social media: lessons learned

Social Media: Lessons Learned

Francisco Sánchez, Jr.Brian Murray

Social Media Explained

A Brief History

• Began in early 2011• Drive traffic to new

readyharris.org site• Engage public and raise

awareness• Build a follower base for future

emergencies

• Every organization’s experience is unique. • Trial and error rules!• Demographics will determine

impact.• Every failure is a learning

experience.

Our Best Practices

Our Best Practices

Master One Site FIRST

• All social media sites are not the same. Start with one site and then add others as you learn from your successes and failures.

Our Best Practices

Have a clear purpose

• Do not start a Pinterest page just because everyone else has one.

• Decide what you need a social media site to do for you.

Write for the Medium

• Be concise and be clear• Use simple language and avoid

jargon• Proofread. And then proofread

again• Cover one topic per post

Our Best Practices

Engage the Public

• Ask questions that encourage replies• Respond as appropriate• Use challenges and contests to add

followers• Take advantage of “National fill in

the blank Weeks”

Our Best Practices

Our Best Practices

Be Visual

• Use videos, photos, maps and graphs to help tell your story.

• You are competing with other posts on someone’s wall. Stand out!

Our Best Practices

Integrate SM with other efforts

• Social media is an information appetizer.

• Link users to additional information from your website and partners.

Our Best Practices

Every post should contain one important takeaway

• Confine your posts to the most important nugget of information & direct users elsewhere for more in-depth information.

Our Best Practices

Measure your impact & adapt• Pay for HootSuite or another service

to get insight into your social media penetration.

• Adapt your messaging to what you learn.

Our Best Practices

Promote Your Friends• “Like” and “Follow” partner

organizations and encourage them to do the same.

• Retweet or Share their posts.• Think of social media as a virtual JIC:

Work smart and accomplish your communication goals with less effort.

Our Best Practices

Respond• When the public posts of comments on your

sites, respond!• The public is a valuable source of on-the-

ground intelligence.• Questions need to be answered and bad

information needs to be corrected.• You will get cranks. Do not get into fights

online...ever. • Protect your image. Delete offensive posts.

Automate• Use TwitterFeed or a similar service to

put information directly into your Twitter and Facebook feeds.

• This saves loads of time, communicates while you sleep and allows you to focus on the big picture.

Our Best Practices

Our Best Practices

Twitter: #Hashtag, #Hashtag, #Hashtag!• Adding searchable hashtags helps

maximize your reach! • Hashtags = retweets

Standard Operating Procedures

JIC Standard Operating Procedures - Template

• TYPE OF MESSAGE

• EVENT

• WEBSITE TEXT

• SOCIALMEDIA

• APPROVALS

• DISTRIBUTION

Travis County Labor Day Weekend Fires AAR -

December 2011

“Social media network needs to

established, especially for those

who are not tuned in to their television

sets, and do not have land line phones.”

Travis County OEM. After Action Report: Labor Day Weekend Fires

https://www.llis.dhs.gov/docdetails/details.do?contentID=54495

February 4, 2011Winter Weather Event

• 375,000 website hits

• 19,810 Facebook page views

September 13, 2011 George Bush Park Fire

• Began sending information in the late afternoon

• Posts from residents helped us determine direct threats to the public, road closures as well as control rumors

• Information was verified and then sent back out to the public through web & social media

• #1 trending topic on Twitter that night.

January 9, 2012Severe Thunderstorm Event

• 3-6” Rainfall over Harris County & region

• Tornado touchdowns in Ft. Bend & Galveston counties

• 29 Tweets/RTs with consistent hashtagging

• 11 Facebook posts• 10 RJIC posts - nearly

all information from partners

• #1 trending topic on Twitter that day in Harris County.

• A Houston Dairy Queen owner asked Ponderosa VFD to move its engine because of parking concerns.

This “non-story” pushed #kony2012 off of #1 on Twitter for 36 hours on March 21, 2012.

Social Media is Beyond Your Control

Social Media is Fickle

Questions?