10 things comms should do after an incident

As public authorities work to get flood-affected communities back to normal they will be reviewing what went well and what could have gone better. Here are top ten tips for an effective review.

by Ben Proctor

1. 1. Do an after incident review.

In the midst of an emergency or even while trying to get everything back to normal everyone will be very committed to capturing the learning. As soon as normality kicks in and managers start demanding the full attention of the beleaguered comms team it can be really hard to get people to sit down and think through the incident. It’s important to do it though.

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the 5 most important things I learned about comms in an emergency

There's been a fire, explosion, crash or terror incident. As the public demands information it's the public sector comms team who steps forward with a role to warn and inform. One former head of comms who specialised in emergency comms has looked back at what he learned.

by Ben Proctor

I don’t know why my careers teacher at school never told me about emergency planning but I didn’t really know it was a thing until I went to work for South Herefordshire District Council in 1996. There I discovered the Emergency Peacetime Duty Officer rota and began to get an insight into what local public services do to look after people in an emergency.

Since then I have worked in and out of local government, usually in comms or digital roles and I have always maintained a particular interest in emergencies.

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don't turn an emergency into a crisis

If you are public sector there's a strong chance you'll be involved in emergency communications. It could be anything from a protest march to a terrorist incident. It's a fascinating part of the job. But isn't that crisis comms? Well, actually no...

by Ben Proctor 

I tell people that I work in emergency communications and, to be honest, most of them suddenly find they have an urgent appointment.

The vast majority of those that are too slow to make a convincing excuse will almost immediately say

“So, you work in crisis comms do you?” and I will almost certainly say

“Yes” because I don’t want them to leave and, really, what does it matter?

Actually I think it matters quite a lot.

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the rise of troll farms... can you really trust social media in a crisis?

Web 2.0 saw a promise of online collaboration for social good. But is the party over? Or at least, has the shine come off?

by GUEST EDITOR Chris Bolton 

Way back in 2008 I read ‘Wikinomics’ by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams, and it pretty much changed my life. At the core of Wikinomics was the idea that the large scale collaboration of people online, was going to change everything we do. The ‘phrase d’jour', was Web2.0; used a lot at the time to describe the ideas around 'online mass collaboration', including what we now recognise as social media.

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why you should go to bluelightcamp

An annual free event that has grown to be an essential event for public sector comms people who may be involved with emergencies of any description.

by Ben Proctor 

comms2point0 sits at the heart of a fantastic community of people who want to make communications better, want to innovate with digital tools and want to drive change in organisations, especially public sector organisations.

We need that community to turn that energy and focus to emergency situations. Organisations are already doing great work to communicate with the public in emergencies but we can do more and one thing we know is: emergencies are always different.

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comms as a lifesaver during the #ukstorm

Driving rain and storms have battered Britain - but how have the emergency services coped in communicating the warnings?

by Dan Slee

If ever you needed proof that sharing out access to social media was a bright idea take a look at the January storms that struck Britain.

High winds, 30-foot waves and flood warnings struck across the country.

It was imperative that messages were sent out and a network of Environment Agency, local government and central government accounts on Twitter helped spread key messages and point people towards the Environment Agency website.

Google news reveals 32,500 news items online with the terms 'Britain' and 'storm' as weather swamped the conversation and the news agenda.

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how social media can play havoc with your business continuity

It's normal now for the time between an incident hitting and 'first tweet' to be just 30 seconds. Armed with that knowledge, what can be put in place before that incident happens to help reassure and ensure business continuity?

by Steve Finegan

“We don’t have an official company policy. We know being social is quite popular, especially with some of our younger staff.”

“I don’t really place that much importance on social media.  I use twitter to market our products.  Sometimes I promote our voluntary work with local communities.”

“We don’t really bother with it.  We created a Twitter account because it’s the in- thing to do.  Most of our customers communicate with us via our website which has a range of interactive services.”

“We don’t use social media at all, it’s not a priority, besides, there’s less chance of us being criticised if we’re not online.”

“Our business is very active on social media.  We have our own Facebook and twitter accounts, and we regularly engage in conversations directly with our customers.”

If any of the above statements apply to you, then your business continuity plan needs to be ready.  Ready for what exactly?  Well, it’s really quite simple.  Whether or not your company has developed an approach to social media or chooses to leave all this social stuff to others, like generation Y (those born between 1981–2000), I’m afraid there really is no escape.  

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how to write and send a marketing email

It seems a pretty easy thing to do, huh, writing and sending an email. We’ve all done it thousands of times, maybe tens of thousands of times. We receive a growing number of them with every passing day. Love them or loathe them, emails are important and they here to stay.

by Darren Caveney 

Email? Send them an email? But, hasn’t the world all shifted across to social media, I hear you cry?

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from eye witness accounts to prime time news

So, how does it start? How does it go from an incident and a tweet to an unfolding incident that is getting played out on Twitter? A bright researcher has reconstructed the Boston Marathon bombings tweet by tweet.

by Carolyne Mitchell

I've followed the the Nieman Lab on Twitter for a while now but I only recently switched on mobile alerts for their tweets. I'm glad I did because already I've found their research invaluable.

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