Be Consistent
Note that emergency messaging requires consistency across local media, social media, official website, emails, and text messaging. How “the media” is to be handled throughout the duration of the event should be predetermined. A discussion with local media contacts to pre-arrange how best to communicate with them will not only help them do their jobs, but also make your own messaging more efficient when the times comes.
Having pre-prepared tweets ready to use during any lull in new information gathering will help fill information voids. Have a system to track your own social media messaging, as well as other related social media messages to help minimize unproductive interference.
Have it on Paper
Create a working document that explains the details and roles of each person on your emergency response team, which should consist of not only first responders in the area of your campus (i.e., campus police, city police, county police, state police, fire departments, hospitals and ambulance services), but also your own administrative and support “key communicators.”
Conduct an hour-long tabletop exercise periodically so the role each person will play stays top-of-mind.
Take that hour to work through a scenario of an emergency situation on a timeline of emergent events (have the campus police provide such a scenario). West Virginia University holds these periodically and has found it to be beneficial in understanding the stressful dynamics of an emergency situation and how we can best perform the important role of communicating to and protecting our campuses.
Author Spencer Graham will present “Emergency Alert! The Anatomy of a Campus Crisis,” at DSE 2016 on Thursday, March 17 from 9:15-10:15am at the Las Vegas Convention Center. For more information on this or any educational program offered at DSE 2016 or to learn more about digital signage go to www.dse2016.com.
As a Digital Signage Certified Expert, conference speaker and professional technologist with more than 30 years of management experience, Graham has been integral to the creation of a wide-reaching high-tech digital signage network at West Virginia University that now spans four campuses with more than 120 digital signs, wayfinding, video walls, walls of honor and a 24/7/365 emergency alert feature in addition to standard WVU messaging and marketing content on the WVU Information Stations network. Graham has led seminar sessions at Digital Signage Expo, UBTech, and ISA Conferences that focus on creation and management of digital signage networks and the challenge of maintaining these networks in higher education. He serves on the Board of Directors for the Digital Signage Federation, Co-Chairman of the DSF’s Education Committee and on the Digital Signage Expo Advisory Board End-User Council.
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