Bevil Wood­ing

Mas­sive pow­er out­ages in Trinidad and To­ba­go and Ja­maica over the East­er week­end saw many cit­i­zens us­ing their mo­bile phones and tablets to turn to so­cial me­dia ser­vices like Face­book and Twit­ter for an­swers and re­al-time up­dates. Re­place pow­er out­age with freak-storm, flood­ing, land­slip, traf­fic pile­up, hur­ri­cane, earth­quake or sim­i­lar classed dis­as­ter and the con­clu­sion would be the same � smart­phones, mo­bile broad­band con­nec­tiv­i­ty and so­cial me­dia are the pow­er­ful new tri­umvi­rate for the dig­i­tal era.

The days of pas­sive­ly await­ing news in the af­ter­math of a na­tion­al dis­as­ter or emer­gency are over, at least for those with In­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty on their mo­bile phones and the savvy to use so­cial me­dia.

The Dig­i­tal Tri­umvi­rate

So-called smart-phones proved their emer­gency wor­thi­ness, em­pow­er­ing cit­i­zens to both dis­cov­er and share what was hap­pen­ing. Mo­bile users were able to post-re­al time up­dates over the In­ter­net; share pho­tos with geo-tag­ging in­for­ma­tion to iden­ti­fy lo­ca­tions, and of course, make calls and send text mes­sages too.

Mo­bile broad­band ser­vices al­so proved their worth, as least in the ar­eas for­tu­nate enough to re­ceive 3G and high­er speeds. Mo­bile users with broad­band da­ta ser­vices will gen­er­al­ly have faster ac­cess to on­line con­tent. They will al­so typ­i­cal­ly be able to share text and mul­ti­me­dia in­for­ma­tion faster, a po­ten­tial life-sav­ing ben­e­fit in an emer­gency.

But the tech de­vices and in­fra­struc­ture need con­tent and con­tent de­liv­ery plat­forms. This is where the so­cial me­dia net­works come in. The pop­u­lar so­cial net­work­ing sites like Face­book and Twit­ter, to­geth­er with crowd-sourc­ing plat­forms like Waze and Ushahi­di al­low mo­bile phone users to in­stall soft­ware ap­pli­ca­tions, called mo­bile apps, on com­put­ers tablets and phones. These apps pro­vide easy ac­cess to the con­tent and fea­tures con­nect­ing in­di­vid­ual mo­bile phone users with a glob­al au­di­ence.

The Dig­i­tal Gaunt­let

The shift in pub­lic be­hav­iour and ex­pec­ta­tion should not be lost on the me­dia, emer­gency agen­cies, pro­tec­tive ser­vices and oth­er or­ga­ni­za­tions whose busi­ness it is to keep the pub­lic in­formed; nei­ther should it be lost on the com­pa­nies and In­ter­net ser­vice providers whose busi­ness­es it is to keep them con­nect­ed and up-to-date.

With the spate of lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al in­ci­dents, teams re­spon­si­ble for cor­po­rate so­cial me­dia im­ple­men­ta­tion should have re­ceived a healthy re­al­i­ty check. So­cial me­dia is not just about set­ting up a Twit­ter and Face­book ac­count and as­sign­ing the res­i­dent technophile to "look af­ter it".

So­cial me­dia in the mo­bile age is about be­ing pre­pared to cap­ture and share in­for­ma­tion as it hap­pens, when­ev­er it hap­pens, where ever it hap­pens.

The dig­i­tal gaunt­let is now be­fore in­sti­tu­tion­al con­tent providers. It's time to get your so­cial me­dia act in or­der. Smart mo­bile de­vices and re­li­able mo­bile voice and broad­band da­ta con­nec­tiv­i­ty are now part of a cit­i­zen's dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness ar­se­nal. By the same to­ken, well-de­fined com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­to­cols and so­cial me­dia en­gage­ment strate­gies need to be stan­dard across the or­gan­i­sa­tions peo­ple turn to in time of emer­gen­cies.

If your or­ga­ni­za­tion is not cur­rent­ly struc­tured or re­sourced to take ad­van­tage of all mod­ern com­mu­ni­ca­tions chan­nels, you are mak­ing a very pub­lic de­c­la­ra­tion to your au­di­ence (be they cit­i­zens, cus­tomers, staff, con­gre­ga­tion, or mem­bers); your com­peti­tors; and the world, that your or­ga­ni­za­tion is not yet in tune with the re­al­i­ties of serv­ing up in­for­ma­tion in the dig­i­tal era.

Peo­ple, Your Great­est As­sets

The great­est fac­tor in the suc­cess of a so­cial me­dia plan is not the pol­i­cy doc­u­ment you pro­duce or the tech­nol­o­gy you em­ploy; it is the team you choose.

So­cial me­dia units must be gen­uine­ly pas­sion­ate about con­nect­ing and build­ing re­la­tion­ship with your on­line fol­low­ers; and should be pre­pared to do what­ev­er it takes to stay con­nect­ed and to keep the in­for­ma­tion flow­ing.

Done right, the re­ward for ini­tia­tive and dili­gence in ex­e­cut­ing your so­cial me­dia will not on­ly be an growth in on­line fol­low­ers, but an in­crease in the bank of good­will and brand val­ue built up with every post, tweet, re-tweet, like and +1.

No one, in any me­dia house, emer­gency ser­vices agency, cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions unit or gov­ern­ment min­istry can con­tin­ue to plead ig­no­rance about the pur­pose, val­ue or ben­e­fits of mo­bile ac­cess or so­cial me­dia.

A win­dow of op­por­tu­ni­ty is avail­able now for or­ga­ni­za­tions to move de­ci­sive­ly to im­ple­ment plans that bring co­her­ence to so­cial me­dia as part of a wider of strate­gic com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­date. In this win­dow, team se­lec­tion, process re-en­gi­neeringand ca­pac­i­ty build­ing can all be ad­dressed si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly. Out of the dark­ness, can come the light of a new mo­bile, so­cial me­dia day.

Bevil Wood­ing is the Founder and Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, an in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it de­liv­er­ing tech­nol­o­gy ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing re­sources to schools com­mu­ni­ties and like-mind­ed or­ga­ni­za­tions across the world. Fol­low on Twit­ter: @bevil­wood­ing or at: face­book.com/bevil­wood­ing or con­tact via email at tech­nol­o­gy­mat­ters@bright­path­foun­da­tion.org