How to Use Social Media in a Disaster: GovSec 2012

Knowing how to use social media in a disaster is an essential part of every professional’s training. I’ll be speaking on this topic at GovSec 2012, which will be held April 2-4 at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC.

My session, April 4, 2012 from 10:30 am - 11:30 am, will provide hands-on guidance on how to integrate social media into your disaster recovery communications plan. We are going to review real-world scenarios, from the October 2011 Connecticut snowstorm to the 2011-2012 LA arson fires, where social media played a crucial role. We’ll discuss how we, as government public servants, can use social media to help us meet our mission: educating the public, disseminating critical information in a rapid, readable and easily understood format that our audiences embrace, calming fears and dispelling rumors. Several popular social media sites will be reviewed for their strengths and weaknesses, along with new, less known sites that we feel might be of value for disaster recovery and emergency response efforts.

My goal is for attendees to leave with a clear understanding of the value of integrating social media into their disaster recovery and emergency response communications plans. We will be focused on:

• How to evaluate different social media sites for broadness of reach, targeting of specific audiences, and message delivery speed.
  
  


• How to shape the message to best fit the social media site being used and the audience targeted.




• How to prioritize and integrate social media goals and specific sites being used, to ensure the overall communications plan gets implemented in a timely and effective manner, with energies focused for maximum results, especially in the crucial first few days immediately following a disaster or emergency.

If you have any comments or suggestions for my speaking topic, I’d love to hear from you! Please let me know at slevine@adviceunlimited.net.

This is a must-attend event for those who want to learn best practices in using social media in a disaster, and figure out how to integrate these practices into your organization as appropriate. To learn more about the conference and register, please visit https://www.xpressreg.net/register/GOVS042/start.asp -- if you have five or more attendees from the same organization, you’re eligible for the group rate! I look forward to seeing you there!

Marketing Technology Effectively to the Government

Are you looking to expand your customer base? Have you looked at the government market?

Even with today’s budget cuts, the government might be a good customer, if you provide a solution that can help enterprise organizations improve efficiency and productivity. Particularly with the current focus on innovation and cost-saving initiatives going on in how the government runs its business, IT is particularly well positioned to increase its government sales – if the government knows you exist, and that your solution can truly help them serve their mission.

The government is aggressively looking for better value, and those who make the buying decisions are actively and effectively using technology to improve efficiencies, performance and productivity in many different areas, from the battlefield and homeland security initiatives to running the 'business' of government - human resources, payroll, ordering office equipment. Particularly in support of homeland security initiatives, technology has moved to the center stage of many discussions, seen as the enabler of many of the capabilities required to support the current ongoing efforts, particularly in today’s economic downturn and tightening budgets.

Do you have a product or service that could help these government initiatives improve efficiency and performance? If so, do they know you exist?

The government marketplace has always been regarded as one with high barrier to entry - the perception was that you need to make a significant commitment of resources and manpower, there are a myriad of rules and regulations to comply with, that it's an extremely complex market to break into, requiring a long time before reaping a significant return on investment. Most of these perceptions are accurate - but the payoff is significant. And if you truly have a technology that meets current needs, the government wants to find you. So how do you break through?

First and foremost, the government marketplace is still spending serious money on information technology. While major cuts are inevitable across the government in the next few years, including the Defense Department, companies providing IT services can still expect a healthy level of spending in fiscal 2012, even if it’s not the same level as earlier in the decade, according to Deltek, a leading government market intelligence firm.

“We rode through most of the earlier part of the decade with unprecedented growth, especially in the IT segment. We were looking at 11 [percent] to 12 percent year-over-year growth,” said Brian Haney, vice president for client services at Deltek, speaking at Deltek’s FedFocus 2012 conference November 3, 2011. “For the last two years we’ve been relatively flat…we’re seeing about two to three years of flat spending. That said, we still are seeing the spending of significant dollars in this particular space. IT is still a healthy market." Haney said the fact that money is being spent on IT in new and unique ways means there are still market opportunities. “Even though overall discretionary spending is flat, growth in IT spending is outpacing the overall average as IT is looked to as an enabler,” Haney said.

