Archive for October, 2009

The Houston Fire Department has declared that the use or possession of helmet cams while on duty is a terminable offense.

At issue is a number of videos that have been recorded by firefighters from their helmet cams showing dangerous scenes, dramatic rescues, and intense situations. The videos are then uploaded to video sharing sites such as YouTube and FireVideo.net.

While I am not a proponent of enacting draconian bans on devices that could provide valuable training information and materiel, I can understand why the department would act so harshly. According to this article by The Examiner, the concern for fire departments nationwide is that while the majority of the videos so far have shown their members brave actions during a life saving operation, it may also show tragedy in full living color and raises questions of departmental liability in the process when things don’t go well.

This is an example of Social Media being created by members of a service that can have ramifications for the agency, especially if that agency does not provide guidelines to its creation. The popularity of these activities is evident by the variety of cameras available for this purpose, including some that are manufactured specifically for firefighters.

Whether it comes from a helmet cam, a cellphone camera, or even from a new iPod the fact remains that video is an easily recorded and shared medium.

Make sure your agency is prepared to deal with the issue responsibly.

Source: The Examiner

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Many Agencies are grappling with how to develop and deploy policies for employees about the use and creation of social media on the job. Human resources consultant, Roberta Jackson, discusses the importance of a social media policy with Greg Friese.

Listen to Greg and Roberta discuss:
1. Do’s and Don’ts for social media policies.
2. Contents of social media policy.
3. Reasons to use social media for an organization.
4. Integration of social media policies into employee manuals and trainings.
5. Using social media for employee recruitment.

Roberta Jackson is the Founder and President of Navigations for Leadership, LTD. Roberta is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources, (SPHR) and a certified Global Professional in Human Resources (GPHR) as awarded by the Human Resources Certification Institute (HRCI). Roberta provides consulting services to EMS agencies, as well as other businesses and industries throughout the United States and internationally. Roberta previously was the VP of HR for one of the largest private EMS services in the northeast.

After listening add your thoughts about Social Media Policies in the comments area. Also what questions do you have for me to ask during a follow-up interview with Roberta?

If you would like a private webinar or in-person training program or consultation about social media policy for emergency response agencies contact us.

Social media is a dynamic and rapidly changing field. I encourage social media PIOs to learn from social media users and advocates in other sectors and industries. An easy way to do this is to friend some of the best social media advocates on Twitter. Then use Tweetdeck to set-up a column for this group of select users. A few people I follow and recommend to others include:

@AmberCadabra
@chrisbrogan
@copybloger
@garyvee
@GuyKawasaki
@JimKukral
@problogger
@Skydiver

I have followed @WendyMaynard for many months now and applied many of her marketing and blogging ideas to my web projects. She also teaches clients about social media. She has shared a presentation, Social Media Boot Camp, that I think is excellent and advocates many of the same concepts we discuss in the social media PIO boot camp. I also think her use of PowerPoint is outstanding. You are likely to learn a lot by viewing her slide deck.

The Toronto Traffic Services social media hub is a “A social forum designed to make Toronto streets safer for all road users through education and awareness. Road safety is everyone’s responsibility.”

The hub is a blogger blog and currently consists of spokes to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. This screencast showcases the efforts of Toronto Traffic Services to use social media.

What do you like about the Toronto Traffic Services hub and spokes? Provide us a link in the comments area so we can showcase your organizations social media efforts.

When speaking with Agency and Institution officers about their Social Media Presence, or lack thereof, more often than not they do not see the value of monitoring or the necessity of participating in it until a sentinel event illustrates how they are now open to criticism and the cascade of public opinion that may come with that. Recently, there was such an event.

The Criticism

Nicole White is the author of the blog My Bottle’s Up. On October 16 she posted a blog entry titled “tsa agents took my son“. The post was a dramatic account of her experience at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport with TSA Agents who, according to her account, separated her from her son for an extended period of time.

The post was a heart wrenching tale that placed a far less than favorable view of the TSA. The post received exposure on Twitter thanks to a large number of retweets and over 300 comments. The story was shared on Facebook, and the site itself received over 40,000 visitors on that day according to its Sitemeter.

The Defense

With the exposure given this post through Social Media, tens of thousands of people would have a negative perception of how the TSA treats passengers, particularly mothers of toddlers. Now if the TSA did not have a Social Media Presence, chances are they would have remained largely unaware of the situation. They in fact have a Twitter account and a blog that are managed by a team.

Rather than ignore the situation, the TSA Blog Team responded with their own blog post. Embedded in the post is a closed circuit camera recording that shows Nicole White and her son entering the TSA security line at 10:55am on October 15, entering the plastic enclosed holding area at 11:02 before being escorted by a female TSA Agent at 11:04 to a screening area, and then being screened by hand in the screening area before leaving there at 11:10am. Both the mother and the child are visible during the entire recording and is directly contrary to the account Nicole White originally blogged about.

The TSA Blog Team did not just stop there. They then sent numerous Twitter messages to users who had retweeted the previous story with a link to their own. Thanks to their quick response and their initiative in using Twitter to directly contact those who had retweeted the original story, the TSA avoided a reputation damaging story from festering throughout the weekend.

