I had the chance to visit Iowa (first time ever in the state!) a few days ago to present at the 9th Iowa Homeland Security Conference. The topic I was going to be presenting on was related to social media and crisis communications – a topic that I have been researching and consulting in for the last couple of years.
This was a very cool conference – I had a chance to chat with some emergency responders and professionals working with the DHS in Iowa about some of the trends they are seeing with social media and what are their challenges and opportunities they are seeing with this emerging platform.
My Conference ID that had a bar code to be scanned as well 🙂
I went over three research studies I had the opportunity to work on related to crisis communications and social media – ranging from interviews (mobile technologies and social media) to intention to comply with social media message strategies, to constructing a qualitative/quantitative value model for social media in a crisis.
In addition, I had to also update and add some additional information related to what happened during Hurricane Sandy this past week and what were some of the emerging trends we saw from a social media perspective. The integration of social media among agencies, the vast upload and sharing power of Instagram, and the presence of misinformation and rumors that made FEMA establish a rumor control section for social media. Another thing I did too was make sure to add some additional resources for people to look at for future study and trends related to social media and crisis communications.
Here is my presentation if you are interested in viewing it via Slideshare.
In summary, it was a wonderful experience and conference to be part of. I got some great comments about my presentation afterwords, which was great. Several responders and other conference attendees said that it was the first social media presentation that they went to that “made sense” and combined social media strategy specifically with crisis communications. Yay! 🙂
Hope you all are having a great day.
Best Wishes,
Karen
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