However, along with this spending is a heightened sense of fiscal responsibility. Throughout the government — military and civilian alike — executives are under pressure to do more with less. There are transforming initiatives at work across all agencies, and a real push for transparency and accountability that expects technology to be a key element for success.

Within this environment, the government marketplace can be a valuable customer if you understand its unique requirements, deliver real value-add, and market yourself appropriately. The key to help you scale the barrier to entry is focused, strategic public relations – the best bang for the buck in any marketing arsenal – and networking-focused, relationship-building marketing.

Questions? Please contact me at slevine@adviceunlimited.net – we’d love to help you engage with this important customer!

Improve Your Communications at ALI’s February Conference

Want to learn more about using social media in your government communications efforts? I’ll be speaking at the Advanced Learning Institute’s Social Media for Government Communications conference in DC and they’ve got a great line-up of excellent topics and speakers! The conference is scheduled for February 13-16 and will give you the latest practical advice on using new media and traditional communication tools to help you engage your citizens.

If you attend, you’ll have 19 innovative speakers, who will share their strategies and experiences in using social media as well as traditional communication channels. The conference will consist of over 25 hours of intense, interactive learning, with an abundance of networking opportunities. The knowledge you gain will help you ensure that you get the right information to the right people, efficiently and effectively. The conference also provides the opportunity to customize your learning by participating in unique and interactive workshop sessions that will enable you to practice and apply your skills in peer groups – you’ll receive strategies and tactics that you can immediately begin to implement in your own organization.

I’ll be leading one of these interactive workshops – my session will be held on Thursday, February 16 from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. (continental breakfast will be provided at 8:00 a.m. for the morning workshop attendees). In my workshop, we’ll focus on how to strategically drive public outreach using traditional and new media, as well as innovative communication tools and techniques. With the current budget cuts, it’s essential that your organization is able to educate your constituents on what you do, how you serve, and how your work positively impacts the world. The session will help you to acquire the strategies you need to accomplish this goal.

Do you have any comments or suggestions on my workshop topic? Please let me know at slevine@adviceunlimited.net; I’d love to hear from you!

If you’re serious about improving your communications by using new media and traditional channels to enhance transparency and drive meaningful results, this is a must-attend event. If you register by December 14th, you can get the early bird rate and save $400! To learn more about the conference and register, please visit http://www.aliconferences.com/conf/social_media_gov_comm0212/register.htm. I look forward to seeing you there!

Strategic Planning Sessions Help Shape Successful Campaigns

As we near the end of the calendar year, an Advice Unlimited tradition is holding a strategic planning session with each of our clients. We gather the key decisionmakers in a room and review this past year’s successes and efforts that were especially effective in communicating our message and aligning with the client’s goals and objectives. And we look forward, reviewing our goals and objectives and tweaking as appropriate. We talk about what we need to do to ensure we stay on track with the goals and objectives, and provide suggestions for ramping efforts up a notch, and taking things to the next level.

Many of you go through similar exercises this time of year, right? And if not, you should seriously think about adding a strategic planning session to your list of things to do before Dec. 31.

For those who are new at this but recognize the importance of this type of exercise, we offer what we call a Brainfry. It is truly that – an intensive, 4-hour session that will fry your brain – and deliver new ideas, new insights, and good solid direction for moving forward. The effort is focused around this intensive, 4-hour session with your top decisionmakers, incorporating a SWOT Analysis and facilitated by me.

We integrate key elements of that intensive discussion with our expertise and market knowledge to create a positioning paper for your organization, which is delivered to you within three weeks from the Brainfry. This helps focus you on what you want to present to your customers, how the services you offer are unique, and how you want to describe the services you offer to the world. It also becomes an excellent foundation for your public relations/marketing initiatives, helping you focus on your goals and on the right road to get there. I’d say a pretty good way to get into a positive spirit for the holiday season! If you’d like more information on fees and scheduling, contact me directly at slevine@adviceunlimited.net. We’re always interested in new brains to fry!

Transform the Way You Communicate With Your Citizens & Stakeholders

I’ll be leading an interactive training session at the Social Media for Citizen & Stakeholder Engagement in Government conference – want to come? The conference, scheduled for December 5-8 in Washington, DC, is presented by the Advanced Learning Institute and will allow you to hear the latest practical advice from leading government agencies and organizations on how to engage your citizens and stakeholders by using new media and traditional channels.

