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

The term RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. It is a file format used to deliver information from websites and pages that get updated on a regular basis. An RSS file, most often referred to as a “feed”, can contain either a brief text summary or the entire content generated from a website.

RSS “feeds” are “subscribed” to using a specialized piece of software or website most often referred to as a “reader”. Once subscribed to an RSS feed, your reader will automatically pull updates from the website that publishes the RSS feed, whenever new content is released. Therein lies the real benefit of RSS. This allows people to stay up to date with their favorite content providers without having to actually visit them in a browser and they are easily notified when new content is available.

Here is a video to help explain RSS in “plain english”:

Social Media provides benefits and opportunities both online and in the offline world. While there is a definite opportunity for Social Media to help promote already existing conferences and events, it also provides the opportunity to initiate gatherings on its own.

While there are multiple opportunities for “Meet-ups” and “Tweet-ups” during live gatherings already planned, you may be asking yourself just what benefit is there in attending these live events (such as Foursquare Day (4/16)) for you and your organization?

5 Reasons Live Events Improve Your Online Social Media

Here are 5 ways that attending or hosting live events can improve the effectiveness of your online Social Media:

• Create New Relationships – One of the biggest challenges to overcome about creating Social Media is letting people know that you are creating Social Media. What better place to do this than in person with other Social Media Creators and, more importantly, Social Media Consumers
• Expand Existing Relationships – As much as you may think you know someone from their online postings, chances are that you don’t know all there is about them to know. On a similar note, chances are that your community doesn’t necessarily know all there is for them to know about your organization. A live event is a great opportunity to expand both your knowledge base as well as theirs
• Deepen the Conversation – While Social Media is a great platform for conversation, an in person meeting can help deepen those conversations and may provide you an opportunity to spark new ones
• Build Trust – Since most agencies will opt for the agency insignia or logo, a live event gives you the opportunity to reveal the face/faces behind the agency which will help build trust amongst your community in your message
• Provides You With Content – You should definitely use the opportunity of a live event to gather content for your Social Media Presence. Photos and a blog post summarizing the event and highlighting other members of your community who you met at the event is a great way to engage others

Live events are another tool in the toolbox to help enhance and improve your Social Media.

Having the right analytics tracker is an important element of running an agency hub. Being able to understand what those analytics are actually saying is a necessary skill.

While the vast majority of content creators will look at the top 3 analytics (Visitors, PageViews, and Keywords) I submit to you that there are actually 9 website analytics that truly matter as Key Point Indicators (KPI) and are vital to your success in managing your hub.

Visitors

Why It’s Important: This is the actual number of visits or “hits” your site has received. It is one of the primary indicators of your site’s reach and popularity.

New Visitors vs. Returning Visitors

Why It’s Important: This is an indicator as to how many new people are coming to your site. While every agency would like to see a loyal following, you’ll never be able to spread your message without growing your base.

Pageviews

Why It’s Important: Is your site a one view wonder or is it compelling to your visitors? Chances are that if your pageviews are equal to your visits then you have stale content elsewhere or potential navigational issues.

Time On Site

Why It’s Important: Are you attracting readers or scanners? The lower the Time On Site is, the greater the chances are that your content is not actually being consumed but simply scanned.

Referring Sites

Why It’s Important: It is always good to see who is sending you traffic, and more importantly in what context is that traffic coming over from. The site that is sending you traffic may be someone that you may want to partner with in the future or perhaps even add to a list of links that you develop. Contextually, is the traffic coming from a positive article about your organization or is it coming from a negative rant about service rendered? It’s important to know when there is both the positive and the negative out there about your organization.

Keywords

Why It’s Important: This is how the search engines are categorizing your site. Are the keywords relevant and accurate? If not, then it’s time to comb over your content and polish it up.

Visitor Geolocation

Why It’s Important: Are your visits from the locale you serve, or are they from everywhere but where you would want them to be? This is an important indicator as to whether or not you are reaching your geolocation target audience

Content Overview

Why It’s Important: This gives you an idea as to what is popular and what is not. Repeat the popular types of content more often, while tweaking the less popular content to make it

Average Pageviews Per Visit

Why It’s Important: This is an indicator as to how “sticky” or useful your content is. Unlike a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich, the stickier your content is the better off you will be when it comes to being thought of as an authority or a trusted source of information.

