Tutorials

A common feature for the Hubs of Emergency Response Agency websites is badges and buttons that link to the agency spokes. Remember some of the spokes you can link to from your hub include:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Flickr

Twitter has a set of buttons available as a link from the Twitter Goodies page. Adding a Twitter button is as simple as copying the HTML code associated with button and pasting it into a widget, sidebar, post, or page.

View this screencast for a quick demonstration on how I added the Twitter button to this post.

Once your Agency has established a blog, it is important to create fresh content so that its growth does not stagnate. Otherwise it eventually will suffer from dystrophy and become useless.

There are many different ideas and theories regarding ideal posting frequency and the posting day/time. This is something you can decide best practice by performing an analysis of a blog’s analytics. As a simple guideline for any Agency to use before such a study is conducted, our recommendation is a minimum 3-4 posts a week published between 7:00am and 9:00am local time for general posts. Breaking news and alerts should be posted as promptly as possible.

Here are 7 types of blog posts agencies can create to fulfill that type of obligation:

• News – Share the latest news from inside your organization as well as current trending issues in the community and how it can potentially affect your organization
• Educational – Every month and week of the year has awareness campaigns built around them, as the Safety Observances 2010 list and 2010 Health Observance Calendar shows. You can use these calendars to prepare content in advance and spread awareness through your community
• Celebratory – Celebrating jobs well done, agency successes, and highlighting positive effects is a great way to communicate value to your community
• Promotional – Promote a new or long standing service, safety program, or event by providing an in depth look using both words and images
• Preparational – Prepare both the residents and responders of your community for potential disasters that are specific for your region through blog posts on a seasonal cycle
• Alerts – Alert your responders and community to impending disasters, such as a potentially damaging storm front or budget cutting legislation that will negatively affect service delivery
• Linking – Share links to news items, situation updates, and important information that will affect your community

Whether you are using your blog as a hub for your online presence or not, keeping it well updated and a resource for your community is a must. Utilizing these simple blog post types should be able to keep you blogging all year long!

Which blog post type (from above or your own) do you think works best for your agency?

Download – Safety Observances 2010

Social media is a dynamic and rapidly changing field. I encourage social media PIOs to learn from social media users and advocates in other sectors and industries. An easy way to do this is to friend some of the best social media advocates on Twitter. Then use Tweetdeck to set-up a column for this group of select users. A few people I follow and recommend to others include:

@AmberCadabra
@chrisbrogan
@copybloger
@garyvee
@GuyKawasaki
@JimKukral
@problogger
@Skydiver

I have followed @WendyMaynard for many months now and applied many of her marketing and blogging ideas to my web projects. She also teaches clients about social media. She has shared a presentation, Social Media Boot Camp, that I think is excellent and advocates many of the same concepts we discuss in the social media PIO boot camp. I also think her use of PowerPoint is outstanding. You are likely to learn a lot by viewing her slide deck.

Josh Hanagrane wrote an interesting post at CopyBlogger titled Blogging Is A Dialect: Do You Speak It? While the post is deeply involved with discussion about dialects, language, and that successful blogging = relationships, there is a simple and important point that needs to be understood and more importantly practiced.

Communicate in Social Media using “plain english”.

One of the major directives in the Incident Command System (ICS) is that responders and providers use common terminology or “plain english” in communicating with one another. This practice is meant to avoid misunderstanding while operating with providers from other agencies and possibly other geographical areas areas.

The same can be said about Social Media. While your target audience may understand specialized language, acronyms, and regional slang it is important to remember that they will not be the only ones looking at what you create. Not communicating using common terms will limit the ability for your message to be understood by a broader audience.

Try to keep your Social Media simple and uncomplicated.

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

Having been adopted by such celebrities as Oprah, Ashton Kutcher, and Shaquille O’Neal has made Twitter into the current rockstar of the Social Media services. Even with all this exposure, there are still two questions that are constantly being asked regarding the service…

What Is Twitter?

