1. Social Media: Lessons Learned Francisco Sánchez, Jr. Brian Murray

2. Social Media Explained

3. A Brief History Began in early 2011 Drive traffic to new readyharris.org site Engage public and raise awareness Build a follower base for future emergencies

4. Every organization’s experience is unique. Trial and error rules! Demographics will determine impact. Every failure is a learning experience. Our Best Practices

5. Master One Site FIRST All social media sites are not the same. Start with one site and then add others as you learn from your successes and failures.

6. Our Best Practices Have a clear purpose Do not start a Pinterest page just because everyone else has one. Decide what you need a social media site to do for you.

7. Write for the Medium Be concise and be clear Use simple language and avoid jargon Proofread. And then proofread again Cover one topic per post Our Best Practices

8. Engage the Public Ask questions that encourage replies Respond as appropriate Use challenges and contests to add followers Take advantage of “National fill in the blank Weeks” Our Best Practices

9. Be Visual Use videos, photos, maps and graphs to help tell your story. You are competing with other posts on someone’s wall. Stand out!

10. Our Best Practices Integrate SM with other efforts Social media is an information appetizer. Link users to additional information from your website and partners.

11. Our Best Practices Every post should contain one important takeaway Confine your posts to the most important nugget of information & direct users elsewhere for more in-depth information.

12. Our Best Practices Measure your impact & adapt Pay for HootSuite or another service to get insight into your social media penetration. Adapt your messaging to what you learn.

13. Our Best Practices Promote Your Friends “Like” and “Follow” partner organizations and encourage them to do the same. Retweet or Share their posts. Think of social media as a virtual JIC: Work smart and accomplish your communication goals with less effort.

14. Our Best Practices Respond When the public posts of comments on your sites, respond! The public is a valuable source of on-the- ground intelligence. Questions need to be answered and bad information needs to be corrected. You will get cranks. Do not get into fights online...ever. Protect your image. Delete offensive posts.

15. Automate Use TwitterFeed or a similar service to put information directly into your Twitter and Facebook feeds. This saves loads of time, communicates while you sleep and allows you to focus on the big picture. Our Best Practices

16. Twitter: #Hashtag, #Hashtag, #Hashtag! Adding searchable hashtags helps maximize your reach! Hashtags = retweets

17. Standard Operating Procedures

18. JIC Standard Operating Procedures - Template TYPE OF MESSAGE EVENT WEBSITE TEXT SOCIALMEDIA APPROVALS DISTRIBUTION

19. Travis County Labor Day Weekend Fires AAR - December 2011 “Social media network needs to established, especially for those who are not tuned in to their television sets, and do not have land line phones.” Travis County OEM. After Action Report: Labor Day Weekend Fires https://www.llis.dhs.gov/docdetails/details.do?contentID=54495

20. February 4, 2011 Winter Weather Event 375,000 website hits 19,810 Facebook page views

21. September 13, 2011 George Bush Park Fire Began sending information in the late afternoon Posts from residents helped us determine direct threats to the public, road closures as well as control rumors Information was verified and then sent back out to the public through web & social media #1 trending topic on Twitter that night.

22. January 9, 2012 Severe Thunderstorm Event 3-6” Rainfall over Harris County & region Tornado touchdowns in Ft. Bend & Galveston counties 29 Tweets/RTs with consistent hashtagging 11 Facebook posts 10 RJIC posts - nearly all information from partners #1 trending topic on Twitter that day in Harris County.

23. A Houston Dairy Queen owner asked Ponderosa VFD to move its engine because of parking concerns. This “non-story” pushed #kony2012 off of #1 on Twitter for 36 hours on March 21, 2012. Social Media is Beyond Your Control Social Media is Fickle

24. Questions?