Measuring success. While the old analytics of monitoring website “hits” is hard to apply to the new concepts of Social Media, they can still provide you with important information regarding your agency hub. It’s important to have a reliable service that will accurately measure these important statistics.

Google Analytics

This full service analytics package from Google relies on an inserted Javascript snippet to be placed somewhere in your code. The service offers e-mailable PDF reports, long term statistics tracking, AdSense integration, and a slew of analytic variables. For WordPress blogs there are a number of plugins that will assist you in the code insertion as well as in dashboard tracking.

Service Cost: Free

Sitemeter

This service analytics package also relies on an inserted Javascript snippet to be placed somewhere in your code. The inserted code also inserts a small graphic that will link back to your analytics account so that your statistics are viewable if you leave them open to the public when you sign up.

Service Cost: Free for the Basic limited service, $6.95 per month for a Premium account

Woopra

This service analytics package relies on a Javascript snippet that makes regular server calls to the Woopra servers to allow for live visitor tracking in the downloadable desktop client. A truly live view of your site is valuable during sentinel events. The service has also been experimenting with a Live Chat feature, allowing instant two way communication with visitors. While the free package does not promote long term research, the value of live monitoring (and the possibility of live communication with visitors) can outweigh that slight inconvenience.

Service Cost: Free for up to 30,000 pageviews within a 30 day period, tiered pricing for higher traffic sites starting at $4.95 a month up to $179.95 a month

Related articles by Zemanta

• Web Analytics Showdown: Woopra vs. Google Analytics (businessbloggingtips.com)
• John Poz on Woopra, Blogging and Social Analytics (siliconangle.net)
• Tracking Blog Stats is Fundamental (mt-soft.com.ar)

One of the questions I seem to get quite a bit is how hard is it to write a blog post?

The short answer is that it is not hard at all.

The long answer is that, like a lot of things we do in public safety or public health, it is a process that you can become more proficient at the more you do it. Over the years I’ve refined my process with both major and minor changes that have optimized my work flow.

Here is the checklist style process that I am currently using for your reference with critical actions bolded:

Post Size-Up

• Determine the story that you want to tell in the post
• Title it
• Consider all the elements (photos, videos, etc.) you want to use to tell that story
• Estimate the appearance of the post on the spokes you want to use to spread it

Initial Blogging

• Write the post without regard for anything other than the essentials of your idea
• Once the essentials are down, go back and fill in additional detail where needed

Focused Editing

• Go back to your initial writing and begin editing
• Focus on the paragraph flow
• Read your post out loud. How does it actually sound? Edit the rough spots
• Focus on correct spelling and grammar usage
• Read your post out loud again. Does it sound the way you want your reader to hear it?
• Format and start placing your elements in your post including Strong and Emphasis tags to enhance your search engine optimization
• Read through your post to make sure none of your added elements break your flow
• Double check the proper spelling of names
• Double check links
• Does your title still work with the finished product? If not, re-title it
• Finally either publish or schedule your post for publishing

Published Examination

• Does your post appear the way you thought it would? If not, fix it
• Check all your links to make sure they are working
• Check your RSS Feed in your feed reader to make sure the post a) appears and b) still functions
• Is everything working? If not, fix whatever needs fixing. If everything’s perfect, have a large French Vanilla Ice Coffee light with cream and with four Splendas

While I find this to be the most effective and optimal process for myself, it may not be for you. Don’t be afraid to change something to make it work better from your perspective, but keep in mind the bolded critical actions you should take before, during, and after writing each blog post to assure yourself of high quality, authoritative, and trusted content.

There is a popular saying in the blogosphere, “Content is king.” While in many instances this is very true, what can also be said truthfully is that “Design is queen.”

Having a good set of design elements and creating an aesthetically pleasing experience for the end user is not always the highest priority of content creators. Still, it is not something that should be overlooked because the truth is that the quality of a design is an initial indicator of an the content creator’s credibility as an authority on the subject matter.

