this should be mandated by the federal government that ALL municipalities have a plan in place taking advantage of this nextgen toolchest that we have provided them with.

Find more jobs: http://www.staffingpower.com/

[...] Given that many students have Web-enabled cell phones (even when school policy forbids them), it makes sense for an all-hazard plan to account for student Twitter use and text-messaging. So too for any other regional plan. Social media analyst Jeremiah Owyang has an excellent blog entry on how to do just that. [...]

[...] collapse. Decentralizing the report and response circles can leverage the power of the masses also beyond the twitter journalism effect. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)IBM IR seminar talk on Socially Connected [...]

We have to spend time NOW building presence and trust in our communication channels, whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or anything else. If we don’t put money in the bank, it won’t be there to draw on when we need it (perhaps an unfortunate analogy given the economy ).

Additionally there will always be the question of reach and participation in any given network. I’ve set up @WSUSpokane as a Twitter account for my campus and will be seeking to get students, staff, faculty and others to follow. But if they’re not on Twitter, that’s not the right channel in an emergency.

We have the 3M system that enables us to push both voice and text messages to specified groups. It’s only as good as the data people provide us, but probably still the most direct channel we will have for some time to come. As we remind people to update that info, we’ll also let them know they can follow us on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook.

We have a campus alert web page we can highlight on the home page, recorded message on a campus alert phone line, and the ability to put a message out through the web portal that people use to access grades, payroll info, etc. We utilized all these when we had severe snow in Jan/Feb 2008 and suspended classes.

With Twitter & Facebook, that’s two more places I have to update when I’m working my emergency comm checklist (although I’ll set Twitter to feed FB, saving at least one step). Back to the need for staff….

@BarbChamberlain

sometimes citizens organize around and for a city event using social media and then the mayor takes credit for using social media…
http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/2008/09/05/how-we-gather-now-our-victory-garden-at-city-hall/

[...] במהירות למציאות החדשה. הבלוגר ג’רמייה אוויאנג הציע בפוסט שכתב בשבוע שעבר תוכנית של חמש נקודות לשילוב כלים של [...]

[...] few days later, Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester sounded my wake-up call: Now that social technologies are becoming mainstream, do your crisis communications plans account [...]

[...] Jeremiah Owyang points out, twitter can facilitate the spread of information in real time. From a journalist’s [...]

I’m so glad to see that you are writing about this! There is indeed a growing level of interest among government leaders at all levels – from locals to federal officials – but a great deal of resistance coupled with a lack of awareness on new social media. The CDC – National Center for Health Marketing is perhaps the group furthest in front on integrating these new technologies and a lone public information officer at the LA Fire Dept continues to sound the sirens, encouraging emergency managers to make use of new tools that are free to them.

This stream of comments echo the findings we have from our research on emergency management, disasters, and social media. I’m encouraged to see that there are others who are writing about these issues. Read more about this research at CU Boulder at spot.colorado.edu/~suttonj

By the way, I see that you are in San Francisco. I know a change manager at SF Bart. If you are interested in discussion your concepts with him, I am more than happy to put you in contact.

holger(at)change-facilitation.org
twitter.com/hnauheimer

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha_O14M081A

In an emergency such as these Mumbai attacks, having an alert system where local officials could send out safety instructions to all registered contact points at once would be paramount. Beyond social media it seems to me that more organizations should maintain a database of contact points (phone, email, txt) for their customers/residents. This way if an immediate response is needed they can issue a status alert to the relevant section of their database and keep more people safe.

No doubt I’m sure many meetings will ensue on how to ‘use’ social media as a tool for reaching the public, but these tools are just too passive and not as widely available to suggest using them as effective notification systems.

http://www.hyperreach.com

[...] Another fellow blogger created an interesting post today on How Municipalities Should Integrate Social Media Into Disaster …Here’s a short outlineWeb Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Marketing. Jeremiah Owyang discusses how web tools and social media enable companies to connect with customers …. name (required). email ( will not be shown ) (required). website … [...]

[...] Mumbai by Stephanie Busari of CNN Twitter – the Mumbai myths by Rory Cellan-Jones of dot.life (BBC) How Municipalities Should Integrate Social Media Into Disaster Planning from Web Strategy by [...]

Interestingly, when I discussed the use of social media in the context of the crisis on my blog I got feedback that I was trivializing the horrible Mumbai attacks.

[...] How Municipalities Should Integrate Social Media Into Disaster Planning Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Today’s Headlines: October 22, 2008Twitter comments fuel unique social advertising campaignReputation Management Tips Some of the Biggest Names in SEONashville Search Engine Optimization [...]

While one imperative is clearly to communicate quickly in times of crisis. The last thing you want (as has been shown in the most recent case of the Mumbai bombings) is to have different departments and agencies communicating mixed messages. Centralized command and control of information is a must, yet very hard to do.

Added to that is the need to better integrate social media into existing emergency response mechanisms such as the Incident Response System to which most large government departments and organizations subscribe for their emergency planning.

While I agree wholeheartedly in the importance of social media integration, and counsel clients as such, organizations such as municipalities need to get their internal house in order first, and be committed to adapting their current structures to incorporate these new strategies, before any real traction is likely to take place.

Communicators should also take care in over-stepping their bounds from more traditional reputation-based communications (which is the primary topic of blogs such as this) into the operational sphere of communications such as evacuation notices and other mass alerts, as they are two very different activities requiring very different skillsets.

Overall, a timely and important post. Cheers.