Great ideas Bill.  I like how we are 'practising what we preach' both by using an online form to develop PTSC-Oline's use of social media and by using the Advancing Crisis and Emergency Communication Practices project to guide our efforts.  I anticipate the results will provide evidence based strategies that PTSC-Online members can take back to their organizations before implementing or changing their social media platform.

The Z1600 communication and warning section also contains some basic communication guidance for formulating our social media communication plan although it does not specifically mention social media. 

I received one suggestion from Patrice, which was already on my list, which is to make links to our social media sites more visible by placing them on our home page. 

I hope the PTSC Comunication plan will address public engagement...and I'll be happy to provide whatever input I can in that regard.  I think that that piece is still often overlooked (funding and other good reasons) and yet is perhaps one of the most powerful opportunities presented by social media.  The following links to an article in the StarPhoenix about the use of social media in Saskatoon to share information about bike paths.  http://www.thestarphoenix.com/technology/Website+gives+cyclists+place+share+data/4084494/story.html. 

This kind of real-time information would be invalueable during many crisis situations - floods for example. It is resource-friendly, real-time and is going to be out there anyway whether we choose to lead it or not. 

Love what is emerging so far on this project.

Thank you Elizabeth, I agree with you with the need for PTSC-Online as a service to address public engagement.  if you check the top of the home page you will see our welcome message which reads:

"PTSC-Online is a Canadian virtual on line community, founded to encourage improvements to emergency management, business continuity and critical infrastructure protection programs. It does that by providing tools for sharing information and collaboration about these programs among stakeholders. All Canadians who have responsibilities for or an interest in making our communities safer and more resilient are welcome to join our community and become a supporter."

Although our initial focus has been on collaboration among emergency management and business continuity professionals we know from our web statistics that the number of unique visitors to PTSC-Online is seven times greater than the number of PTSC-Online members.  I believe it is reasonable to assume that many of these are members of the public.

One of the ways we want to engage the public also is through our use of social media. PTSC-Online established social media accounts some time ago and has made some use of these accounts, but we are now trying to develop a more organized approach to use them ore effectively. With the support of our Social Media Ambassadors who are listed in the first article in this discussion group and applying current information about how to do this effectively, we should make progress.

You will note we have just added links to our social media accounts to our home page as shown below.

Your participation in this discussion forum is appreciated.  If you have the time please check and participate in our social media links. 

I liked the article you provided the link to. It makes one important point that bears repeating and that is that there are free technologies available such as your article mentions, those provided by Google and the free communities similar to this one which are available from IGLOO.

 I thought I should provide a  recent example of the power of social media  and how it complements PTSC-Online. Yesterday,  Ken Jones  added an article which was a job posting for an emergency management coordinator for Strathcona County Alberta. When I looked at  the article in the early evening it had been viewed 20 to 30 times. I issued a couple of tweets on twitter on my own (memci) and PTSC-Online's  account, put a post on our Facebook page and a couple of other emergency management related Facebook pages.  The tweets automatically show up on our linked in page as it is set up to follow the PTSC-Online twitter RSS feed.  Within a few hours the page had been viewed 138 times and the number of views now stands at  238. Just  a small illustration of the power of social media.

I believe this highlights one of the advantages of posting emergency management related information and collaboration topics on PTSC-Online. Posting on PTSC-Online increases your exposure because because our social media ambassadors are collectively working on tapping into the power of social media to significantly broaden PTSC-Online's reach.  This concept is working now and with some fine tuning, practice and making better use of technology it will only get better. 

Whether we like it or not social media has become an integral communication tool for engaging the public.  I am very interested to hear how other are utilizing the various social media technologies and particularly how to measure its effectiveness.

Great idea you came up with on Face Book, Perron, asking folks to recommend their Face Book friends to become friends of PTSC-Online's Face Book page.  For those who have not found it, the "Suggest to Friends" feature is listed right under the PTSC-Online logo.  This is a great way to engage emergency management folks who already use Face Book and to help raise awareness about emergency management with the public. 

The webpage  http://www.sm4em.org/getting-started/ provides some content that seems to run parallel to the Advancing Crisis and Emergency Communication Practices project.  There is some great additional information on the main website Social Media 4 Emergency Management  www.sm4em.org .  Forgive me if this website has been discussed already but I don't remember it being mentioned on PTSC.

You may also want to check out the Twitter Hashtags  #SMEM, Soical Media for Emergency Management and  #SMEMChat for useful information.

Thanks,

Patrick

Great site! Many thanks Patrick for sharing this information!

On February 5th there was a "Soft Launch" of the website www.sm4fire.com, which is intended to, "....serve as a one-stop portal to curate best practices, initiatives, events,  and to share information within the Fire and EMS communities interested in social media."  Again, some great info here that is relevant to the PTSC-Online project.

Thanks,

Patrick