Here is a list of some simple tips when designing the look and defining the usability of your Agency Hub:

Design Elements

• Colors
• Content
• Font
• Layout
• Navigation
• Usability

Colors

• Learn the basics of color theory
• In order to determine compatible colors, reference a color wheel
• Your primary content area should have a light color background with a dark color font
• Your hyperlinks should be a different color than the rest of your text
• Blue is considered the best color for links (it is what Google and the vast majority of the web uses)

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Content

• The primary content area should be in the center of the screen
• Subscription methods to dynamic content, either RSS Feeds or E-Mails, should be visible “above the fold”
• Your content should not look like an ad
• Your main content area and sidebar content areas should be clearly defined
• There should be slight style differences between the main content area and the sidebar content area
• Images in content should be aligned and buffered with white space

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Font

• Choose a basic font (ex. Times News Roman, Arial) that is compatible with all browsers and mobile devices for content
• The font size should be a minimum of 12 points to be sure it is readable on all display types
• When using specialized fonts (ex. Igloo, Airwolf) for titles convert the titles into graphics

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Layout

• Main content areas should be the widest container on the page
• Sidebar content should not extend past the main content area
• Sidebar content should have a different background color than the main content area, even if it is just a shade or two different
• Layout should be scaled to a 1024X768 screen resolution, but be mindful that there are both bigger and smaller resolutions being used so centering your site will help maintain the focus on your main content area
• Featured content should be in a clearly marked area above the fold

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Navigation

• Navigation for the entire site should be visible “above the fold”
• Navigation should maintain the same location throughout the site layout
• Navigation should be easily readable as both active and visited links
• Navigation should be clear and concise
• If possible, utilize “breadcrumbs” in your navigation menu so users know exactly where they are on your site

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Usability

• Your site should be “browser friendly” and not coded for one specific browser or another
• It is important to understand that both Javascript and Flash elements may not be viewable by all users
• While Flash based sites are fancy and eye appealing, mobile users, in all likelihood, will not be able to view anything since the majority of mobile platforms currently do not support Flash
• Form labels on your site should be placed above the field
• Blue is considered the best color for links (it is what Google and the vast majority of the web uses)
• White space between elements helps declutter a site and improves viewer understanding of content differences
• The majority of users are “ad blind” and will not only not “see” an ad but also anything that looks like an ad so be sure that your content is not too similar to an ad

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Yesterday morning my Twitter stream lit up with breaking news reports of an explosion at a Power Plant under construction in Connecticut. In this short screen cast I show how a Google Search and Advanced Twitter Search can be used to gather real-time incident intelligence from people at or near the incident.

When initiating my search I made a critical error. See if you can catch it.

This technique could be useful to:

• Hospitals preparing to receive casualties
• Administrators trying to determine how many off-duty personnel to call in
• Emergency management officials making decisions about opening a county or regional IC
• Selecting which shelters to open or close

How else could you use Google search, Google Alerts, and Advanced Twitter Search for social media intelligence gathering?

One of the most valuable aspects of Social Media is its ability to spread a message both near and far. In order to effectively do that an agency needs to create a Social Media message their consumers can easily become passionate about.

The 5 Basics For A Passionate Message

The real key in creating passionate Social Media consumers is in the message. There are 5 basics that your overall message should follow in order to foster a sense of passion amongst your community…

Target Your Message To Your Community’s Interests

Just as the easiest way to reach an audience is to go where they already are, the easiest way to get your community interested in your message is to tailor it to their interests with something of unique use to them. It is important to understand the community perspective, be able to ignite their passion, and at the same time be both useful and entertaining in order to get your message out there.

Action Item: Consider what the goal of your message is and make a list of 5-10 specific interests from the viewpoint of your community. Identify the broadest one and tailor your message to that one specifically first before addressing any others.

For the #SMR2009 contest we understood that our audience was interested in Social Media itself. Therefore we tailored our message and the event itself around that interest.

Create A Clear Quick Action In Your Message

Both ease and convenience of action is vital. Most media consumers today do not have a long attention span and have even less patience when being asked to do something that is diverting them from what they want to be doing. Your message can be moving, fill them with a need to act, and light the passion in their hearts… but it will be for nothing if they are then blocked from decisively acting quickly. By removing as many barriers you can there is an increase in a chance of success of meeting your goal, whatever it may be.

Action Item: Define a clear action that you want your message to direct to. Make sure it is an action of relative ease and preferably one they perform without navigating away from the message.

For the #SMR2009 contest we created a clear path of action for both nominations and voting. We included specific platform instructions and accommodations for Twitter since we know that a large portion of our audience utilizes it, and made the actions as easy as possible by providing both a sample nomination via Twitter and an in page nomination form.

