Twitter

The United Kingdom’s Northwest Ambulance Service is providing citizens with a ride-a-long experience with paramedics via their Twitter account this week. During this week long endeavor the service’s Twitter feed will focus on a different ambulance crew each day to cover the five counties the agency covers.

Our patient is in labour – could this a be our first ‘tweet’ baby? #nwamb999

— NWAS NHS Trust (@NWAmbulance) January 30, 2012

While citizens are often made aware of the motor vehicle collision or murder victims through traditional media, this provides a way for the service to communicate ALL the different types of calls it handles. By communicating the variety of calls and patients the agency services increases their perceived value in the eyes of the public.

Huge kudos to Northwest Ambulance Service for taking this initiative. What is stopping you from taking this type of campaign directly to your communities?

Have you heard what Washington DC Fire EMS (DCFEMS) have been up to? Their leadership suspended the departments Twitter account (@DCFireEMS) for 22 days.

The account reportedly stopped activity August 30 when the employee responsible for its content went on vacation. The accounts break was extended as the department investigated some of the content that supposedly placed Federal Agencies in “danger”. No specifics on the offending content were offered but Communication Director Lon Walls’ feelings about Twitter were made clear when he said, “Social media is for parties. We ain’t givin’ parties.”

Walls and the department came under intense scrutiny by both new and old media, specifically citing the lack of transparency that Mayor Vince Gray had promised would improve. The account returned to activity September 22, only a day after the suspension had been widely reported across multiple media platforms. However, the account will now be “filtered” with content requiring the approval of Lon Walls.

This situation has a number of issues that can easily be avoided if an agency takes the time to properly plan and implement a social media presence in a responsible manner. Here are a few things to help avoid making those mistakes:

• Have a communications guide for
• Include social media accounts in your communications plan
• Include social media accounts in your Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP)
• Establish a social media team
• Utilize social media in tabletop and full blown drills
• Read our blog considering we’ve already covered all these things!

Don’t let yourself or your agency become a casualty like DC FEMS where your transparency and trustworthiness are called into question by the public.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has unveiled the new National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) that replaces the old color coded Homeland Security Advisory System. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano noted that the color coded system provided “little practical information” when she announced earlier this year that it would be replaced.

NTAS Alerts are being piped out through a number of different channels, including Social Media conduits Twitter and Facebook. The alerts will warn of either an Elevated Threat or an Imminent Threat. Each alert will provide information about the threat including a potential the geographic region, mode of transportation, or critical infrastructure possibly affected by the threat. Additional information where available will include protective actions being taken by authorities and action items that individuals and communities can take to protect themselves and their families in an attempt to help prevent, mitigate or respond to the threat. A long form sample alert can be found here.

Elevated Threats warn of a credible terrorist threat against the United States. These will be the broadest threats with no true specifics.

Imminent Threats warn of a credible, specific, and impending terrorist threat against the United States.

Full alerts can be found posted at DHS.gov/Alerts and there are a number of web resources for developers to display the latest information on their sites.

What do you think of the new National Terrorism Advisory System and its ability to provide information through Social Media channels?

As yet another winter storm descends upon the northeast I prepare myself for monitoring Twitter. Looking through my saved searches I find that I’m monitoring hashtags such as #snopocalypse, #snomageddon, #snomg, #blizzageddon, #winter, #blizzard, and #nycsnow.

That’s quite a few hashtags to monitor for the same event. Sure I can narrow down the tweets by specifying a geo-location through an Advanced Twitter Search, but what about when I need to disseminate information? If I am sending the 87 character message “Blizzard warning is in effect. Please keep the roads clear for emergency vehicles only.” with the above hashtags, I would need 166 characters.

I’m not the only one who has noticed this hashtag dilemma.

There has to be a better way to both monitor and disseminate information using a pre-crisis Hashtag system that can easily be understood by both agency subscribers and agencies themselves. The key is to keep the hashtag as compact as possible to allow room for the message while also relaying vital information. It should be something simple and easy to remember such as…

We’ve already seen this format work with such organic hashtags as #ATLfloods and #NYCsnow. It is a relatively simple format that is easy to remember, has a low character count, and can be easily adaptable to any crisis. So how do we institute this new type of “crisis” hashtag?

