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In the emergency response field, due to our access to patient’s protected health information and concerns about confidentiality, there is a lot of worry from employers about employees blogging about patient encounters that are true or loosely based on the truth. One of the best bloggers in EMS, Medic999, has decided to step away from blogging. While he emphasizes that he has not been asked to stop blogging he senses the pressure building in his organization against social media expression by employees.

Episode 94 of the EMS Garage podcast, the Day Social Media Stood Still, discusses Medic999’s departure from blogging, the implication to others, and the need for employers to clearly state social media policies for on-duty time and off-duty social media conversation. The conversation included some of the top voices in Fire and EMS social media like, Jamie Davis the PodMedic, Tim Noonan the Rogue Medic blogger, Chris Montera host of the EMS Garage and EMS Leadership podcasts, Kyle David Bates host of the First Few Moments podcast, Ted Setla the filmmaker of Level Zero and Chronicles of EMS, Natalie Quebodeaux co-host of the GenMed podcast and blogger, and Justin Schoor the Happy Medic blogger and co-start of the Chronicles of EMS. Hear what these industry leaders have to say about the importance of organizational support for social media and the potential positive impact on our communities.

Near the end of the EMS Garage episode 94 I shared a special discount code to receive a free copy of the PIOSocialMediaTraining.com ebook – Social Media Policies for First Responder Agencies.

Does your organization have a social media policy?

Does your blog put your job at risk?

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We have a new episode of our award deserving podcast ready for you to listen to and enjoy! This episode Greg and Dave are joined by Mark Basnight of The Crisis Communications Network. Here us discuss:

• The Social Media 4 Responders Conference
• September 13 and 14 2010 at the Hilton Charlotte University Place in Charlotte, North Carolina
• Specifically created with the Responder in mind
• Law enforcement, emergency medical services, fire service, emergency management, public health, disaster & crisis aid, and public utilities can all benefit from a Social Media presence
• Featuring hands on workshops designed to jump start a Social Media Presence
• Traditional conferences expect you to learn by listening, SM4Responders will help you to learn by doing
• The AT&T announcement that they were ending the $30 a month unlimited iPad data plan is calling into question the iPad’s ability to remain dominant in the newly rejuvenated tablet market as numerous Android OS and Windows Mobile tablets are on the verge of being announced
• Bambuser is an application that lets you stream live video from your smart phone
• Social media efforts for the Deepwater Horizon BP Oil Spill include a hub site, Twitter account, and a Facebook page
• If you ever needed an example as to why you need to create a Social Media presence before the crisis, the unofficial, unauthorized, and hugely popular BPGlobalPR Twitter account should be evidence enough

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As the oil leak at the BP Deepwater Horizon site continues into day 43, there is a now an application available for both the iPhone and Android OS phones to help assist collecting data and sharing it to aid the cleanup and recovery efforts underway along the coastal regions affected by the oil.

Oil Reporter is a pretty simple idea. We want people to share what they see and to allow that information to be shared with everyone. We believe that if people share what they see and that information can be placed on a map, it can help organizations and communities with their response efforts. – OilReporter.org About Page

Oil Reporter takes a page from Twitter’s base question of “What are you doing?” and changes it into “What do you see?” The application provides a very basic description box for collecting a text narrative about where you are and what you are seeing as it pertains to the areas under siege by the crude oil. The application takes advantage of the multiple media creation tools that smart phones provide and promotes the attachment of photos of your location as a visual reference for your report. For those who are text shy, the application allows you to utilize a slider to rate how much oil you see. The slider asks you to rank the sight of oil from 0 (open water) to 10 (thick oil).

The application does not just ask for information about actual oil on the shores, but also about the area wildlife and what effect the oil is having on their living conditions. There is a drop down box asking for the status of the area’s wildlife and a second slider asking for the reporter to document the effect the oil is having on the area’s wetlands. Both of these more focused inquiries address the main concerns of the citizenry and can become crucial in directing clean up efforts as the situation continues to unfold.

Oil Reporter not only takes information, but reciprocates the exchange by providing an easy option to view their Twitter feed from within the application and they also provide easy access to volunteer opportunities in the four states thus far affected by the oil spill.

