Archive for October, 2009

The Association of Air Medical Services (AAMS) informed NBC Chairmen Mr. Jeff Gaspin by letter that AAMS has asked its members to protest the television show Trauma by using social media. The AAMS president writes:

“Beginning today, we will challenge our members of to “tweet” via Twitter and post messages on Facebook every time an inappropriate, unethical or inaccurate portrayal of EMS is depicted on Trauma. And we will continue to do so until either your producers “get it right” – or the series goes off the air.”

Download the letter from October 5, 2009
View AAMS Facebook group
View AAMS Twitter page

Emergency responders, their employers, and professional associations have lots of potential uses for social media. When mobilizing your colleagues and or members to participate in a social media campaign ensure the following:

1. Numbers to make a meaningful impact. AAMS has 199 Twitter followers. A tiny fraction of Twitter users. For a national organization wanting to impact an international corporation that is probably not enough. On the other hand if a local fire department had 199 local followers that might be enough to garner support for local initiatives to improve service or prevent fires.

2. Reach of members to spread message. Even with a small number of members social media could give AAMS tremendous impact. Imagine if one of their followers was @LanceArmstrong or @Oprah (each with more than 2 million followers). A retweet from Lance or Oprah could make the AAMS campaign worthy of national entertainment news. Are you following and being followed back by key social media influencers that have thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of followers?

3. Solve problems that make people’s lives better. People use the internet to make their lives better. They do that through connecting, learning, sharing, and or purchasing. We are surrounded by media messages that tell us what is wrong in the world and what individuals, organizations, and parties are against. Reading this letter from the AAMS is my first significant interaction with AAMS. I now know what they are against – a television show, but I have no idea what they are for and what they might have to offer me as an EMS professional to make my life better.

How is your agency or member organization using social media to connect, teach, learn, or share? How would you mobilize a social media campaign to teach what you are about?

Adding video is a simple and low cost way to quickly add multimedia content to your Agency’s social media hub. By far the easiest method is to copy embed code from an existing YouTube video and embed that video into the HTML programming view of your blog post. Below the text portion of this post is a screencast that shows how to copy, customize, resize, and embed video code from a YouTube video. Since many public service and government agencies, like FEMA and American Red Cross, have YouTube channels you can find plenty of videos with emergency preparedness and injury prevention themes that would likely fit the mission of your agency social media hub.

Creating your own videos allows you to select the content best suited for your audience, localize the information for your agency, and conclude with a specific call to action for your viewers. There are many methods to capture video. You can use a smartphone, laptop with built-in web cam, stand along web cam that connects through a USB port, or a handheld video camera. I use the Flip Camcorder (Amazon link). A video camera is an essential item for your social media PIO jump kit. Your organization may already own a video camera that allows data transfer to a computer and upload to a video sharing site.

These are my five tips for beginning social media PIOs to produce video:

1. Shoot lots of video. Get familiar with your camera by using it to shoot video. Bring the camera to training programs, public events, and actual incidents. Practice videoing subjects from different distances, angles, and view points. You may never post much of this video, but by shooting and watching the video you will learn a lot about basic camera operation, composition, audio pick-up capability, scene lighting, camera stabilization, and media transfer.

2. Learn to edit as you shoot. When you playback a patient assessment and treatment simulation you will realize there are lots of pauses where not much is happening. Edit as you shoot by pausing the recorder during low moments in the action. Even in a fully involved structure fire or automobile extrication there will be significant lulls in the action. It is better to have a few minutes of really great action packed content than an overwhelming amount of footage with long runs of low activity. Learn to anticipate action and be ready to film that action where and when it is occurring. Shooting small bursts of activity (three to ten seconds at a time) will result in a video that keeps a good pace for viewer interest.

3. Stabilize the camera. Hand held video cameras are small – some no bigger than a deck of cards. Make sure image stabilization is enabled if available or learn to hold the camera steady. I hold my Flip camera with two hands much like I hold an SLR camera. If the video subject is not moving use a tripod. For subjects talking straight to camera a tripod is essential. Holding a digital camera at arm’s length might work for a still shot, but it is no good for video.

