social hope: social media in disasters

Social Hope:Social Media in timesof Disaster Relief#12NTCdisaster

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The Panel

Wendy Harman, American Red Cross@wharman

Carie Lewis, Humane Society of the United States

@cariegrls

Dan Michel, Feeding America

@dpmichel

Slide 2Social Hope

Agenda

• Case Studies from 2011 Disaster Season

• Examples

• Learnings

• Future of providing service in times of disaster

• How does social play into that?

Slide 3Social Hope: #12NTCDisaster

2011 Disaster Season by the Numbers

99major declared disasters by FEMA

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73billion dollars worth of damages

>500deaths from just the Alabama &

Joplin tornadoes

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Feeding America

• Provide 3 billion pounds of food annually

• Serve 37 million people in U.S. each year

• Disaster is a part of what we do – not primary mission

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Disaster Services provides our memberswith updates on disaster activity, resourcesfor preparedness, response and recoveryplanning, and guidance for best practices.

Where We Are

Volunteers on the Ground

FA 2011 Disaster Efforts

Deployed national teams (including social media) to:

• Alabama, May

• Joplin, June

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What we did well

Communicated the story of hope

Communicated how people (outside the area) could do to help

Became a participant into existing conversations

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What we did well

Recognize and mobilize corporate support

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What we could do better

Used Social Media to help guide people to services

Connecting people to local food bank/agencies

Get more pictures/facts up faster

Continued the story/check back

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Local Efforts

Ozarks Food Harvest

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Connecting Victims/Providing Hope

http://youtu.be/ERMQgqEF0yk

The Situation:

• There’s a hurricane coming.

• It’s big. And strong.

• It’s going to affect multiple states.

• We need to warn people.

• We need to save animals.

• There’s no central place for pet owners to get information aboutevacuation, resources, and shelters.

• Our disaster approach: Prepare > Respond > Recover

@cariegrls // #12NTCDisaster

What do we do? And how do we do it?1 – Get the preparation and evacuation messages out

• identify the audience it affects

• Coordinate messaging with PR

2 – Tell our story and disseminate important information

• Put an internal comm infrastructure in place for info gathering

• Coordinate content with web, email, PR, program

3 – Tell people how they can help

• Develop a fundraising campaign

• Coordinate needs on a local level

4 – answer questions and needs from audience

• Step our monitoring game up

5 - Close the loop

• What happened to the animals you saved?

• What did my money go to?

@cariegrls // #12NTCDisaster

Getting The Message Out• First: prepare, then: evacuate WITH

your pets

• Who is the audience? Who do wehave as resources in those areas?

• State directors and Care Centerdirectors in affected areas

• Developed a list of Facebookpage links and admin contactinfo

@cariegrls // #12NTCDisaster

• We helped monitor, respond, and post to thosepages since admins were out in the field

• Targeted posts to our HSUS Facebook fans livingin the affected area

• Messages were taken from press releases and webpages (pre-approved content) and boiled down

• Made it engaging by asking people to send us a pic oftheir disaster kit that included their pets and we gavethem a window cling

Gathering and Disseminating Info

@cariegrls // #12NTCDisaster

• Internal information gathering

• Put an internal communications infrastructure in place for webcontent and up-to-the-minute updates from the field

• What kind of content do we want in order to tell our story ofwhat HSUS was doing? Bite sized info for Twitter, diaries for theweb, as many photos as possible

• National level = Rescue Team coordinator > Web editor

• Local level = State Director > Community Manager

• Daily meeting to coordinate all content with web, email, social,PR

• Field responders marked content as external or internal use

• External information gathering

• We followed emergency management orgs like FEMA, Red Crossin each affected state on Twitter

• Made a list of animal shelters in hurricane’s path and followedthem for updates

The $64k question: what can I do?

@cariegrls // #12NTCDisaster

• People could help on a national and/or local level

• Developed a fundraising campaign for our Animal Rescue Team’sefforts

• Integrated across all communication channels

• Created Amazon wish lists for affected shelters

• Took advantage of our large followings and

targeted Facebook posts to help shelters in need

Answering Questions and Needs

• Monitored every @ reply on Facebook

• Monitored hashtags that were being used

• Created our own hashtag #Irenepets (4,500 uses, seen by 8.5 millionpeople in 3 days)

• Monitored keywords like “flood pet”

• Answer everyone.

• Aggregate info for pet owners from multiple sources on our Twitter feed(FEMA, shelters)

@cariegrls // #12NTCDisaster

Closing the Loop

• If you are committing to answer everyone, provide updates.

• If you’re going to individualize an animal in a fundraising or storytellingcampaign, be ready to monitor and report on the fate of that animal.

• Tell people what their money went to.

@cariegrls // #12NTCDisaster

THIS is why it’s important to alwaysbe listening and answer everyone.

We saved this dog’s life.

@cariegrls // #12NTCDisaster

THIS is why it’s important to monitorcomment strings and be responsive.

We garnered donations.

@cariegrls // #12NTCDisaster

Show compassion in times of crisis.

@cariegrls // #12NTCDisaster

Repost Good UGC to create community.

@cariegrls // #12NTCDisaster

Give them what they want!

@cariegrls // #12NTCDisaster

Next Time…

• Keep feeding tweets and adding to photo album

• Find a way not to miss any @ replies on twitter (keep up)

• Research hashtags already in use, start using own hashtagearlier

• Set up tracking ahead of time and take screenshots as theyhappen

• Thank those who donated and shared on Twitter

• Share the credit with other orgs involved – build relationships

• Map of affected shelters – or maybe an app?

• Proactively reach out to Weather Channel, Red Cross, FEMA,agencies

• Customize email shares to use our hashtag

• Develop communication guidelines for first responders

• We want a WAR ROOM!

@cariegrls // #12NTCDisaster

@cariegrls // #12NTCDisaster

Public is a Resource

Making Data Actionable

Digital Operations Center

Digital Volunteers

Questions?

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Discussion?

Other examples?

Evaluate This Session!Each entry is a chance to win an NTEN engraved iPad!

or Online using #12NTCdisasterat www.nten.org/ntc/eval