Our goal here at PIOSocialMediaTraining.com is very clear. We want to empower Agencies to effectively engage in the creation of Social Media to achieve their own unique goals. In that vein we have given you 5 Reasons and Methods to Develop and Distribute Social Media, shown you that Social Media is cheap, demonstrated how to use Twitter to spark conversation, provided a checklist method for authoring blog posts, and we’ve shared with you how the TSA effectively handled negative Social Media allegations amongst other things.

Today is not about tutorials, best practices, or the latest tech revolutionizing the world we live in.

Today I get evangelical and am going to pontificate about the absolute one duty that ALL agencies share and warrants the use of Social Media.

The Golden Rule

The Social Media PIO Golden Rule: Agencies must empower themselves to be able to tell their own stories

Having the media misrepresent or incorrectly communicate an agency’s story is a very common occurrence. The most common errors are usually minor (a name misspelled, a photo miscaptioned) but can be annoying none the less. It is also not uncommon for the media to use an unflattering angle when reporting on our stories and that is not how we originally wanted our stories told. Finally, the media also commonly omits information and details that can provide the public with a fuller understanding of the story. Traditionally, we have had to tailor our style to the media’s tendency for 250 word stories and 10 second sound bytes, however this is not something we need to continue to deal with.

We need to stop relying on the media to tell our stories the way they interpret them to our communities. I know some people will consider this “media” bashing but the truth about the media’s state of business is evident more and more every day. When we hear about media outlets such as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer stopping their print editions (after a 146 year history of doing so) in favor of online publishing, it is an omen. It is a sign that the current media model is at their own resource “Level Zero” and we need to be prepared to fill in the gap in order to continue communications with our communities.

We need to tell our stories to our communities ourselves. Now is truly the time to do so since the proliferation of Social Media will allow us to do that with few barriers in our way. We can do far better for the well being of our agencies by effectively communicating our own value, explaining our own views, and becoming a trusted source of information to the communities we serve than allowing the media to continue their stranglehold on being able to craft the public’s perception of our services.

The Case Of Pittsburgh EMS

Last week a story from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania made the national news after being featured by the local media and making the local Social Media circuits. The story centered around the death of a man who had called 911 10 times over 30 hours but no ambulance was able to reach him during the February 5-6 snowstorm.

Initial news reports included harsh criticism of the Pittsburgh EMS Paramedics failure to respond to the home and was spurred on by the city’s own Public Safety Director Michael Huss condemning the responding Paramedics for not walking the 1/4 mile to the home through the snow.

Now that more time has passed there have been more facts revealed surrounding the conditions during “Snowmageddon”:

• The city lost 25% of their EMS resources when ambulances became stuck in the snow for hours (1)
• Many streets were not plowed because drivers were diverted from their routes to try and rescue vehicles (2)
• Multiple ambulance crews were dispatched to the call and all encountered the same accessibility problem (1)
• The responding Paramedics were actually canceled off the calls by their dispatcher (3, 4)
• Response delays grew worse as the day and call volume wore on (4)

Although these new facts indicate that it was not personnel failure but more of a system wide failure, the damage to the reputation and morale of Pittsburgh EMS is done. A search at Social Mention gives us an idea of the extent of that damage:

Those results from Social Mention indicate an agency in a reputation crisis that doesn’t have to be. Pittsburgh EMS maintains a static website but has no discernible Social Media presence. The sentiment ratio of 1:1 indicates that for every 1 positive statement about the service, there is 1 negative statement. This sort of sentiment is a failure for any Agency, but it could have been different had Pittsburgh EMS had a Social Media presence.

With either a blog, or a Twitter account, or a Facebook Fan Page they could have issued Public Service Announcements to educate the community to better prepare for the storm. More importantly they could have stopped treating their community as a liability and treated them more as an asset by communicating the realistic expectations of delays in service, the challenges they were facing, and the best way to assist for mutual success.

While there is no denying that they had the sentinel event of a system failure, the Social Media presence could have been used to tell their own stories of success before, during, and after the “Snowmageddon” event. I find it hard to believe that there was nothing but failures over the course of those two days, but unless Pittsburgh EMS is willing to tell their own stories we’ll most likely never hear about those successes.

In Conclusion

Social Media is not going to disappear tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that. It is here to stay and for that matter continues to gain momentum into being integrated into our society. Agencies that haven’t started using it are going to find themselves at a huge disadvantage when they find themselves needing it most.

To sum it up, here are the top 5 reasons that your agency should start using Social Media today:

• Empower yourself to tell your own stories directly to the community
• Share your agency’s successes with the community
• Communicate your agency’s value to the community
• Inform and educate your community to help transform them into assets instead of liabilities
• Have effective conversations with your community in order to find ways to improve your service

Need help getting started? Sign-up for our Free E-mail Bootcamp that will give you a better understanding of Social Media and actionable items to get you started.

Finally, I am going to make a special offer to Chief Robert McCaughan of Pittsburgh EMS. I will be more than happy to donate my time and services to help Pittburgh EMS set up a Social Media Presence so that they can tell their own story, share their successes, better prepare their communities, and transform that community from a liability into an asset for the organization. If you’re ready to take that step Chief, contact us.

About the author

Dave Konig wrote 205 articles on this blog.

Dave has been involved in Social Media since 2005 through the current major services and some defunct ones as well. During this time he has been able to hone the craft by testing out the theories of others, creating his own philosophies, and gathering a better understanding of the mediums involved through networking and most importantly actual practice.

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