Social Media in Your Campus Emergency Plan
September 29th, 2010
Yesterday’s horrific shooting incident at the University of Texas at Austin underscored the need to include your campus social media presences in your emergency/disaster communications plans.
While the University did an excellent job of updating their main home page and emergency web site, they left one of their most important channels completely dark – their institutional Facebook page with a reach of over 186,000 followers had absolutely no mention of the incident. As of early this morning, they still have not addressed the issue in that forum.
This is not to say that the University neglected their duty to the community during this crisis – in fact, from all of the press, Tweets, and blogs I’ve read, it seems as if the on-campus alerts, text messages, sirens and e-mails did a thorough job of communicating the incident, and directing community members to shelter in place.
In this age of instant social media communication, it was strange to see UT’s official Facebook page not addressing the issue. With Fan postings to the wall turned off, there was no way for people to share information with each other. The only UT Facebook presence that kept followers updated was that of the UT Police Department – which had a fraction of the fan following that the main institutional Facebook page had. About 1 hour into the campus lockdown, the UT Police department page had just under 900 visitors – this morning, it has close to 10,000. Certainly, as word got out and users shared the link, the UTPD page grew, but it didn’t have a large number of followers initially.
Now I understand that throwing a Facebook page into the mix adds another place you have to turn to and update while you’re in crisis mode, and that leaving the fan wall posting ability turned on makes it easy for rumors and false information to spread, but I still believe that the official institutional Facebook page needs to be managed and updated in a time of crisis.
The time to work your social media outlets into your crisis plan isn’t in the middle of a crisis – it’s now. You need to decide who will be responsible for making the updates, what they post, who authorizes them to post, and how comments and fan posts are dealt with. If you don’t have control over your Facebook and Twitter presences, you need to find a way to get it – if the admissions office or the development office controls your most highly followed social accounts, the communications, media, or PR office needs to be able to provide updates as well. Figure this out now, so you’re not chasing down someone to post an update in the middle of a disaster.
If your campus has an emergency/disaster drill, work with the organizers to see that social media is covered in the communications plan. When my institution ran a drill this summer, one of my responsibilities was to monitor social media (our presences as well as general searches) for mentions, and to keep our primary Facebook and Twitter accounts updated with the most recent instructions and information.
Whoever was behind the UT Police Department’s Facebook updates was doing a great job – but they were doing it on the wrong page. I agree with Jessica Krywosa’s post yesterday on .eduguru – the updates were authentic and provided important instructions and information, I just think they should have also channeled them through the official Facebook page to reach a wider audience.
Linking to a single Facebook wall post
September 3rd, 2010
This is an easy thing to do, but not so easy to find the link. Facebook has hidden it in the post’s time stamp. Just click on the time stamp, and the post will open on a new page – copy the URL of this page from your browser’s address bar, and you’re all set!
ReadWriteWeb Summit Wrapup – Part 1
June 17th, 2010
Last Friday, I had the opportunity to attend the ReadWriteWeb Real-Time Web Summit in New York City. Although I was one of only a handful of people in attendance from the higher-education world, I found the summit to be extremely valuable, and it was a great place to learn, share and connect with others across a wide variety of industries.
In addition to these wrapup posts, over the next several days I will also be writing a series of posts reviewing new applications and services that I had a chance to demo at the summit.
SpeedGeeking Demo Review – Scenios
June 12th, 2010
This is the first in a series of posts about products and services I had an opportunity to view as demos during the SpeedGeeking event of the ReadWriteWeb Realtime Summit on June 11, 2010.
Scenios is a web-based digital asset management application that allows you to upload, share, tag and export video clips collaboratively with your team.
As soon as the demo began, I immediately saw the value this could have in my office, where we often use video clips from more than one student videographer, and reviewing and producing the piece can be timeconsuming and confusing.
Facebook Releases New Privacy Control Information
May 26th, 2010
Facebook announced changes today to the way users can control access to information they have posted on the site.
I have not, yet, had time to review all the press and new controls fully, but here is the rundown:
Facebook has established one control mechanism to set who can see the content you post on the site. This does NOT replace the granular controls that currently exist, you can still get at them and control your account that way if you desire. The new controls are meant to simplify the granular process. With this, it should be easier to set who can see all your content with one fell swoop.
In addition, Facebook is no longer requiring some information to be public. You will now be able to decide who can see your friends list and pages list.