Social Media in the time of Crisis

As you all know by now, the bombs set off during the Boston Marathon yesterday were a horrible thing. People were injured. People died. Our world has changed again.

Many took to social media to share news quickly to say that they were okay, instructions on how to find help and how to give help. Some posted prayers and comforting quotes. Pictures and videos were shared. News from individuals, media, and authorities was pushed out quickly.

Because so many people take to social media in a time of crisis, individuals, organizations and companies that have automated postings should consider changing the messages in their posts until there is some sense of normalcy again. Some say turn them off completely for a while. Mostly benign, the social media posts can make one look uncaring, unfeeling, and uninterested. For instance, during the Boston crisis, Virgin Airlines was sending promtional tweets about the London Marathon this weekend. If you don’t turn off the automated tweets and don’t change the message, be prepared to hear negative comments from the people that read the posts and don’t realize that the posts are automated.

Some people posted items that they quickly deleted after quick reflection while others saw it as an opportunity to be sensationalist for their own benefits. Some even saw it as an opportunity to set up spoof social media pages to build awareness for themselves. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you see it, tweets like these can not truly be deleted. What happens on Twitter stays in the Library of Congress.

What would your agency do in this time of crisis? Do you have a crisis communications plan in place? Who is speaking on your behalf? Does your staff or volunteers know what to say? It is increasingly important for you to be able to share your information quickly, accurately, and through the most channels as possible.

Update: 4/17/13 – here are a couple more examples of automated tweets failing:

• Conde Nast – Epicurious
• Artie Davis

The 140 Best Twitter Feeds

Time.com just came out with their “Best 140 twitter Feeds for 2013.” However, none are disability-related. Since they won’t do it, I think I will come up with a list of the “Best 140 Twitter Disability-Related Feeds for 2013″ but I first want your input.

If you have a favorite Twitter disability-related feed and think others should be following it, too, please share it in the comments section. Please do so by the end of the day 4/15/13. I will compile and categorize the nominations and will share the list in a future NCE Social Media blog post.

Please note, that I reserve the right to exclude some or all of the Twitter feeds nominated due to appropriateness or space limitations.

Facebook makes changes…AGAIN

In the past week Facebook anounced two changes that I think you should take note of: 1) they are going to start allowing hashtags to be posted in status updates and 2) they changed the news feed again.

If you recall from one of my previous posts, hashtags are key words or terms that you expect people to use in searches so that they can find your post(s). It can be an actual word or an abbreviation that would mean something to the intended reader. For instance one conference I will be attending uses the hashtag #afpicon so people can find information specific to the conference. Another example would be to add the hashtag #autism to a post about autism. You would then be alerting people that the theme is autism and at the same time helping search features of Facebook, Google, etc., know what the keyword is in your post.

The second item I mention was the news feed. Facebook is still in the process of rolling it out to all !.0 bilion+ users. The goal is to make the page design more visually appealing to users – especially those using mobile technology.
Mark Zuckerberg said that the new news feed will “give everyone in the world the best personalized newspaper in the world.”

So how do you use hashtags and how do you like the new Facebook news feed? Let us know in the comments. We want to hear from you.

Social Media Pictures

Social media tools that allow you to post pictures and videos are very helpful tools to let folks get a glimpse of life from your point of view.

Recently, one of the most repressive governments, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea to you and me, allowed two reporters to begin to use Instagram to share photos of their country. Since so few people travel to North Korea or are allowed to share images that aren’t heavily censored, it is a very interesting view of a place you and I have never seen before.

Looking at it from the point of view of a person with disability, how would you want to share your life in pictures with someone who may not have seen how someone with a disability lives? How would you want to do a video using Vine or YouTube? As an Arc staffer, you know that just like the photos from North Korea, there will be nothing different than what we all experience everyday. But not everyone knows that yet. You and I are the ones who will need to show others via viral social media tools.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Don’t just use 999. Use all of them!

60 Second Lifespan

Yesterday, the Governor of Pennsylvania visited our office to hold a press conference to discuss his interest in increasing the budget to address our statewide waiting list.

While our agency had an official photographer there, I took a couple of photos and brief videos of the visit on my own. I posted a Vine video to Twitter. The Governor’s Twitter account writer, surely the Governor doesn’t tweet on his own, retweeted my video.

Did you know that after an hour, your post or tweet has a less than 1% likelihood of being retweeted. So the lifespan for your post is 60 minutes or less. So is your information being shared multiple times throughout the day to make sure people are seeing it?

Retweeting and reposting is what we aim for when thinking of viralness of social media. You want your information to go viral. That’s how it will be heard by others not already connected with you.

You’ve got 60 minutes. Go!

Vine Video App

Last week Twitter made public the newest must-have “Killer App” – Vine. It is a tool that allows you to record 6 second video clips on your smartphone. You can post them to Twitter in addition to Vine. Facebook blocked it right after it came out (the two won’t play nice with each other so Facebook took it’s ball and went home), therefore you have to manually post a link to your Vine video to Facebook. Think of Vine as more social version of an animated gif.

As my friend Nathan Hand already pointed out in his blog post 21 nonprofit uses of Vine, it can be a very useful tool for nonprofits. I’m already contemplating how we can thank donors, demonstrate how their gift was put to use, share our capital campaign progress, and possibly demonstrating our various programs. Also, there are companies already creating Vine-based tools, such as live-streaming Vine videos as they are uploaded. It’s a hot topic so it shouldn’t be long before others will quickly build and release Vine-based applications that will benefit us.

If you use Vine, share your username in the comments section. The Vine account I created to test can be found at http://vine.co/v/bJvDBE6V0zg Feel free to visit it. Let us know how you are or will use it for your organization.

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 3,700 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 6 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.