The advice that will be touched on during the conference includes using the latest communication tools to promote transparency, enhance engagement and foster collaboration; communicating effectively and efficiently through the use of social media avenues; taking citizen and stakeholder feedback and ideas and putting them into action plans; delivering the information that citizens want, when they want it, using the channel they prefer; leveraging citizen satisfaction analytics to guide resource allocation decisions to make improvements in the organization; and utilizing social media in a crisis situation as a place for planning, strategy implementation, networking and recruiting.

My session will be held Thursday, December 8 from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. (continental breakfast will be provided at 8:00 a.m. for the morning workshop attendees) and will focus on how to strategically drive public outreach using traditional and new media as well as innovative communication tools and techniques. In today’s environment of budget cuts and government disillusionment, it is more important than ever for your organization to educate your constituents on what you do, how you serve, and how your work positively impacts the world. This workshop will help you learn how to listen better to your audiences and get them to listen better to you, understand the different approaches to communicating (including the array of communication tools available today), define your organization’s priorities and build your communications plan around them, and choose the most effective communication tool for the specific message being communicated and audience you’re communicating to.

If you have suggestions for must-topics to include in this session, I’d love to hear from you. And if you decide to sign up, please let me know so I make sure to meet you at the session!

If you’re interested in improving your citizen and stakeholder engagement efforts, this is a must-attend event. You’ll receive over 25 hours of intense, interactive learning, great networking opportunities and a comprehensive overview of engagement strategies and processes from leading practitioners. My fellow speakers include U.S. Army Public Affairs; National Institute of Corrections, U.S. Department of Justice; Maryland Emergency Management Agency; U.S. Census Bureau; Google; Federal Highway Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation; GovLoop; U.S. Department of State; OhMyGov!; and the Washington State Office of the Attorney General.

To learn more about the conference and register, please visit http://www.aliconferences.com/conf/citizen_stake_eng_govt1211/register.htm. Hope to see you there!

Aftermath of 9/11: Crisis Communications is now Interactive

It used to be that most government organizations had a crisis communications plan that would be pulled out and reviewed maybe once a year, that was relatively static and standard in its contents. The plan provided guidance on calling a press conference to update reporters who would in turn update the public on the process and progress being made in dealing with the crisis or disaster at hand, creating press releases and other briefing materials, etc. The process was largely reactive, rather than proactive, and definitely the information went one-way – from the public affairs representatives and government officials to the public.

No more.

Today, public outreach is interactive. Whether we as government public affairs organizations are ready for this or not, citizens are involved and engaged in information sharing – especially in a crisis or disaster. If we are to do our jobs and stay on top of ensuring the public gets accurate information in a timely manner, we must be much more proactive, flexible, and connected.

In fact, it is even more important in today’s interactive environment for us to be responsive and responsible – to ensure the public gets accurate information and the guidance they need to stay safe in a crisis. We as public information specialists must be proactive, leveraging the many communication channels our public will look to for information, guidance, reassurance. We must incorporate these new tools – along with traditional communication channels – to ensure we are reaching all of our different citizen groups with timely, accurate, clearly understandable information and guidance through the communication channels they use and trust.

I believe it is also our responsibility to be vigilant against misinformation – rumors being spread, panic being encouraged, because of some source of information that has it wrong but has the public’s attention. This requires awareness and monitoring of those sources of information that impact our target audience, and rapid response capabilities to correct misinformation and set the record straight authoritatively and calmly. We are not only the providers of information; we also set the tone for response and reaction by providing, proactively before people begin to panic, specific information to the most basic and important questions: how bad is it? Will my family be safe? What do we need to do to be safe? Will our basic needs be taken care of?

Several of the news reports after the East Coast earthquake on August 23 joked that a lot of people did exactly what they were not supposed to do – they ran into the streets rather than seeking safety in their homes or buildings. They panicked. They had never experienced this before. Where should they turn for information? One of the greatest challenges with a crisis is that it happens unexpectedly, and the worst of it is immediate. There’s minimal preparation time, and the more terrible and frightening the crisis, the harder it is to get people to listen to any source of information, much less an ‘official’ message. The best we can do is plan for the worst, prepare now for what might happen so that when disaster strikes, we are well trained to jump into action and reach out to reassure, provide guidance and calm fears. And understand that our communication must accommodate our citizens responding and communicating with each other as well as with us, in an interactive, collaborative environment.