Twitter is a service that delivers text based messages 140 characters at a time. When it was originally founded and made public in 2006 (11 months before the 2007 release of the popular iPhone) the service bridged the gap of communication between the web and mobile cell users using the Short Message Service (SMS) feature of their phones. It was the 140 character limit that enabled this compatibility.

In a few short months, Twitter became the defacto watercooler for the Internet. It allowed users to update their “status” that their friends would subscribe to, and vice versa. It enables users to hold conversations utilizing the at symbol (@) before the Twitter Username indicating a reply, thread conversations using the pound symbol (#), and re-broadcast a message using RT @TwitterUsername (message).

One of the things that has endeared users to Twitter is it’s history of feature updates based on how the users actually utilize the service. Replying, re-tweeting, and threading by hashtag all began through user habits and were added into the feature set of the service later on.

How Can I Use Twitter Effectively?

Here are some initial actions for you to take in using Twitter:

• Sign up for a Twitter Account
• Add yourself to the WeFollow Directory using tags appropriate for your Agency:
  • EMS Tweeters
  • Firefighting Tweeters
  • Police Tweeters
  • Hospital Tweeters
  • Emergency Management Tweeters
  • Emergency Preparedness Tweeters
    
• Subscribe to the top 25 Tweeters in your categories and your location
• Import the RSS Feed from your Hub into Twitter using Twitter Feed to drive traffic back to your Hub
• Follow @smpiotraining and send us a message

After you have established your Twitter presence it is important to interact with the community by engaging in conversation and providing relevant content. If someone asks a question that you know the answer then go right ahead and answer it. Ask questions yourself to spark conversations and build content for your Hub from them.

@EveryDayEMSTips is constantly sparking conversation by asking questions and then delivering the answers in unique and valuable content to their readers not necessarily involved with Twitter

Twitter Resources

• The Twitter Blog – The official blog by the Twitter team
• Twitter Status – Status of the service features and availability
• TwiTip – Blog chock full of Twitter Tips
• Twitter Tips, Tricks, and Tweets – A paperback guide to Twitter
• Facebook’s Twitter App – a Twitter application for your Facebook account

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

Your Agency’s Social Media Hub is far and away the most important aspect of your Social Media Presence since all of your other efforts will direct your audience back to this central location.

Blogger As A Hub

Blogger is the free platform for blogging owned by Google. It recently reached it’s 10 year anniversary, having launched in 1999, and it continues to be a relevant platform in the blogosphere through continued innovation and improvements.

Using Blogger as your Social Media Hub is as good an option as you can get for the price – free. It offers the required ability to provide dynamic content, and it does so right on the front page. The service has implemented a Label system, similar to what other blogging platforms refer to as Categories or Tags. Since it will reside on the reliable servers of Google, bandwidth is not an issue should you receive an inordinate amount of traffic in a short period of time.

Most importantly, it will allow you to use your own custom domain name. Allowing the use of your own domain name by Blogger is a huge win for you from both a marketability and search engine optimization standpoint.

Although the LAFD News & Information Blog that is hosted on Blogger isn’t the Agency’s Hub (LAFD.org is) it still is designed to function like one with links to all of the Agency Spokes

How Difficult Is Customization?

Blogger‘s customization options have greatly improved over the years. There are a large number of basic templates to choose from and you no longer need to know advanced HTML to make changes to your template since they introduced widgetized themes:

Another huge improvement over the years is Blogger‘s template color management system. Instead of having to hand edit and code a CSS file, Blogger offers a simple scrolling menu option with a live preview:

This makes changing the colors of your blog on Blogger quite literally the easiest of all the other platforms.

Award winning Cross Blog is hosted on Blogger and, as we’ve already pointed out, have customized their template extensively to connect with their audience on a personal level therefore enhancing the effectiveness of their communication

How Do I Start A Blogger Blog?

Starting a blog on Blogger is really easy:

You can either sign in with your Google Account or create an account to create a blog. Of course this is just the first step, because after you establish the blog now the real work comes in creating reliable media in the format of your choice.