4. Frame the subject like a filmmaker. Next time you watch a favorite movie pay attention to the film technique. Rarely does the actor fully occupy the center of the screen. Instead the actor is one-third of the screen. Lighting is not directed only to the front like a simple point and shoot camera flash. Instead it is diffuse and either fills the scene or only highlights important aspects of the scene. When I film indoors I use as much light as possible to fill the space. Many of the lights are not in the scene but simply light the scene. Also on simple video cameras the light balance will set on the brightest object. If the background has something very bright, like a computer screen, that will throw off lighting of the entire scene.

5. Pay attention to the backdrop. Before I start filming I always scan the entire scene that will be captured on film with my eyes and ears. Listen for noises that may be distracting to viewers – like exhaust fans, music, appliances, doors opening and closing. To the degree you can control those noises do so. Look for items that you might be accustomed to seeing everyday but would look out of place in a video without the context. For example, if you are filming a straight to camera shot at your desk do you want the artwork from your children in the video?

Are you using video for your Agency Social Media Hub? Share your video production tips in the comments area. Do you have a video you would like us to critique or share? Contact us with the link and we will take a look and offer suggestions for improvements on future video shoots.

October 4-10, 2009 is Fire Prevention Week. Emergency response agencies should combine traditional fire prevention week activities – station tours, school visits, press releases, and public service announcements with social media efforts. This screencast showcases the efforts by Montgomery County Fire Rescue Service to use social media tools – blogger, Facebook, and Twitter – to talk about Fire Prevention and to bring attention to its traditional fire prevention week activities.

Links for MCFRS Social Media Sites:
Hub – MCFRS Online
Spoke – @mcfrs
Spoke – Facebook page

Facebook is the current king of the Social Network heap with over 300 million active users. What is a more important statistic for agency PIOs to consider is that more than 2 billion pieces of content are shared each week. This content includes links to websites, Facebook Notes, and blog posts.

So the big question is how do you introduce your agency’s message in the form of content into that sharing trend?

Profiles vs. Fan Pages

A presence on Facebook can come in one of three forms. The gateway for all users onto Facebook is the Facebook Personal Profile. Designed for individuals, this provides users with the full ability to add and distribute content to those who link their accounts as friends and it offers the widest range of application options. Unfortunately quite a few agencies make the mistake of trying to establish themselves with a Personal Profile.

Best practice indicates that agencies and organizations are better served by setting up a Facebook Fan Page. These Pages offer a unique feature set of analytics that PIOs will find valuable in their Social Media efforts and are designed for agencies and organizations as opposed to individuals.

If your agency is already on Facebook using a Personal Profile, then you’re doing it wrong.

How To Set-Up Your Fan Page

Setting up your Facebook Fan Page is actually really pretty easy to do.

• Go to an established Facebook Fan Page such as PIO Social Media Training
• Scroll down to Create A Page For My Business and click on it
• You will now need to classify your organization. Some categories you can classify it under the Local setting is Health Service, Professional Service, or Other Service. By using the Brand, Product, or Organization setting you can categorize it as Government, Non-Profit, and Professional Service
• Once you select your categorization it’s time to enter the name of your organization. I recommend entering the full corporate name of the organization and not use acronyms or abbreviations
• Finally, you need to affirm that you are in fact authorized to create this Facebook Fan Page. The Facebook TOS is very clear that only an “official representative of this brand, organization, or person” is allowed to create a fan page. Creating an unauthorized Facebook Fan Page can lead to the suspension of your entire Facebook account, including your Facebook Personal Profile

Once you click on the Create Page button, you’ll be taken to your now blank page that has not yet been made public. Click on Edit Page on the left column to make changes:

• Settings – Country Restrictions and Age Restrictions will stop anyone who is in a country you list or anyone under a certain age from viewing your page. There really is no reason to restrict other users based in other countries from viewing your page, so I wouldn’t change any of these defaults. The last setting is Published Status and should be listed as Unpublished until you have made all the changes you want before publishing your page