We can build organic usage of it the same way we establish our Social Media presence before a crisis occurs, by using it. As trusted sources of information to our subscribers, they will begin to follow our lead. As they begin using it, so will their subscribers, then their subscribers, and so on. While our monitoring practices will undoubtedly still need to be for the wider trends and both geo-targeted as well as open, the ability to deliver an effective message can begin by using an effective hashtag.

Please feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions in the comments…

When we talk about Social Media the conversation inevitable turns to both the good and the bad aspects when using Twitter to provide emergency notifications. We covered emergency notifications in a past episode of our award deserving podcast, and much of what we said then still holds true now. The true key to any emergency notification system is to use everything in the toolbox that is available and not rely on one specific passive outlet or another.

It is important for every agency to remember that Twitter, although it is a form of micro-blogging, is used as a tool for conversation. The way a Twitter subscriber, and in certain aspects a Facebook Page subscriber, consumes your content is different than someone who is subscribed to your blog. Their method is more as a passive consumer, so when a crisis unfolds it requires you to become more aggressive in your Social Media usage to get the message out to those subscribers.

How Effective Was This?

We’re going to look at the NYC Office of Emergency Management Twitter stream from @NotifyNYC as an example of how agencies are currently being passive with a tool that requires aggressive use during a crisis. Illustrated is the stream from the recent “Boxing Day Blizzageddon” that struck the city December 26 and December 27:

• There was one Blizzard warning issued December 25th at 19:02
• There were three mass transit messages and one parking regulation message issued December 26th between 12:52 and 22:42
• There were ten messages sent out on December 27:
  • two having to do with parking regulations
  • two with transit delays
  • one roof collapse
  • two fires
  • one warning about carbon monoxide poisoning
  • one requesting citizens to help clear hydrants
• There was one message about parking regulations, one message about a power outage, and two messages about the same 3-alarm fire sent out December 28
• Finally there were four messages sent out December 29 but only one of them had to do with abandoned cars in the roadway and a method to report them

That is a total of 15 messages sent out during a 48+ hour event. If we consider that the average Twitter user subscribes to 20-50 other Twitter users (who may or may not be very active themselves), what are the chances of those 15 messages reaching the audience needed when it is sent only once during those 48 hours? The chances are probably very slim.

How Could It Have Been More Effective?

So how can we use Twitter to be more effective with the audience we are trying to reach? Consider some of the following tactics and tools:

• Schedule Tweets: Use a tool like CoTweet or HootSuite to schedule warning messages to go out at intervals. The Blizzard warning could have easily been scheduled to have been sent out once every 4 hours for a 24 hour period which would have led into the actual event
• Repeat The Tweet: There is no hard and fast rule that says that you can’t repeat a Tweet. While it is not a recommended practice for marketers, for Emergency Managers sending messages through a “pull” system the process can, and definitely should, be different during a crisis. Consider hourly updates on the situation as a good starting interval
• Promote Relevant Blog Postings: Take the window of opportunity before the event to provide links to relevant blog postings that are already available, as a refresher to your community
• Listen To The Problem And Provide Solutions In A Timely Manner: It is important to have a situational awareness of what is going on around you. The morning of December 27 you would have been hard pressed to have NOT heard about abandoned cars in roadways from Twitter or for that matter the media outlets, and that is really when the message about calling 311 should have gone out. Be sure to monitor and listen both Social Media and the traditional media channels for a better “big” picture view and share the solutions to the issues being reported in a timely fashion
• Pls RT: It won’t hurt to ask your subscribers to help spread the message. Once they do, also don’t forget to thank them!

And remember…

• Just Because A Tweet Can Have 140 Characters Doesn’t Mean It Has To: Yes you are limited to 140 characters, but don’t feel the need to use each and every one. For that matter, keep messages that you want to see re-tweeted down to around 70 characters

While it is important to use your Social Media presence before a crisis occurs, it is also important to remember that during the crisis you should be ramping its use up to match the response of your agency.

