If you’ve seen what has been happening in Alberta you’ll understand that an emergency of this kind needs support and resources.
Take a minute please to read this from the Red Cross.
The last few months have been like Christmas morning in the social media world with new toys being delivered to be opened and played with, shown to your friends and placed in that special spot with all your important stuff.
Then, you open the next one and lo and behold that first great toy is forgotten.
Be careful about all the excitement and jumping around. Take some time with your new toys. Get to know them. What they can do, the benefits, the draw backs the ease of use and the simplicity to your audience.
Here is what I mean….Vine and Instagram Video
Just when people were starting to get used to the Vine capabilities, Instagram jumps in and offers video on its platform. Now, people are all excited and like a puppy going off all over the place because they just can’t control themselves and cursing Vine and its 6 second, no filter simplicity.
Take a breath and think for a minute. Why not use both? Each has benefits and drawbacks. They are different, but the same.
Instagram is a Facebook platform, so guess what shows up on Facebook with ease.?
Vine is a Twitter platform, so which is easier to navigate to there?
Don’t swear one off for the other. Think about how you can work with both to maximize your exposure (pun intended). Right off the top of my head, I’m thinking if I want to make a video right now and I want the Facebook audience to see it…I’m going to Instagram it. If I want to put it on Twitter, then I going to go with Vine. If I don’t want to do the extra work and make two video’s?? Hmmm….you tell me: What’s my option?
The voice of police is so strong and so powerful that each and every officer has the opportunity to grab greatness with the things they say. But the opportunity is so often lost because we don’t want to rock the boat or stand-up and be seen. So often, we say what is easy, simple or it’s so vanilla that it has no value what so ever. And often, it can just be the wrong thing to say.
“If you’re not upsetting anyone you’re not changing the status quo” – Seth Godin
Not into quotes by social media icons, then here is one that goes back a little further….”You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
The problem with challenging the status quo is you can be seen as a trouble maker, a malcontent or a hater! Generally, the last one is the one that we see most often is social. You are a hater because you disagree with what someone says? Come one…give me a break. Oh, unless you spank someone really badly with your thoughts, then you are a bully. Don’t get me wrong, I hate bullies, but I hate people who pull the bully or hater cards even more when it isn’t justified.
The one thing I hate even more than both of those though is the people who sit on their hands when they see something that they should stand up and smack down, but they choose not to for fear of rocking the boat. Have you ever been on a rocking boat? It is a BLAST!! It is a lot of fun and is really exciting! Rock the freakin’ boat…it’s a good thing to do. Just don’t sink the ship.
You want to make something better? When you see something that is broken, change it.
By the way…the second quote, Sir Winston Churchill.
I know this post is NOTHING like what I usually write about here, but something happen last night that made me want to find some way to talk about it. SO, since I have this forum, I will use it…if you think that it will help someone out there in some way, please feel free to share it.
Kids…I know that there is a demand for you to fit in, be popular, be accepted and be liked. But lets face it, some of us are just square pegs that don’t fit into the round holes very well. It’s not that we do anything wrong, it just sometimes feels like we don’t do anything right. You will NEVER be liked by everyone and you will NEVER be great at everything. Growing up seems like the longest journey you will ever have. But, trust me…it flies by and one day you will look back and wish you could go back and slow it all down and maybe do things a little different.
I was a horrible student all through high school. I was a decent athlete, but not a star. I was not one of the “popular” kids. I could transition pretty easily through the groups. But I do remember always wanting to be like all the popular ones. And I am sure, that there were people who wanted to be at my level who weren’t even noticed by many others in high school.
What makes people accepted in high school or, on the other hand, what makes people rejected, is rarely ever what really matters in life. LIFE…it’s something that you haven’t even begun to experience yet. When I was in high school I thought I knew everything that mattered. Now, in my 40’s, I know that even now, I am still learning so much. I know that what I know now is way more than what I thought I knew then, but isn’t close to what I know I will learn in the days, months and years to come.
Being popular, gifted, a star athlete, smart, pretty or handsome are superficial things that in the end really don’t have any bearing on your potential. Friends fade, our bodies fail, our looks change and our minds fail over time…but who we are…what we stand for…what we value…THOSE are the things that will set us apart as we grow and learn.
So, yes, it seems like there isn’t a point right now to why you would continue on this journey of life. It may feel like you are alone and that going on seems meaningless. But, life as you know it is not the life that matters when it counts.
