Social media platforms have become essential tools for communication, information, and engagement in times of crisis. They can also help communities to prepare, respond, and recover from disasters, and to enhance their resilience. But how can social media be used effectively and ethically to support community resilience? Here are some tips and best practices to consider.
Before you start using social media for resilience, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and how you will measure your impact. Do you want to raise awareness, educate, mobilize, or connect people? Do you want to influence behavior, policy, or resources? Do you want to reach a specific audience, location, or sector? Having SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) will help you to plan, implement, and evaluate your social media strategy.
When building community resilience using social media, first determine where you want to go (i.e., what’s your objective). Until you figure out where you’re going, you can’t figure out how to get there. When you figure out your objective, you can focus on how to get there. If you’ve decided your objective is raising awareness, you can identify your interim goals that provide a road map of how you get to your objective from your starting point. When designing your goals, ensure that they’re S.M.A.R.T. goals. They have to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, & Timely. Using S.M.A.R.T. goals allow you to focus in on your path and use data and data analytics to assess your progress toward your objective.
Before diving into the world of social media, it's important to clearly define your goals. Do you want to inform the community about disaster preparedness, share resources, or raise awareness about specific risks? By defining your goals clearly, you can create targeted content and develop strategies to strengthen your community's resilience.
Social media can strengthen the resilience of communities by providing vital information in real time, facilitating communication and coordination during emergencies, enabling the sharing of resources and emotional support, and promoting solidarity and unity within the community.
There are many social media platforms available, each with its own features, advantages, and drawbacks. You need to choose the ones that best suit your goals, your audience, and your resources. For example, Facebook can help you to create groups, pages, and events; Twitter can help you to share updates, hashtags, and links; Instagram can help you to showcase visuals, stories, and reels; YouTube can help you to broadcast videos, livestreams, and webinars; and LinkedIn can help you to network, recruit, and collaborate. You also need to consider the accessibility, reliability, and security of the platforms you use, especially in areas with low connectivity, high censorship, or high risk.
The choice of social media platform is important. It's not just about reaching audiences, but also what you’re trying to achieve & if the platform aligns with how you are trying to achieve it. For example, if you’re trying to bring groups of people in the community together to learn & build resilience, choosing YouTube or Twitter probably isn’t the best approach. Rather, Facebook’s focus on creating groups, pages, & facilitating events might work better. You also need to consider if you’re going to try to use the platform not just for blue sky planning / building but also for information dissemination during crises. If you are, then you have to consider the platform’s speed & reliability of information dissemination during a crisis.
Each social media platform offers different features and target audiences. Identify the platforms where your audience is most active and focus your efforts there. For example, Facebook groups are great for sharing information and organizing local relief efforts, while Twitter is a fast-paced platform for disseminating real-time alerts and updates.
It is a mistake to limit use of social media platforms by only choosing a select set of platforms for communication. The reality is that almost everyone and every entity is on far more than one platform which means while it may require additional work and effort there is value in using all legitimate social media forms and formats for communication. It is also important that the messaging across the platforms be uniform and consistent. Also, monitoring all the widely used platforms gives you the means to shut down misinformation effectively and quickly. Further, the use of a wide range of platforms gives you the best chance of getting a clear full picture of what is needed to address in a post disaster environment.
The content you create and share on social media should be relevant, accurate, and engaging. You need to tailor your content to your goals, your platforms, and your audience. You also need to follow some basic principles of content creation, such as using clear and simple language, providing credible sources, using visuals and multimedia, and adding calls to action. You should also consider the tone, style, and frequency of your content, and how it reflects your brand and values. Finally, you should monitor and moderate your content, and respond to feedback, questions, and comments.
Social media is a powerful tool to help EM build resilience. When using social media for EM, the principles of content creation are similar to those of content creation for other social media uses. Your content should be clear, accurate, & engaging. It should have a hook that gets the reader’s attention & pulls them in to the rest of the content. Remember, you’re not just sharing data, you’re educating the public on preparedness, promoting resilience, & planting seeds of post-disaster recovery. The content tone & frequency must reflect the seriousness of the subject, but also reassuring and guiding. Finally, visuals often can illustrate complex emergency procedures effectively and more concisely than words.
The New Zealand message is you will most likely not have any assistance from emergency services for 72 hours after a disaster. This is broadcast and understood throughout peace time. This helps people think about risk mitigation and for communities to band together during an event.
Social media cannot be trusted. However, it can be a springboard to legitimate information, and contacts of organizations, federal agencies and other verifiable resources. It is a difficult balance. Even asking this question requires a disclaimer that any REAL agency will not request your personal information and under NO circumstances should you provide any personal information stemming from Social media sources. To be warned ?? Is to be prepared.
Your content should be informative, relevant, and engaging. Use visual elements such as graphics or videos to reinforce your messages. Share practical tips for emergency preparedness or highlight local resources. By providing valuable content, you can build trust within your community and strengthen its resilience.