Overall, this crowdsourcing initiative via application is utilizing the citizenry instead of considering them as liabilities, which is something that FEMA has been pushing emergency managers towards.

Oil Reporter was created through the joint efforts of Intridea, Appcelerator, and Crisis Commons

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We have a new episode of our award deserving podcast ready to download and enjoy! This episode Greg and Dave go over the current available mobile operating systems and what they can offer Social Media Empowered PIOs. Here us discuss:

• The different choices of mobile operating systems out there now and coming out soon
• The third party application options for each system
• The difference between 3G and wifi
• Creating your own “apps” for the mobile platform versus having a mobile browser friendly option
• Five applications every empowered Social Media PIO needs on their phone:
  • • An e-mail application
    • A Twitter client
    • A Facebook application
    • A Photo sharing application
    • A Wifi Finder
• 68% of business internet traffic goes to Facebook
• Dave was quoted at the Cops 2.0 blog in regards to creating Social Media in plain english

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We have a new episode of our award deserving podcast ready to download and enjoy! This episode Dave and Greg are joined by Emergency Communication Network’s Customer Relationship Manager Mike Ellis (@EmergCommNetwrk) and Vice President David DiGiacomo to discuss:

• Mass notification systems – what they are and how they are used before, during, and after an event
• The importance of having a toolbox as opposed to relying on one form of communication
• Mass notification systems and how they integrate with Social Media as opposed to using Social Media as a mass notification system
• Just to clarify, it was Dave Konig who was shouting down the use of Twitter as the sole component of an emergency notification system due to its unreliability



• Using Social Media to increase awareness of an emergency notification system
• The value of “push” mass notification systems
• Getting past the notification “blindness”
• Missing children
• Tornado alerts
• Rumor control
• Targeting notification to a geographic area or risk group
• Tips on geo-locating fellow Social Media users

For more information on the CodeRED™ emergency notification system or any of Emergency Communication Network’s offerings you can visit them on the web, read their blog, or call them at 866-939-0911

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This is a commonly posed question: What are the consequences for an employee posting something negative about their employer on a social networking site like My Space, Facebook, or Twitter?

This is how I respond:

Monitor and Catch the Positive

What do you do if you catch employees posting something positive on Twitter or Facebook about being a paramedic, their co-workers, their patients, or their employer? I work with a lot of paramedics that like their job and are very proud of being an EMS professional. Their pride is infectious. They share it with co-workers, patients, other emergency responders, nurses, and physicians. They talk about the challenges and rewards of the job freely and without consequence.

You likely have some feedback mechanisms in place to listen to your employees that are saying good things about their employer. Your medical director or a triage nurse might mention it during a committee meeting. An on-coming crew might say something like “that last crew sure does a great job cleaning the rig at the end of their shift.” Before looking and listening for the negative conversations make sure you are hearing, encouraging, and applauding the positive employee use of social media.

Most conversations about employee use of social networks, social media content sites, and the web generally imply that employee use is negative and nefarious. From my anecdotal observation most of my co-workers spend their at work down time pursuing their own interests – playing games, learning more about a favorite hobby, or – gasp – working on becoming a better EMS professional. It is my suspicion that most social networking use on or off duty ignores or is simply indifferent to work. If you are skeptical start monitoring and measuring what and why employees are saying on social networks. On Facebook the ration of Farmville posting to work related posting is probably 99 to 1 based on my informal observation.

Working Hard or Hardly Working

Complaining about work is as old as work itself. Have you previously had rules or consequences for saying something negative about work or a co-worker while in a bar, bowling alley, or grocery store? People openly, with or without social networks, complain about work and all things work related on and off duty. I have endured hours listening to complaining workers. How I wish I could simply remove their rants from my Facebook news feed instead of being trapped to listen in the front of the ambulance.

Creating a policy means training on the policy and then enforcement of the policy. Training and monitoring the actual work of paramedics (driving, assessing patients, treating patients, writing documentation) is a pretty substantial task. Are you sure you want to add Facebook and Twitter monitoring?

Social Media Policy

A policy should cover the do’s and don’ts of social networking use with concrete examples that, at best, lead to positive and professional use and, at worst, lead to neutral indifference. David and I have recorded these poscasts about social media policies:

1. Create and Click Responsibly
2. Social Media Policies Interview with HR Professional Roberta Jackson

We also have an ebook on crafting a social media policy.