Anyone can have a blog. What you do with the blog is really what matters most.

The San Bernardino City Fire Department uses Blogger to provide information formatted for the media about fire calls in the city using a standard template that also links out to their Social Media Spokes which makes them a trusted source of information across multiple media platforms

Blogger Platform Resources

Here are some resources for using the Blogger Platform:

• Blogger Buzz – The Official Blogger Blog
• Blogger Status – Service issues are announced here
• How To Back Up Your Blogger Blog – A headache saving tutorial
• K2 WordPress Theme For Blogger – A popular WordPress Theme cloned for use on the Blogger Platform
• Free Templates – If it’s free… it may just be for me

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

Let’s be honest, times are tough.

Unemployment is up, tax revenue down, there are more patients while fewer have insurance and budgets have had to be cut. With all of this going on your Chief, Director, or Administrator probably scoffs at the idea of establishing a Social Media Presence while being so financially strapped.

The truth is that if you have a computer with an internet connection, the cost to set up an effective Social Media Presence is $25 or less per year.

This series of blog posts will cover the following topics:

• Using Blogger As Your Social Media Hub
• Using WordPress As Your Social Media Hub
• Using Facebook Fan Pages To Tie Your Audience To Your Hub
• Using Twitter To Spark Discussion
• Using MySpace As A Spoke
• Becoming A Trusted Source Of Information
• What You Actually Spend The $25 On

Empower yourself and your Agency with Social Media using these no-frills and minimal cost methods that can fit into the budget of ANY agency.

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

YouTube videos are the new press release. A chief, mayor, secretary, governor, or president can speak directly to its community or stakeholder with a YouTube video. Videos can be recorded with not much more than a simple camera (we like the Flip UltraHD Camcorder
), a tripod, a clean backdrop, and some standard props like a lectern and/or American flag.

In this short video Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano asks emergency officials, responders, and leaders to provide input to the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR). You can and should record videos for your organization’s social media hub. Follow these tips:

1) Outline or script what you plan to say.
2) Speak in a natural and conversational tone.
3) Focus on just a couple of key points.
4) Start and finish with a call to action.
5) Invite stakeholders to participate at a deeper level.

Each hour more than twenty (20) hours of video is uploaded to YouTube. In that same hour 38,000 photos are uploaded to the Flickr photo sharing service. Given the massive amount of social media (audio, video, images, and blog posts) available to internet users how do you get your content to stand-out?

First, understand your audience. As a Social Media PIO your audience is not the entire internet. Instead your target includes local media, citizens in your response area, employees or employment candidates. Make sure you are creating compelling content for your target audience.

Second, reach out and connect with your target audience. Search for bloggers in your community. Begin to read their blogs, comment on their posts, and eventually ask if they will help share your social media content with their audience. Follow other Twitter users in your city or regional response area. Most Twitter users will follow you back. Then make sure you are posting links to your social media content in twitter.

Third, correctly title and tag content so visitors can determine if it is relevant to them without actually viewing it. “Safety Tips” is too vague for a video title. “Home Safety Tips for Kids in Parsnip County” defines your target audience – parents in Parsnip county. Tags help users that are searching by keywords. For example, if you are posting pictures of vehicle extrication practice to your Flickr account add tags like – rescue, extrication, fire department name, firefighter, paramedic, vehicle crash.

Fourth, unless you have a compelling reason not to allow others to embed and or link to your photos, videos, and blog posts from social networking sites like Facebook. That allows for exponential increases in views. For example, the Social Media PIO has 100 Facebook Friends. One of his friends shares a video from your blog about a bicycle safety program in his Facebook stream to his 500 Facebook friends. If a few of those people share that link with their Facebook friends your audience has increased exponentially.

Finally, encourage sharing with widgets that can be added to a blog like “Share This” or “Add This.”

Tell us about your social media content in the comments section so we can share it with our audience.

Read more about the staggering statistical difference between physical storage and digital media storage.