Using Social Media in a Disaster

Victoria Edwards | Digital Content Strategist | Florida Blue

Background Information

Working in Social Media/SEO/Content Marketing for 9 years

Digital Content Strategist for Florida Blue

Where You Can Find Me

Twitter - @TallChickVic

LinkedIn - LinkedIn.com/in/VictoriaLEdwards

Email – Victoria.Edwards@FloridaBlue.com

Website – Victoria-Edwards.com

When I am Not Working

Overview

Social Media Network Basics

Case Studies (Air Asia/Ferguson Riots/Charlie Hebdo)

Florida Blue Social Media Best Practices

General Best Practices with Social Media

Questions?

Resources

Top Social Media Networks

Facebook: A social networking website that makes it easy for you to

connect and share with your family and friends online. Permission needed for friend request Can Follow someone with friend requesting them Follow = only sees publically shared updates Can “like” any public pages (company, brand, place and so on)

Twitter: Micro-blogging format that lets users send messages in 140

character posts or messages called “tweets.” Can follow anyone on Twitter without permission needed

Top Social Media Networks

LinkedIn Business social networking site Designed specifically for professional networking -- finding a job,

discovering sales leads, connecting with potential business partners -

Instagram Online photo and video sharing social network

Pinterest Is a web and mobile application company that offers a visual

discovery, collection, sharing, and storage tool. Users create and share the collections of visual bookmarks (boards).

Hashtags #

A word or phrase preceded by a pound sign (#) that is used to identify messages or posts around a certain topic.

Case Studies

AirAsia

Ferguson Protests

Charlie Hebdo

AirAsia

AirAsia

CEO (Tony Fernandes) was active on Twitter when the AirAsia passenger jet went missing

Messages were directed to his staff, the public and the families passengers

AirAsia Twitter and Facebook page linked statements published to reach a wider audience quickly.

Created hashtag around incident #togetherwestand

AirAsia

AirAsia

Hands on, honest and transparent during crisis

Utilized social media = quick response

Proved that direct and genuine/real compassion is what the public need in times of crisis.

Ferguson Protests

Ferguson Protests

"On August 9th Michael Brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson. Within minutes, various accounts of the incident began appearing on social media, accounts filled with speculation and little, if any, solid, accurate information.”

A few minutes later in his speech, McCulloch added,

“The most significant challenge encountered in this investigation has been the 24-hour news cycle and its insatiable appetite for something, for anything, to talk about, following closely behind with the nonstop rumors on social media.”

Ferguson Protests

And social media erupted!

Ferguson Protests

Social media informed people first

Social media raised questions that reporters on site were not always asking first

Social media gives users and outlet to express and inform

Charlie Hebdo

The gunmen said the magazine was targeted because of its publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

TV news struggled to keep up at first compared with the fast-moving wave of information on live blogs and social media.

Within 24 hours there were more than 3.4 million mentions of #JeSuisCharlie

Charlie Hebdo

Not only did this event spark discussion around social media…

It also helped spread malware

Charlie Hebdo

Innocent photo of a newborn with the #JeSuisCharlie

Upon downloading the image a message appears in French explaining that the image was created in a previous version of MovieMaker

Reality is that the user has been compromised by an access toolkit which lets the attacker to take control over the machine to send out spam or distribute more malware.

Monitoring Commentary

Handling Social Media Posts

Responding to Posts

Florida Blue Best Practices

Monitoring Commentary

Monitor comments daily on Florida Blue’s social media networks

Monitor other mediums like external blogs, news articles, forums and so on for brand names, employees, newsworthy events

Handling Social Media Posts

Response not recommended for: Inflammatory, negative, or satirical postings (rants). Questions that cannot be answered transparently. Situations where a response is unlikely to affect change or

provide clarification. Situations where a response could potentially result in a

“flame war” or negative back and forth, which could potentially be harmful to the brand.

Handling Social Media Posts

Response is recommended for: Inquiries related to providing information about the crisis or

issue .

Inquiries or commentary sent directly to company-sponsored social media sites (@ reply or emailed).

A question or concern where there is an opportunity to add value.

Erroneous facts or incorrect information that can be cleared up transparently.

A topic that is negative but true, in which case the core social media team will consult External Communications to determine the appropriate manner of outreach.

Responding to Posts

For general inquiries regarding health care: Social Media Team (SMT) responds within one hour with a

statement or reference to an existing Florida Blue source based on crisis communication plan and messages.

SMT gather information needed to address a request or inquiry by asking the user to provide his or her name and contact information with a response to specified email address.

If the user does not complete the form or email his or her contact information, the Digital Services Team (DST) will continue to monitor the site for additional posts but will not attempt a second message.

Responding to Posts

The DST handles specific customer issues such as: Benefits Claims Enrollment Precertification and DST problems, in accordance with current policies and

procedures

Best Practices

Invest in listening tools (Radian6, Sprinklr, Brandwatch)

Develop an SOP document and response flowchart

Acknowledge the crisis

Don’t ignore

Be human

Be apologetic

Know when to take it offline

Create a crisis FAQ and make it east to find/access

Best Practices

After crisis, deconstruct and reconstruct crisis: Document tweets, status updates, blog comments Store any images of event Analyze traffic patterns Analyze search volume patterns How did your team response work? How did the internal communication work?

Resources

To find, analyze and optimize your Twitter experience - https://followerwonk.com/

http://time.com/3604700/ferguson-riot-mcculloch-social-media/

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/11/charlie-hebdo-social-media-news-readers

http://www.slideshare.net/wearesocialsg/how-to-manage-a-social-media-crisis