Public Relations Strategery

If you were reading the news or traveling by plane today, you probably already know about the JetBlue evacuation of JFK airport in New York today.  Turns out the evacuation was precautionary, and ended up being just two paperweights that resembled grenades.  However, to a social media dork like me, the really fascinating part of this story was that I was there (I was one of the evacuees at JFK this morning), and I was directly involved in bringing the story to light (I, along with a few others tweeted about the incident as it happened).

So, why does this matter?  And even more importantly, what does it have to do with emergency response?

Let’s take a look at the timeline for some more information –

Twitter Search Results for

7:54 AM – I tweeted that “Sooo…JFK airport is being evacuated right now….just great.”  Right around this same time, @almacy, @johnhamilton22, and @imnotobsessed also tweeted similar messages about the evacuation.

7:59 AM – One of the people who follow my tweets, Mark Drapeau (@cheeky_geeky) saw my tweet and began re-tweeting so that now, both of our networks of followers would get the information.

8:00 AM – I overhear some JetBlue employees saying that “some idiot had hand grenades in his bag”

Scene outside JetBlue Terminal at JFK

8:03 AM – @almacy posted a picture of the scene

8:05 AM – Mainstream media begins to catch on – Geraldo Rivera on the scene!

8:06 AM – BlogsofWar posts the running Twitter traffic

8:13 AM – FOX5 in New York finally reports on the story but with no real information and no mention of “grenades”

8:23 AM – First references to the “grenades” on mainstream media

8:50 AM – Crisis averted, and everyone is let back in to the terminal

We’ve already seen examples of this in the London bombings and the Virginia Tech shootings – today’s evacuation is another sign of the times, albeit on a much smaller scale.  Think about the potential impact that Twitter, blogs, and other social media could have on emergency response efforts.

Government agencies should advise first-responders to start monitoring the social media world, including Twitter, Facebook, and the blogosphere just as they do the police scanner.  Where the police scanner gave the average Joe a way to learn about what was happening in their neighborhood before the mainstream media could report on it, tools like Twitter do this and more.  Now, not only can people learn what’s going on from people who are involved first-hand and in real-time, they can also use these tools to share this information with anyone else who is monitoring them (like I did).

If this morning’s evacuation had been a serious threat, think about the potential benefits that could have been realized if the government agencies involved were using Twitter.

• They would have a real-time timeline of what happened from the time the announcement happened
• They would be able to pinpoint to the minute where people were, and what they were doing
• They could use the pictures taken at the scene and posted to the web to identify who was where and when
• Families and friends are notified en masse of people’s statuses
• Agencies would know what information (and mis-information) is being spread on the ground and could use that to dispel rumors and correct mis-information

Now, I’m not nieve enough to suggest that FEMA should be monitoring Twitter all the time and jumping anytime there’s mention of a disaster.  I’m merely suggesting that government agencies and mainstream media need to place a greater emphasis on mining these sources, and training their staff on how to use the informaton that’s available to them.

I know that there are some real risks to this approach as well – hoaxes would seem to be that much easier to pull off, for example.  Are there others?  What other benefits do you see?  What obstacles exist?

For more information on this topic, refer to these two excellent blogs, who also had an opinion on the  power of Twitter.

• “Let’s Network!”
• The 60 Second Marketer

As I mentioned in my first post, I’m currently leading a small, but growing team of people at my firm who are focused on building our social media capabilities, both internally and with our clients. Five years ago, when I joined my company, the only mentions of the terms “wikis” and “blogs” were usually preceded by the words “What the hell is a…” Now, as with most organizations, there is an enormous demand for social media, both internally among my colleagues, and externally with my clients. Luckily, I work for a firm where I have had the flexibility to pursue my interest and passion for social media, and over the last two years, have been able to grow this capability to where we are today.

So how did I get to this position? It’s important to note that I didn’t go to school for social media (I majored in public relations), I didn’t get staffed on a project where sharing information using social media was part of the culture (I was working for a client in the Intelligence Community where the prevailing attitude was “Need to Know“), and I wasn’t told by my leadership that I would now be the social media expert (they didn’t know a blog from a website). No, I was just a strategic communications consultant who saw that social media was fundamentally changing the way organizations communicated, and I decided that this was an area I wanted to focus on.

To my surprise, when I first started working in the Intelligence Community, I stumbled across something called Intellipedia, a wiki similar to Wikipedia, on the Top Secret network on which I was working. Upon more exploration, I found out that Intellipedia uses the same software (MediaWiki) as Wikipedia, and is not only available on the Top Secret network, but that it’s actually used to share VERY sensitive data across all of the agencies within the Intelligence Community. Well, upon discovering this, I said to myself that if the CIA, FBI, DNI, and other Intelligence agencies can use wikis and blogs to share classified information, there’s no reason why these applications can’t be used across the government.

I started voraciously reading about how Intellipedia worked – who was behind it, what technical feature did it have, what else was planned, who was using it, etc. I bought all kinds of social media books (Wikinomics, The World is Flat, Wikipatterns, The Long Tail are just some of them), I attended multiple conferences and other professional development events, and most importantly, I didn’t shut up! I talked about social media to anyone who would listen to me. I constantly looked for ways in which social media could enhance or replace existing processes (couldn’t we just post this white paper to a wiki and edit it there instead of sending it around over email?), I volunteered to help write proposals, white papers, and any other document that I could get my hands on where I could talk about social media, and I sent dozens of social media media articles and success stories to my leadership and anyone else who I thought would be interested. In short, I really annoyed a bunch of people for a long time!

Eventually, I must have gotten my point across as I’m now one of the top bloggers on our company’s internal blogging platform, am one of the top wiki editors, am advising many of our senior VPs on what they need to know about social media, and am responsible for meeting with many of our clients to talk about how and if they should use social media internally. Over these last two years, I’ve worked a lot of 9AM-5PM days on my client work, only to be followed by nights working 5PM-9PM on building our social media capability (my wife is a saint for putting up with me!!). I’ve had to learn how to tactfully stand up for what I believe in without pissing off too many people. I’ve had to do a lot of “what is a blog?” briefings. I’ve had to endure a lot of contentious discussions with our legal, marketing, HR, and IT departments. The last two years have involved a lot of work, a lot of stress, and a lot of headaches, but it’s also been extremely rewarding, personally satisfying, and exciting. What’s in store for me over the next two years?