Utilize Multiple Media Formats

What media formats will work best for your message? Will it be in an entirely written format or will you be able to use images as well? What about video and audio? Whatever formats you choose to use, be sure that they are also embeddable and usable by others. Allowing others who are passionate about your message to embed a video, audio, graphic, or even the written word on their own will only help you to reach a wider audience. This is your ultimate goal, and enabling your passionate consumers to reproduce your efforts is vital.

Action Item: Look at your different spokes and make a note of what offers the ability to embed content as opposed to what does not. Whoever allows embedding, create a piece of media for that platform, and then embed that piece of media as part of your message.

For #SMR2009 we did not use any embeddable media. This was a conscious choice we made because of the wide scope of platforms we were dealing with. You can see this idea in action at the #FCBLOG09 Contest hosted by FireCritic. Towards the bottom of the page he not only is providing graphics for use on other blogs, but he is also providing the HTML code so they can easily cut and paste it.

Centralize Your Goals

So just how much can you really fit into 140 characters? Chances are your message and the call to action will exceed that limitation. This is why either a blog post or a page to direct your community to is vital. A blog post has the advantage of being transmitted via RSS, but a page has an advantage when it comes to long term search engine results.

Action Item: Centralize your message and action onto a page (if you’re blog platform allows pages that is), author a post about it, and link to the page via your other spokes.

For #SMR2009 we had a page with all the rules and forms as well as a blog post with the Quick Rules linking to the page. All of our Twitter and Facebook mentions specifically linked to the page.

Believe In Your Message

Your belief in your message will be evident by the actual effort you put into it. The absolutely worst thing you can ever do is to leave out a step or a stage in limbo. Have a clear cut schedule as to what needs to be done by when, and then stick to that schedule. Worried about unforseen circumstances for a step you may need to manually do? Build yourself a little bit of a cushion but announce that up front in the time table.

Action Item: Use Google Calendar or another time/task keeping tool when planning out your campaign. Be realistic in the planning stages so that your delivery does not falter.

Going into #SMR2009 we had a specific timetable set-up. We were providing 10 days of nominations along with 10 days of voting (we actually provided 12 days of voting but subtracted the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day holidays from the equation) which we initially thought would be enough time to both get the results from the Judges AND privately ask the Finalists for a blurb for the voting page. Due to the high volume (and uber-quality) of the nominations, we extended the judging time but this didn’t allow us to speak to the Finalists prior to the official announcement which still went off on time.

One of the important aspects of a Social Media presence is your ability to measure its effectiveness in achieving your end goal.

Twitter is considered to be the current rock star of Social Media. Having such fame, it will inevitably end up as a potential spoke for your Social Media Hub. It therefore becomes important to be able to measure its effectiveness.

Defining Twitter Success

While most “experts” and “gurus” will say that the key to success in Twitter is having a large number of followers, I’m telling you that isn’t the case. The quality of your followers is much more important than the number of followers you actually have. Sending dynamic messages (with links to articles, photos, etc.) with good content will cause engaged followers to retweet your messages and engage you and your agency in conversation. There is more value in these types of Twitter activities than just sending non-dynamic propaganda.

This becomes evident when you begin looking at these three free analytic tools that will help you determine the effectiveness of your Agency on Twitter:

TweetStats

This is a very simple tool that measures the number of tweets your account sends out on a monthly basis, as well as the density of messages and their times sent over the course of a week. The tool also gives you insight into the top ten users you have retweeted and who have “@” messaged you. While the analytics aren’t deep, this is a great little tool to measure just how much your Agency uses Twitter, and to be able to quickly spot any gaping holes in your Twitter messaging approach.

Twitalyzer

This is a more advanced tool for analyzing your effectiveness on Twitter. Twitalyzer breaks your statistics down into 5 groups: Influence, Signal, Generosity, Velocity, and Clout. Twitalyzer breaks down your activity on Twitter, coupled with the activity of your followers, and is able to develop a better picture of your account than just counting the number of followers you have. Twitalyzer excels as a tool used over time. I would recommend analyzing your Twitter account once a week on a set day, and once a month of analytics has been recorded you can look at the changes in a time based analysis.

Twitter Analyzer

This is by far the prettiest user interface of the bunch. Twitter Analyzer provides you with a slew of statistics including your Popularity and Reach. However the real hidden jewel of the service is showing you the number of your followers who were recently online using Twitter. This is a hugely important statistic to know and understand, because the truth is the number of your overall followers are less important than the number of your engaged followers when you send out a Tweet.