Someday, you will have a child that holds your hand and thinks the whole world revolves around you. Someday, you will have a career that brings meaning and value not just to you, but that makes the difference in someone else’s life. Someday, someone will love you and they will get lost just looking into your eyes and you will know that you are the most important person in the world to someone.
Don’t ever think that you can’t go on living life, until you have at least lived life. High school is 4, maybe 5 years, 6 for some 🙁 . When you are 20, you will have spent about one quarter of your life there. When you are 30, high school will have been a bump in your time line.
Live life, love yourself and hang in there…it gets so much better.
One day you will look back and realize that what you have gone through has made you who you are today. Strong, resilient and powerful.
“Illustration © Jack Hunter (www.jackhunter.net) – used with permission”
What a great and simple question…. this is re-press from “The Bright Blue Line” by Chief Scott Silverii. Follow him on his blog and on Twitter @ThibodauxChief.
I’m not going to say anything about it. I’m just going to ask you to read it and understand exactly what Jim Garrow (@jgarrow) is saying here:
http://faceofthematter.com/2013/04/26/getting-it-first-or-getting-it-right/
We talked yesterday about Dr. Reynolds’ CERC model for emergency risk communication (and what a huge fan of the curriculum I am), and the three main tenets: be first, be credible, be right. Sounds good in a training, and it reads wonderfully as a best practice, but how doable is it really?
Turns out not so much. And the Boston bombings were a perfect example of the tradeoffs made when folks, including the media, try to do all three at once. Being first is easiest, being right is hard (and frankly, can be a moving target), and credibility suffers if you mess up either of the other two. Unfortunately, examples of failure can be found on just about any day from that week. From the reports of unexploded bombs being found, to inflated death counts, to mistaken accusations, to reports of the second bomber being caught (before he actually was, obviously). A lot of this can be attributed to the fog of the situation, but how much went unverified because it was too much work to untangle the less-than-truths, and besides it’s so darn foggy, anyways.
Most of the late night joke fodder centered around the mass media (especially CNN and the New York Post), but I think we’ve all got some skin in the game. How many of us didn’t check multiple reports before retweeting something? I could give the blow-by-blow, but it’s too sad. A simple Google search for, “news organization got it wrong in Boston,” is depressing enough.
It got so bad that the FBI had to release a statement–like some small-town sheriff dealing with an overzealous national media for the first time–admonishing the press. The Boston Police, like experts in crisis communications, took to the source of many of the rumors, Twitter, to try to unring the social media bell.
The problem is that while we understand that unsourced social media reports aren’t to be necessarily trusted, the media, in their rush to be first, are starting to depend on these breaking news reports as initial sources. So when CNN says something’s true, it lends an air of credibility to something that’s little more than a rumor. And those reports have real consequences. One only needs to look at the market drop that followed the AP’s hacked tweet on a bomb at the White House.
More seriously, reports of a “dark-skinned” suspect lead many, including the junior crowd-sourcing detectives on Reddit to mistakenly finger Sunil Tripathi, a missing college student. Just this week, Sunil was found dead (apparently not connected with the witch hunt). The editors and owners of Reddit thought this such an egregious act, they subsequentlypublished an apology and reviewed their longstanding policy of not allowing g personal identification anywhere on the site. All in the name of getting it first.
The news isn’t all bad, though. Organizations like CBS and NBC and the New York Times got props for doing it right. Speaking of the Times, this whole episode reminded me of an article I’ve been saving since December. The Public Editor of the Times, after the Newtown shooting and there were similar calls for a return to real journalism, published an article that said this:
In the future, [reporter Wendy Ruderman] would prefer that everyone adhere to this rule: “We shouldn’t put anything in the paper without a name attached to it.” In other words, there would be no reliance on anonymous law enforcement officials.
Which I think is a pretty cool thing to say. But my favorite part is this:
The Times can’t get pulled into the maelstrom of Twitter-era news. It has to stand apart from those news sources that are getting information out in a fast, piecemeal and frequently inaccurate way. That process has its own appeal and its own valuable purpose. But The Times should be its authoritative and accurate counterbalance.
