Public Safety Canada making strides in social media

Ok I’ll admit it. I’m excited about this because Public Safety Canada has been one of my long-standing clients (social media training, social media strategy development and social marketing) for well over 3 years. Specifically, the Emergency Preparedness Branch, which is responsible for the Get Prepared initiative.

The intent of “Get Prepared” is simple: “To ensure Canadians (during an emergency) are prepared to be self-sufficient for at least 72 hours while emergency workers focus on people in urgent need”.

There are three easy steps for Canadians to do this as illustrated in the image below and on their website. In terms of measurement, Google Analytics conversion goals have been set up to measure the successful navigation through each step. This is a great example of tying your website goals directly into your branch/organizational goals).

Here are some of the social media engagement steps they have taken that I’m excited about:

• Social Media Press Releases in both English and French
• Organic, genuine, strategic blogger relations (in this case with mommy bloggers). Have a look at an example here (note the comments).
• Lee Lefever video entitled: “Preparing a Family Emergency Kit” in both English and French (English version embedded below).

There are still many internal roadblocks that need to be overcome, however this team is definitely making strides in the right direction. Let me know your thoughts!

April info shower…dominated by Twitter as usual

With March Madness finally winding down (always trickles into April),  I figured I’d quickly blog about a few things that caught my eye over the last few weeks:

• The top Google searches in Canada over the 12 months are  “facebook” & “youtube”. Proves that: a.) People don’t use URL’s b.) The internet is primarily a social platform.
• The term “social marketing” , properly defined here , is being misused left, right, and centre. Now Shaklee has filed an application to trademark the term, and true social marketers are in an uproar (rightfully so). You can follow the discussion by joining the Social Marketing Listserv.
• Thanks to R. Craig Lefebvre, there is once again talk of creating a Global Social Marketing Community. Let’s turn talk into action by getting involved!
• Public Safety Canada has launched a Social Media Press Release for their Emergency Preparedness campaign. Much more yet to come (full disclosure: PSC is a client of mine).
• University of Ottawa incorporates social media into its recruiting initiative Seek To Know
• Twitter hits 8 million users and increases the slope of its growth curve even more!
• Twitter potentially going to be bought by Google for a massive sum. Here’s a good explanation why in case you’re jealous.
• Twitter hashtagging is rising in popularity and in the number of potential applications. Search/follow the latest hashtags here.
• Changecamp Ottawa is gaining momentum and will surely catch the attention of some key public servant decision makers. Follow the Twitter hashtag here: #changecampottawa.
• Malcolm Gladwell is coming to Ottawa thanks to United Way. You can get your tix here.
• Rahaf Harfoush (member of Obama’s new media team) will be speaking at Marcom 2009 in Toronto.
• A plethora of new entries have appeared on the Government 2.0 Best Practices Wiki that I haven’t even had a chance to look at.
• The #gov20 Twitter hashtag is seeing lots of usage.

Ok, that’s my 5 minute midnight spontaneous brain dump. Upon re-reading it I realized that Twitter dominates the list. No surprise there. I’m finding myself using Twitter (via Tweetdeck) more than ever. Why? Like all social apps, the more people that use it, the more beneficial the tool. From a marketing/communications perspective (public or private sector), Twitter is an absolute dream come true. Remember, the key secret is the fact that you have the ability to FILTER conversations (e.g. Twitter Search).

For continuous live brain dumps like this be sure to follow my tweets: twitter.com/mikekujawski

California earthquake LIVE tweeting!

Today I had a meeting with my Public Safety Canada client (Emergency Preparedness Branch) , whom I’m currently training on social media engagement. We’re in the midst of finalizing a social media strategy and choosing specific online tactics that will help Canadians (or rather, a specific target audience of Canadians) be more informed of how to properly prepare for an emergency (i.e how to put together or buy an emergency kit).

One social media channel we discussed as a best-practice example was the ever-popular Twitter. The shear amount of real-time conversations happening on this channel during disasters or conflicts is absolutely incredible. What’s more, all of these conversations can be filtered to your heart’s content using Twitter Advanced Search. You can search by location, by km radius, by language, by tone, you name it…

Roughly 20 minutes ago, I happened to be checking my Twitter contact updates and noticed someone “tweet” about a quake in California. This caught my attention and so I refreshed my list and a few more people started “re-tweeting” the same thing. When C.C. Chapman (a fellow social media guru who is usually well ahead of the news) tweeted about the quake a few seconds later, that triggered me to check Twitter Search for the term “earthquake“. Low and behold, the results started pouring in. Within seconds there were an additional 30, 90, 150, 570, 1669 live tweets (and still counting) about people in various Southern California cities experiencing the 4.5 magnitude quake.

Have a look yourself and try tracking the conversation back to the original “tweet”. Note that this link will cease to be relevant contextually to this blog post within a few days. Eventually, simply searching for the term “earthquake” will be too generic. In which case you will have to go to Twitter Advanced Search and specify today’s date (January 8th, 2009) in your search criteria for “earthquake”.