Tomorrow night is the premiere of the new NBC show Trauma. The show is about paramedics in San Francisco. A group of EMS podcasters and bloggers is planning an online premiere party and post show call-in discussion using the social media tool TalkShoe.com. The principles being used for this event could be applied to virtually any event that your emergency response agency is involved.

While the premiere of Trauma has been months in the making, planning for the online premiere party began late last week. In just a few days tens of thousands of EMS professionals from around the world have been invited to the event by Jamie Davis, Greg Friese, and Chris Montera with use of social media tools.

1. Numerous Twitter announcements with links to the TalkShoe.com page for the event as well as press releases and blog posts about the party. Greg used Hootsuite.com to schedule two a day Twitter messages to multiple Twitter accounts.

2. Posting links in personal Facebook personal and group pages. Jamie’s Twitter followers are different than his Facebook followers. Facebook comments also provide a chance for social testimonial which means seeing that others are planning to participate may encourage others to get involved.

3. Distribution of press releases by email to media contacts. EMS related websites can rapidly add new content. Even though the press release for the event was not written until Friday morning it was posted on several EMS websites by that afternoon.

4. Use of TalkShoe.com for live broadcast during the premiere. Listeners will be able to chat with Jamie, Greg, and Chris and each other. After the premiere is over TalkShoe will be used to take calls from listeners.

5. Asking other bloggers to participate by posting the premiere party announcement, embedding the TalkShoe.com widget at their site, and share their comments about the show to their readers.

Before any of this could happen the bloggers and podcasters involved needed to have a social media presence. Jamie Davis, the podmedic, has recorded nearly 200 episodes of his podcast the MedicCast. He also has established a Facebook fan page and regularly posts to Twitter. Even more importantly he creates relationships on Twitter by contributing to conversations by using the @reply. Chris Montera started a family of podcasts in late 2008. The three weekly podcasts – EMSEduCast, EMS Garage, and EMS Leadership – have a combined audience of nearly 20,000 users. Chris participates regularly in the EMS social networks of EMSUnited, JEMSConnect, and EMSConnect. Greg Friese blogs regularly, was an early EMS Twitter adopter, and has co-produced the EMSEduCast. So this group already has an audience because of its regular social media content production efforts. Now they can capitalize on those relationships with a special event.

So how can you use social media to complement your next special event? I can envision lots of uses to support fundraisers, special appearances, and injury prevention programs.

About the author

Greg Friese wrote 58 articles on this blog.

Greg Friese, MS, NREMT-P is an author, podcaster, blogger, and advocate for emergency response agencies to use social media before, during, and after any incident. Greg is the Director of Education for CentreLearn Solutions, LLC. He is also the co-host of the EMSEduCast podcast and is a paramedic for a 911 agency in northeast Wisconsin

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