What else could be done, during a crisis, to effectively get the message out using Social Media? Please feel free to share in the comments below

Recently Twitter made some announcements that are meant to better shape the development focus of its future. One of those announcements was posted on their blog where they made it clear that Twitter is no longer just a micro-blogging service, but rather a communication platform. One result of this change was their internal development of applications, including a mobile client that is available for both iPhone and Android OS smart phones. Besides the fact that this is now the “official” Twitter client for Android, you’re probably wondering what could make it so different from the TwiDroid or Seesmic mobile clients. The truth is, there are quite a few differences!

Functionality & Usability

The home screen is absolutely incredible, and animated! The top level menu breaks the app into the six primary components of the Twitter service: Tweets, Mentions, Direct Messages, Lists, Retweets, and your Profile. Additionally, the home screen animation gives you a glimpse into the Trending Topics list that is easily accessible with an onscreen page flip motion, or for the specific topic a simple tap on it will bring you to a results page.

Sending a tweet is extremely easy, with the input box designed specifically to sit atop the onscreen keyboard without covering over any functionality. This is a small but often overlooked detail that Twitter has addressed, and it’s that type of extra effort spent on the details of the user interface that really sets this app apart as you’ll see from the next feature I’m about to talk about…

Share It All & Push It Good

Twitter has seemingly always played host in a semi-symbiotic relationship with Facebook. Over the years Facebook has adopted many of Twitter‘s practices such as the News Feed that was derived from the Twitter Timeline, vanity URLs for their user profiles to mimic Twitter‘s user profiles, and of course using the at sign (@) to initiate user tagging in Status Updates similar to Twitter‘s user inspired Reply feature.

In the Android app, Twitter finally has the opportunity to “borrow” back with the cornerstone Facebook tenet of sharing. Depending on the other apps installed on your phone, the Twitter app will allow you to share a tweet via G-Mail, Facebook, SMS Messaging, Google Buzz, and ironically itself. Sharing a tweet via the application provides a message formatted like this:

David Konig (@davidkonig) has shared a Tweet with you:

“cnnbrk: Severe weather kills 4 in Ohio. http://on.cnn.com/cEC33d”
–http://www.twitter.com/cnnbrk/status/15561566108

In addition to this sharing capability, the Twitter app also provides built in push notifications. You can set the refresh interval and whether you want to be notified of all tweets, replies, and/or direct messages. Push notification is really a must have in todays communication applications, and surprisingly the Twitter app does not provide this feature on its iPhone version.

Not For The Power User

The one drawback of the Twitter app for Android is that it only allows you to use the application with one account. While this may not seem like a huge drawback to personal users, it does severely limit its use for the power user who is a member of a Social Media Team. Power users will probably still find Seesmic the best app for managing multiple Twitter accounts, but still have the option of using the Twitter app functionality for the account that would benefit most from it.

In Conclusion

The Twitter built application for Android is feature packed and blinged out beyond any other third party developed app. This is an example of building on a vision by merging the gamut of their features into a usable mobile extension of their core service. We can only hope that other services will follow suit for ALL the mobile platforms.

This is a guest post by Michelle Mangen.

HootSuite is one of the many great third-party applications you can use to schedule tweets for future dates and times. It also allows you to connect multiple Twitter accounts, including co-workers and agencies who want to give you access to their accounts.

Perfecting Scheduled Tweets

One of the first times I scheduled Tweets in HootSuite I utilized their “drafts” feature and had originally intended that in the following weeks I would only have to change the bit.ly link as well as the specific info for that particular week. Brilliant plan, right?

About 30 minutes into Week Two of scheduling tweets I found multiple flaws in my previously “brilliant plan.” The pre-saved drafts didn’t go as well as I had intended due to the fact that HootSuite saves drafts alphabetically – which isn’t the most efficient when you have updates you want to send to Twitter on a specific day and time.  Additionally if you have drafts for multiple accounts it is not easy to determine which tweets are for which account. It quickly became apparent to me that a Plan B had to be devised when I realized that I would have probably been just as fast by typing entirely new updates from scratch vs. using the drafts.

