Getting Help

My friend Robbie (she is the Web Content Coordinator at St. Francis) felt sorry for me and my feeble attempt to enter the blogosphere. She offers help...reminding me to keep my posts:

• frequent,
  
• short,
  
• with bullets

...and she reminded me to monitor other folks blogs more often, and cite those things that are worthwhile on my blog.

Yes M'am

Here's one she sent me:
A Sample Blogging Workflow
http://www.chrisbrogan.com/a-sample-blogging-workflow/

FB

Asked in class

The other night in class, I was asked - again - to explain the "log" system we use in crisis to avoid getting too behind in a "now" is too late environment.
So, here you go - fairly simple -
1) Select a time frame (either 15 minutes or 30 minutes) for the cycle.
2) Pre-write your "first" release or notification - recognize that your information will post on a blog, be typed up as a release or set on your Web site as a "diary" or "journal" and your first statement can be pre-written so little or no time is lost - ours is "At ____(time) St. Francis was notified that _______(brief statement of what you told when notified; e.g. that there was a chemical spill in the hospital's NICU, or whatever)...and the hospital's (organization's) crisis team has been called and is responding. We will have an update for you in just 15/30 minutes when we know more."
3) Work your cycle - 10 or 20 minutes of information gathering, 3 or 5 minutes to draft a short paragraph indicating what - new - you KNOW (no speculation). In the second and subseqent releases - be open to questions and advise that you will answer them in subsequent announcements as you learn the answers.
4) Keep the "cycle" going for the first 2 - 6 hours of the crisis until you have staff, and you have passed the initial period of time when you have more unanswered questions than answers.
5) Switch to a "traditional" crisis response with news conferences, news releases posted at designated times (e.g. twice a day) and integrate all your communication processes from face-to-face to blogs, web sites, faxes, etc. etc.

That's it.

Sorry, been gone...will re-energize in July

This is supposed to be a "professional" blog...but like a lot of newbie bloggers, time and focus got away from me last month. One big reason is that I took three weeks away from the work world for a vacation through the fijords of Norway. Anyway, I'm back and will attempt to post more regularly starting in July.
FB

Still Here

I admitted to being a newbie. And, I see now why so many blogs fail. It's too easy to fall behind and fail to post. Reasons abound, work schedules , home issues, travels, etc. May went by before I knew it. If anyone sees this and has a suggestion on a good way to stay on top of things, other than just putting it in my calendar and forcing the issue...let me know. I suspect the lack of visitors to blog has also had me questioning - "why bother!"
Fred

Survey results starting to come in

The Crisis communication and social media survey (link on left) is starting to create some results. There are already some interesting findings:

• More than half of the respondents either don't have a crisis communication plan or it is not separate from their organization's disaster plan
• About 2/3 of the the respondents have the senior PR person as primary spokesperson in a disaster
• Most used news releases and reactive news media interviews to convery their key messages.
• Most also used ongoing employee communication tools to keep their employees informed during the crisis
• New media or social media is not being used widely yet -

The link to the survey is provided on the left..if you haven't completed it yet, I encourage you to do so...if you have, share the link with a friend!