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We have a new episode of our bi-monthly podcast for your listening enjoyment! In our fifth lucky audio podcast you can hear us discuss:

• A Paramedic was terminated for creating an online animated video and sharing it on Facebook.
  • Agencies, no matter the size, need to have a policy in place.
  • Policies need to focus upon behaviors and not services. The fact Xtranormal was used for this video is a prime example of why policies need to be written that focus on behaviors.
  • Education on the policy is critical and can easily be intertwined with customer service training.
  • Responders need to create responsibly, “own your own words”, and understand your actions may have unforeseen repercussions.
• Phishing attacks across social networks are a common occurrence that users can help curb.
  • Phishing messages are usually generic and random.
  • Phishing messages include a URL shortened link that when clicked will send you to a malicious site that will steal your user name and passwords for your accounts from your browser cookies.
  • Click responsibly to avoid losing control of your account and potentially damaging your reputation.

Dave will be attending the EMS Today Conference on Friday March 5 in Baltimore, Maryland. If you’re attending the conference you can connect with him in person by sending him a message via Twitter @DavidKonig and you can monitor the activity of other attendees through the hashtag #EMSToday

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We have a new episode of our bi-monthly podcast for your listening enjoyment. This time, Greg flies solo with guest Lauri Stevens (@lawscomm) discussing the dual roles of Law Enforcement in Social Media and helping departments make the experience better for their constituents with The Social Media In Law Enforcement (SMILE) Conference (@SMILEConference) April 7-9 in Washington DC.

In our third audio podcast you can hear us discuss:

• The SMILE Conference is broken down into two distinct themes on three days:
  • Wednesday is a hands-on day covering both the fundamentals of services such as Twitter and Facebook, but also expanding into more advanced third-party applications and other services such as LinkedIn.
  • Thursday covers reputation management, community building, and outreach.
  • Friday is dealing with investigative techniques using Social Media.
• It is important to plan and understand the goals you want to achieve in Social Media so that you have a direction to go.
• More and more individual law enforcement officers are partaking in Social Media as opposed to waiting for the official agency PIO.
• Using novel methods of connecting with the citizenry both utilizing Social Media and in the actual community is essential to success.
• We need to shine the spotlight on the successes of Law Enforcement in Social Media instead of focusing on failures.

You can visit Lauri’s blog at Connected Cops and find out more about The SMILE Conference

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We have a new episode of our bi-monthly podcast for your listening enjoyment. This time, it’s all about the good and bad of Facebook for agencies.

In our third audio podcast you can hear us discuss:

• Facebook presents a unique opportunity to get your message to those you want to reach because with over 350 million users, the chances that your target audience is already on Facebook is very good
• Facebook personal accounts, groups, and pages
• Personal accounts are good for individuals
• Groups can be public or private and are good for specialized communication
• Pages are public and are great for agencies

The importance of utilizing Facebook Apps to customize the experience

The importance of RSS Feeds when creating Social Media

The need to not just build your Social Media presence, but also to use it

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Mark Basnight of the Charlotte Fire Department joins us for the second episode of the PIOSocialMedaTraining.com podcast which is now available for your listening pleasure!

In our second audio podcast you can hear us discuss:

• The view from the #SMR2009 Winner’s Circle with Charlotte Fire Department
• How the contest gave Charlotte FD a vehicle to spotlight their Social Media efforts
• How stakeholders in the day-to-day success of the Charlotte FD responded
• Building trust and relationships is vital
• For agencies looking to start in Social Media, start slow and experiment with personal accounts
• The Social Media Response in Haiti
• The first interview out of Haiti was via Skype which is the same service we use to record the podcast
• The first video and images out of Haiti were via Twitter and Facebook
• Fundraising efforts spread throughout Social Media in many forms
• Social Media can be the source of unsubstantiated rumors
• Agencies need to engage in Social Media and define themselves as trusted sources of information
• Agencies engaged in Social Media have the power to stop the wheels of the rumor mill if established as trusted sources of information

Connect with Mark and The Charlotte Fire Department on Twitter and Facebook

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