verification to be sure the owner of the account is accessing it. Setting a password is one step, having a verification code sent to your smartphone is the second factor in proving your identity online. This prevents others from accessing your account credentials – if they don’t have your phone, they can’t access the secret verification code to unlock your account. Two-factor authentication should be set up on all social media accounts, and should be a requirement for any CERT team members who are given administrator or editor access on those accounts.
- CERT teams are made up of individuals with a variety of backgrounds, skills and abilities. Your communication should include an effort to reach others within the community as well. Adding closed captioning or text to videos isn’t just important for those who can’t hear the audio, many times people just want to keep the sound off to their device because they are in public or maybe they are at work. Essentially, they tools you use to make your communications accessible to more people, the more your messages reach everyone. Read within the help menus of each platform the tools that are available to help reach these audiences. For example, twitter will allow you to add descriptive text to a photo to assist someone with a visual impairment. The added benefit is that this text also shows up in search results, so your message can be seen by more people because it was descriptive. The government has suggestions for what is called 508 compliance and these may assist you in thinking through some of what is needed to reach these audiences.
- Social media is not a learn it once and you are done. It is constantly evolving and changing, however, your basic messages and content may be the same over time. Make sure you are reading and studying ways in which you can be more effective online.
- The virtual social media working group under the department of homeland security, science and technology directorate is charged with researching best practices in social media and emergency management. Each year the working group publishes a report through the Department of Homeland Security. The previous reports are available on the First Responders Community of Practice site and have gone through iterations of best community engagement and strategies as well as the extraction of data for situational awareness and decision support. This year, our group is working on a report which will include best practices in exercise design. Like any good element the planning and testing cycle, social media must be integrated into agency exercises. The report will work through process design, decision flow as well as best practices for incorporating exercises in closed and open systems.
- Hopefully we’ve left a little time for some questions. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions you have, and online use the hashtags #CERT or #SMEM for social media emergency management for ways you can do more to communicate with Social Media. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.