Best Practices

There are a number of things that First Responder Agencies can learn from this. Here are the Top Five Social Media Best Practices that can be applied from this example:

• The most effective response to negative Social Media is through Social Media – If you haven’t already established a Social Media Presence, then what are you waiting for? Don’t know how? Sign up for our Social Media Bootcamp E-mail Course and we’ll show you how!
• You need to monitor Social Media to protect your reputation – Set up some Google Alerts either through e-mail or an RSS Feedreader to monitor mentions of your Agency
• Use your Social Media Presence – Your Social Media Presence is like a muscle, if you don’t use it then it will never get strong and may very well become dystrophic
• Be responsive in Social Media – Whether it be by e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, or on your own blog be sure to respond to accusations and negative comments the same as you would the positive. Be transparent, even if it includes telling them that you will get back to them… just make sure that you actually follow up on it
• Provide value in your Social Media – Make sure that you are including true factual content and link to it whenever possible

Related articles by Zemanta

• How to Discover the Truth (ariwriter.com)
• The TSA Took Her Child…Or Maybe Not…But the Point… (stirrup-queens.com)
• TSA Releases Video to Clear Itself and Mother Responds (flightwisdom.com)

Two of the most significant issues that I see in the emerging use of social media by emergency responders are trust and authenticity. I have used Twitter to establish business relationships with people that live hundreds and even thousands of miles away from me. Most of these people I have never met in person and I have only had phone calls with a few. Otherwise all of our interaction is by Twitter message, Facebook posts, and email exchanges.

When you establish a social media presence you will begin to develop a community of followers. People follow you because they share your interests, they are curious, they want to be associated with your organization, brand, or personality, or they are simply trying to build a tally. Regardless of their intent I think most of us enter into social media relationship with a belief that the person on the other end of the interaction is who they state they are. Maybe that is naive, but I want to give people the benefit of the doubt that they are authentic.

Although I follow more than 2000 other Twitter users there are probably less than 50 people that I monitor closely. Over the course of time I have learned about their work, families, social activities, stress relievers, and their humor. Like any other clique my small group of Twitter friends that are also paramedics has developed a shared sense of humor and targets for skewering with snarky comments.

The premiere of the NBC show Trauma has been a rich target for EMS professionals using social media. In the days after the Trauma premiere many EMS twitter users mocked the show with fictional tweets about responding to only-possible-on-TV 911 calls. Within our clique the humor and sarcasm was obvious. Unfortunately, non-EMS professionals (users outside the clique) did not recognize the humor and sarcasm and though some of these Tweet messages were true.

The day after Trauma a paramedic wrote, “Dispatched to shortness of breath, prob. 2nd to massive explosion & helo crash. Pulling out the versed calling for helo #LPD #CaptainVersed.”

He used two hashtags – #LPD and #CapatainVersed” – coined by members of the clique that were meaningless to outsiders. As an insider I knew that either the entire tweet was fiction or everything but “shortness of breath” was false. A follower of this paramedic forwarded the Twitter message to a local news reporter. Some quick investigating of the paramedic’s Twitter feed probably would have quickly led any outside reader to conclude a group was having fun mocking the TV show.

The news report followed up on this lead of a developing story by calling the 911 dispatch center for location details. Obviously there was no story. The duped reported alerted the paramedic’s fire chief to the false tweets and asked what action would be taken against the paramedic. Since the paramedic was not working when the Twitter message was sent there was no follow-up action.

I asked this paramedic two questions about the incident:

1) Does your employer offer any guidelines about social media use while on duty? If yes, what are the guidelines? If no, what would you like to see?
“My department does not have any policy, written or verbal, regarding the use of social media. I believe a lot of this could have been avoided if we had some guidance. Use of Facebook or MySpace is not permitted on company computers. Use of Twitter has not been allowed, but when our Community Risk Division requested to set up a Facebook fan page and Twitter account to help our community outreach, the request was denied. Many companies are embracing social media and are seeing results. Emergency Service providers (the agencies) are a little slower to adapt to new media and change. Guidelines for usage on duty should include some form of basic PIO like course. We all forget sometimes the impact a simple little message over any social media can have in the general public. As a public safety provider the general public will take us seriously even when we are sharing an inside joke.”

2) How would you recommend fire/EMS professionals best use social media to share about their work and build relationships?
“EMS, Fire and police can use the social media in many ways to build relationships and network across international borders. I can ask paramedics in the UK, Australia, Canada and Germany questions and get responses within minutes. Twitter specifically has allowed more connections to other providers than any other social media application. As public service providers we all need to keep the sarcasm out of our messages. Any provider that uses social media that can be accessed by the general public should have some basic training in Public Information/Relations. Additionally, have a clear statement that the words are the opinion of the individual and not the company he/she works for nor does the individual represent the company in any way.”

Josh Hanagrane wrote an interesting post at CopyBlogger titled Blogging Is A Dialect: Do You Speak It? While the post is deeply involved with discussion about dialects, language, and that successful blogging = relationships, there is a simple and important point that needs to be understood and more importantly practiced.

Communicate in Social Media using “plain english”.

One of the major directives in the Incident Command System (ICS) is that responders and providers use common terminology or “plain english” in communicating with one another. This practice is meant to avoid misunderstanding while operating with providers from other agencies and possibly other geographical areas areas.

The same can be said about Social Media. While your target audience may understand specialized language, acronyms, and regional slang it is important to remember that they will not be the only ones looking at what you create. Not communicating using common terms will limit the ability for your message to be understood by a broader audience.

Try to keep your Social Media simple and uncomplicated.