Plan B: Scheduled Tweets in 10 minutes

A better option than using the drafts feature is to type the tweets into a Word document. Now I can schedule a total of 14 tweets (7 for two different accounts) in 10 minutes by utilizing the following tactics to publicize two different podcasts:

• Change specific info for the upcoming week’s tweets (guest names, episodes, etc.)
• Create a new bit.ly link and then using the Find & Replace option I can update all instances of the previous week’s bit.ly link to the upcoming week’s bit.ly link in a mere matter of seconds.
• Copy and paste the tweets into HootSuite; Select the desired date and time; Select appropriate Twitter accounts; Save and Done!

By simply adjusting the method in which the drafts were saved (using a Word document instead of HootSuite’s option) the invested time was reduced from over 30 minutes to just under 10 minutes per week.

My philosophy for both myself and for the clients I serve is that a minute saved is a minute that can be “used” elsewhere so I am continually hyper-vigilant in “tweaking” my procedures and utilizing other programs to achieve the same end result in the least amount of time possible.

What are some of your favorite shortcuts to get more social media done in less time?

Connect with Michelle on Twitter (@MMangen) or at her website Your Virtual Assistant.

One of the driving forces behind my investment in a smart phone was none other than Twitter. I’ve always seen value in the service, but I never felt as though I was getting ALL of the potential value because I was stuck with a clunky Nextel i560. Now with my Droid, I’ve been able to finally experience the full power of Twitter.

All I can say is wow. Now I know what ALL of the buzz has been about.

But my experience isn’t just about the actual Twitter service. For that matter any experience on the internet is owed to both the service and the application used to gain access to it. I think my personal Twitter revolution is owed largely in part to the Seesmic Twitter app for Droid that I’ve recently started using.

Before Seesmic, I was using the popular Twidroid application. I even paid for the full version because I wanted to be able to manage multiple accounts ( my personal @DavidKonig and the @PIOSMTraining account to name two) and I wanted to be able to save searches.

Seesmic is really a great application with a variety of features and choices. You can edit your notification settings (all Tweets, Mentions, or Direct Messages), your refresh rates (5 minutes, 10 minutes, etc), and of course your notification tone.

The display is a typical Twitter timeline that you unfortunately can’t customize with colors, but it features hot key filters at the top for @ Replies, Private Messages, and your own profile. Seesmic will also allow you to save searches for quick one push searches of either hashtags or locations. I found this to be an incredibly valuable feature, especially when I was at a conference that used a hashtag.

But what I really enjoy about Seesmic is that it integrates seamlessly into the Share feature of the Droid. This allows you to share not just text but also photos through your choice of Twitter photo sites and making distribution of those scene photos very very easy.

Even though Twitter‘s recent purchase of Tweetie signals the service itself is entering into the app market, I still think that for Droid users the Seesmic application is the most powerful choice with the best price… free.

You can download the Seesmic App through the Android Marketplace

Twitter has made it fairly easy to monitor using Twitter search features and hashtags.

1. Browse to Search.Twitter.com

2. Enter the word or phrase you want to search, such as your department name.

3. When the search is completed look in the upper right of the page for “Feed for This Query” That is the RSS feed for the search query.

4. Copy the RSS into your RSS reader.

5. Anytime the query appears in a tweet it will update the feed.

I would suggest monitoring for these terms:

• Department name
• Department name acronym
• Chief’s name
• Your name
• City name and key words like fire, police, ambulance, emergency

Use the results of your searches to refine the queries and select new queries.

Also use the Advanced Twitter search features to refine your search to your area. For example, searching NYFD might pull tweets from around the world. Narrowing the search to within 5 miles of zip code 10001 will limit the tweets to those coming from Manhattan and the surrounding Burroughs.

Today the 2010 Technology Entertainment Design (TED) Conference will begin in Long Beach, California. While I’m excited to see what this year’s conference will offer, I just wanted to rehash one of my favorite talks from last year.

This is Twitter co-founder Evan Williams on listening to Twitter users:

Five things to take away from this talk:

• Great ideas won’t always start out as the main goal
• The simplest idea can be changed and adapted by the user for their needs if you are flexible enough
• Tradional uses of mediums (and the media) for broadcasting is changing to be more of a conversation
• Real time delivery is a huge 2009 trend and continues to be a 2010 theme as well
• The first part of communication that will matter is being able to listen effectively

Are you listening effectively? If so, then how are you doing it? If you aren’t, then what is stopping you?