Because in a world where being first too frequently leads to disaster, being right is the most valuable thing a news organization can do. That’s where their credibility comes from, that’s the hook that will move mass media into the future. They will never compete with social media, and they shouldn’t try to. As one of my favorite Tweeters said:
What do all of these things (and many more) have in common? They all are things that grab our emotions on one level or another. Seriously, who thinks the world needs another playful and cute kitten video? I know I don’t, but I can guarantee that there will be videos and pictures shared today of kittens.
You want to grab someones attention? Hit them in the emotional epi-center of their lives.
This isn’t a new concept. It’s been around for years and years. I’m sure it’s taught in all the best schools of advertising, marketing and branding. Get someone emotionally attached to you, your products, your services and you will have greater loyalty.
When a video of police laying the boots to someone surfaces, it doesn’t matter whether the person is deserving of it. Often it doesn’t matter what the person did. Sympathy for the ‘victim’ will be great… it’s based on the emotions evoked by just the visual image.
The Boston Marathon Bombings and the events that followed had many of glued to the television and computer screens. For hours, there was no new information but we couldn’t pull away. Why? Emotions kept us sitting there, glued, transfixed.
The emotional grab can work for you or against you.
If you want your information shared, attach an emotion to it in some way. You will certainly increase your odds of shares just by doing that, but add in these two gems and you’ll be golden:
AMBER ALERT : Edmonton, Kentucky,Quebec license plate (Quebec 72B 381).
“A Little girl, 3 yrs. old picked up by a man driving a gray car, license plate: Quebec 72B 381. Canada. Reblog this. It could save her. The Kidnapping is recent so do it.”
Holy crap… a little 3 year old girl has been grabbed. I better share this on Twitter, Facebook, Tumbler, Pinterest and my blog right away! Getting as much information out there as fast as possible will save her!
Naturally, that is what a police or law enforcement agency wants. That wildfire spread of urgent information to get as many boots on the ground and eyes around town looking. And people WANT to help out. They truly want to share the information.
The problem is, the above story has occurred in Florida, Arkasas, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Texas, involving the same car, same licence plate and same 3 year old little girl.
This isn’t the only situation that you have to consider this a problem. Think about anything that has an expiry date. How do you stop the sharing of information after it starts? How do you ask your public, “Please share this information, but in three days you will have to remove it or you could be breaking the law.”?
Another example is the child that goes missing in the morning on the way to school. By noon, the child is found safe and sound but for the next several days’ people are continuously sharing the information.
“Please share to help find this child safely and quickly”
Problems
Answer
You can’t because the alternative does not work anymore. The alternative being, not sharing the information or sharing it only in the traditional formats.
What you can do it make certain that you equip your community for great sharing. You educate them about what the sharing responsibility means and you take on some responsibilities of your own.
Tell your community right up front if there are any possible challenges to sharing the information. For example, identifying a young offender in Ontario has a short time allowance and once it is over you can’t identify the person without further judicial approval. Continuing to identify that person could be putting your public in legal hot water. Tell them. Adivse them, guide them.
Amber Alerts have an expiry date as well. Why not put that expiry date right on the image you release? Possibly even the link to Amber Alerts in your area so that people can verify prior to sharing?
Most importantly, you need to be monitoring your channels. If you see any information get shared, verify it, check into and counsel your community. When an expiry date occurs, tell the public, thank everyone who shared the information but ask them politely to stop sharing. That can be a tricky fine line.
I don’t care if you have to tweet, “Thanks for sharing the information. Thankfully XXXX was located at ZZZZZZ time.” One thousand times, you do it. Because if you don’t correct the information, then at some point your community will become less inclined to help you out…and that would be tragic.
The other way that people will automatically become desensitized is a lack of priority to your information. If you treat every missing person and every BOLO and every community safety caution with an equal level of importance, sooner or later people won’t care, won’t stare and won’t share.
Remember, calls to action (please share, please RT, call if you see) are essential adds to your information when you are asking for the help. They are also essential when you are thanking your public for helping. Asking your public to share your thanks, your located alerts and your cancellations will help to get more attention to the second volley of information.
“Thank you. Mr Bunny has been located. Please share our thanks with your community.”
Is Improving Police an Impossible Task?.
Here is a very interesting article from a former Chief. What are your thoughts on this?
Here is a challenge that so many in Law Enforcement face. There is a safety concern from something as simple as blogging or tweeting as well as the always present fear of, “tripping up” with opinions, thoughts or musings.
I wish SH all the best and hope the return is at a time when it is right.
Thank you for all you have shared. You will be missed.