One of the main benefits of social media is that it allows you to connect and interact with a wide range of stakeholders, such as individuals, groups, organizations, and institutions. You can use social media to build your network by following, liking, commenting, sharing, tagging, and mentioning others who are relevant to your goals and audience. You can also use social media to collaborate and coordinate with other actors who are working on similar or complementary issues, such as emergency managers, first responders, media outlets, NGOs, and donors. By building your network, you can increase your reach, influence, and impact.
The EM uses of social media in a disaster are well known. However, social media can also give EM a powerful tool for collaboration during blue skies, helping us work with a wide range of partners on various issues, projects, & problems to boost community resilience. Building a strong, reliable network through social media can help EM increase resilience. By connecting with a wider group of partners working on the same or similar/adjacent issues, we can create a larger team with diverse experiences and specialties. This allows us to increase our reach & can significantly enhance community resilience by fostering a culture of collaboration shared responsibility to increase preparedness.
Strong community resilience requires collaboration and support. Use social media to build relationships with other organizations, authorities, and experts involved in disaster management. Through collaboration, you can pool resources, share expertise, and plan joint actions to strengthen your community's resilience.
To assess the effectiveness and efficiency of your social media use for resilience, you need to track and analyze your results. You can use various tools and methods to measure your performance, such as analytics, surveys, interviews, focus groups, and case studies. You should look at both quantitative and qualitative indicators, such as reach, engagement, sentiment, behavior change, policy change, and resource mobilization. You should also compare your results with your goals, and identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Based on your evaluation, you can adjust and improve your social media strategy.
If you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it. This applies to social media in general, and, though we don’t always realize it, to social media use by EM. Social media use by EM is social marketing / social selling, even if we don’t want to admit that. As with any other kind of marketing, we only get optimal ROI when we track & analyze results; conduct A/B testing to improve views; assess data such as reach, engagement, performance; etc. However, don’t forget that behind every data point is a human story. Therefore, qualitative indicators like sentiment and behavior change are just as important as quantitative ones. A well-rounded evaluation of your social media strategy can lead to greater resilience.
Regular evaluation is crucial to measure the success of your efforts and identify areas for improvement. Analyze metrics such as reach, engagement, and audience reactions to your content. Based on these insights, you can adjust and refine your strategies to achieve more effective use of social media in strengthening community resilience.
You are not alone in using social media for resilience. There are many examples and lessons from other communities, organizations, and initiatives that have used social media successfully or unsuccessfully to enhance their resilience. You can learn from their experiences, challenges, and best practices, and apply them to your own context and goals. You can also join online communities of practice, forums, and webinars that focus on social media and resilience, and exchange ideas, insights, and feedback with your peers. By learning from others, you can enrich your knowledge, skills, and creativity.
As communities have unique needs & resources, what works for one may not for another. However, others’ experiences & best practices can give valuable insight for planning & improvement in using social media to build resilience. If another community’s approach & experience don’t translate directly to yours, look at their approach from different angles & see if standing it on its head or flipping it around will help you apply the lessons learned to your campaign. Finally, don’t only look at campaigns to build resilience. Consider campaigns by experts in other fields, particularly social selling. No, they’re not targeting resilience, but their tactics & approaches are universal & their expertise can only enhance your campaign.
First it can help with connectivity by forming community groups and subgroups. These can be used for info postings but also for alerts and communication trees. Secondly they can be used to poll and vet plans and needs… in this way a community can impact the plans and the plans the community. I am assuming by “social media” you mean apps like X, next door, Facebook etc…
Engage with other organizations and communities that are already successfully using social media to enhance resilience. Exchange experiences and best practices to gain valuable insights and help you develop new ideas and strategies to achieve your goals.
I strongly agree with the points made in this article, first you must be clear about your objective and what message you want to communicate with your audience. With so much information out there people, in my experience, are overwhelmed about what they should focus on before, during, and after an emergency. Also, when thinking about what platforms to use we cannot forget issues such as accessibility and inclusive communication. Having seen platforms flood (excuse the pun) with posts during times of disaster our messages need to be simple and stay on point, what do we want people to do as a result of seeing / reading this information and have we given them enough information then on how to do it.
In addition to the steps mentioned above, there are other important aspects to consider, such as data privacy and security, crisis communication, and engaging diverse population groups. Ensure that you stay informed about current developments and trends, and adapt your strategies accordingly to strengthen your community's resilience in the long term.
Emergency management supervisors must develop a robust social media platform to push reliable information out to the public. Yes, there is a place for tangible flyers, pubic meetings, and robocalls. Social media is the past, present, and future of information distribution and as emergency management members it is our responsibility to provide the pubic with the latest greatest truths before the emotional windfall of the inevitable rumor mill churns out nonsense. During emergencies, time is not on our side. Let's be diligent in where we spend our training hours.