As the stewards of communication, it is our responsibility to understand this new dynamic, prepare for it and integrate this new reality into our planning and preparation, to ensure we are leveraging all communication channels and participants effectively to ensure everyone has accurate facts and the information they need to stay safe.

Welcome to the new world of crisis communications.


Sandy Evans Levine is President of Advice Unlimited, a WOSB public outreach/strategic communications firm serving government organizations and IT companies, based in Olney, MD. Ms. Levine can be reached at slevine@adviceunlimited.net.

Irene Inspires Proactive Communication from Federal, State and Local Officials

Disasters happen. How quickly and appropriately those in authority respond to those disasters can make the difference between a frightening but manageable situation, versus a full-out catastrophe on many levels. It seems that government officials at federal and state and local levels took to heart the lessons from Katrina, and made sure that as Hurricane Irene captured the nation’s attention, they were in front of the storm – with their communications and their preparedness efforts.

The speed and precision you exhibit when communicating with your public correlates directly with how bad the crisis will be – when you have a solid plan in place you can move faster to calm fears, negate rumors, and build trust with your audience. By placing your clients' needs first in dealing with a crisis you are more likely to survive a crisis situation. The mantra before Irene from many government organizations was the focus on how they could help their citizens: ‘we can’t stop the winds or the floods, but we can move to protect our citizens and save lives.’ Some felt the mandatory evacuations in some places was a bit of overkill, but NJ Governor Christie, for one, clearly stated, “no regrets.” Many followed that pattern of better safe than sorry, and most found calm acceptance from their constituents. There was even patient acceptance that the power company crews ‘were doing their best,’ as people were consistently updated through various media sources on the battle against power outages by crews working 24/7, and supplemented with traveling crews from other parts of the country.

Clearly, some things were done right. Is your organization in good shape for the next time a calamity impacts your operations? How up to date is your crisis communications plan?

The Calm Before the Storm

Before a disaster occurs, your priority and top-level goal is to prevent or minimize a crisis situation before it escalates. Many government organizations are reviewing their crisis communications plans and putting Public Information Centers (PICs) in place. These organizations understand preparedness is vital to successful crisis communications and have gone through the necessary procedures to be ready when disaster strikes.

There are key steps to preventing or minimizing a crisis. To begin, prepare a plan that dictates the roles of the leaders on the crisis communications team. This plan designates the makeup of the confidential working group that will deal with the crisis, and defines the logistics of immediately assembling this group to assess the situation should a crisis occur. Once the leaders are in place, determine key facts surrounding the disaster; including: What is at stake? Who is the audience? What are your immediate and longer-term communication needs? What needs are exclusive to this type of disaster? Understanding the scope of the situation allows both primary and secondary prevention to be considered. Primary prevention averts incidents from occurring, while secondary prevention thwarts an incident from escalating by swiftly addressing issues made public.

An effective crisis communications plan will provide the processes to help you anticipate challenges, recognize your vulnerabilities, and evaluate and assess potentially damaging scenarios. It provides the tools to thoughtfully define the parameters of a crisis - what's the worst news that could come out of a possible disaster - and the best way to prevent and/or manage such a scenario.

The more you prepare during the calm, the faster you can get ahead of the storm when a disaster hits. As our constituents become more connected and communication tools become more interconnected and interactive, the more important an effective crisis communications plan becomes. This plan helps your team navigate rough waters effectively, to minimize panic, reassure your audiences, and protect sensitive sources. A delicate balancing act - but one Public Affairs and Public Relations professionals must engage in more and more frequently. And we all want to be able to say, confidently and calmly, at the end of the storm: ‘no regrets.’

Sandy Evans Levine is President of Advice Unlimited, a Woman-Owned Small Business public outreach/strategic communications firm serving government organizations and IT companies, based in Olney, MD. Ms. Levine can be reached at slevine@adviceunlimited.net.