• Wall Settings – Your biggest appearance defining option is Default View For Wall. This can be switched from Only Posts By Page to Posts By Page And Fans, which allows whatever your fans post to your wall to be integrated with your posts. While it may be nice in theory to allow your Fans to have their posts on the front tab, I don’t recommend it and I’m sure the producers of NBC‘s Trauma probably wish their Page Administrator hadn’t allowed it either. The option Default Landing Tab For Everyone Else is a useful feature if you want your non-fans to see a different Tab first, like a Welcome Page. If your not going to create something unique, leave it set on the familiarity of the Wall



• Application Settings – There are 6 default applications that are already loaded onto your Facebook Fan Page. While each application has it’s own settings available for the action it is to perform, they all have Application Settings that determine how the application is displayed on the page and what it is permitted to do when interacting with your Page‘s News Feed. The two options under Profile are Box and Tab. Box will add a small box with the application content either under a Boxes tab or you can move it under the Wall tab. Tab will display the application on an individual tab and it’s content on it’s own page
• Upload Your Photo – Using the Photo Application, add a photo or a logo that you want to have representing your Agency on the page and in the News Feed
• Publish Your Page – Once you’ve made all your setting selections, filled in the blanks, and uploaded a photo it is time to Publish your Facebook Page
• Share Your Page – Be sure to share your page both through posting it to your profile as well as personal messages

3 Must Have Applications For Your Facebook Fan Page

Networked Blogs – While Facebook Notes is the default application to pull in your blog posts via RSS Feeds and works quite well, Networked Blogs does it better on three levels.

• First, when it pulls the feed it also will pull in a thumbnail of any images in the post. This visual addition will make your post stand out in the newsfeed of your subscribers
• Second, it will give you the ability to post it automatically or to post it manually to either your Fan Page News Feed or your Personal News Feed. Notes are automatically posted
• Finally, when your readers click on the post from Networked Blogs in their feed they will actually be taken to your blog. Clicking on a Note will take you to an imported version of your post on the Facebook platform

FBML – This is a really simple application that can pack alot of power. It allows you to place a box or a new tab on your Facebook Page that you can render either HTML or FBML for customized content. Some uses for this application include a custom splash landing page, using Feedburner‘s headline animator, or providing a subscription form for e-mail subscribers.

Twitter – If you are setting up a presence on Facebook then chances are you are also setting one up on Twitter. The Twitter application will allow you to update your Twitter status simply by updating your Facebook status. One stop status updating is one of the benefits of using the same type of media across multiple networks.

Further information on the use of Facebook by government agencies you can check out and become a fan of Facebook Government

To get the most out of this series it is highly recommended that you sign up for our Free E-Mail Social Media Bootcamp if you haven’t done so already since we will be referencing techniques and terms introduced in that program

One of the benefits of Social Media is the ability for people to share it. On Twitter sharing is done through “Re-tweeting” someone else’s message. A re-tweet usually takes the format of RT @YourUserName And Then Your Message. So how do you make your message more re-tweet friendly?

Here are 7 simple tips:

• Make it useful – Solve a problem or link to a problem’s solution
• Keep it compact – You only have 140 characters to work with so message size matters. Ideally a re-tweetable message is no more than 70 characters long so that it can be re-tweeted from those that re-tweet you
• Keep it clear – Avoid the big words and keep your message clear
• Use URL Shorteners – Using a URL shortener like bit.ly or ow.ly helps save on the characters
• Make it actionable – Give someone an action through either a link or even ask them for the re-tweet
• Limit Hashtags – The more something has hashtags or irrelevant @names the less likely it is to get re-tweeted
• Replicate what works – Pictures of kittens get retweeted for their cuteness, shock videos get retweeted for their shockingness, and list posts get retweeted for their usefulness

BONUS TIP:

• Thank those who re-tweet you

Did this post help you? How about Re-Tweeting it?