Tag Archives: social media

We’ve not had a significant impact on preventable fires with our current methodologies. To paraphrase a popular management mantra for change these days, “What got you here, won’t get you there.”

We focus on the young likely because its easy. But, what we Fire Prevention Demoprovide in education is often lost in an overriding effort to entertain them. Further, without reinforcement of the fire safe/prevention message in their home environment, any value is soon lost to the parent's daily example/attitudes towards fire safety.

There is a lot more that can be done to use social media in a community emergency, but this should be a good “starter kit”. So what are you waiting for? Your community emergency, either man-made or naturally occurring, is “just around the corner”.

Was wondering if you could do me a favor and list what you believe to be the most significant changes/trends in the past 10 years of the fire service.

Growing up most of us have probably been told, “You only get one chance to make a good first impression”! This is also true in the market place for any business, organization or individual.

Let’s “cut to the chase”, shall we? We've got many paradigms in the fire service that we need to “break" and one of them is how we seek resources to get the job done.

While WBT and social media apps can greatly enhance your community's ability to recruit and mobilize resources in "real time" following an event generator, don't wait until the event happens to put a system in place beforehand. Start now to create a marketing plan to inform and educate the public about how your community will use social media when an EOP/COOP/COG event strikes the community.

I’m not speaking of some fictitious character, but rather your “brand”: who you are, what you do, what do you stand for, etc. See, in the digital world you only get one chance to make a good first impression AND you only get to use that 7-10 percent of communication, the non-verbal part.

Your department’s website still needs to be the bedrock for your Internet presence, but with Web 2.0 there is so much more. Let’s take a look at some of the tools in the toolbox, shall we?

By choosing to use social media tools to engage the stakeholders in its community in developing the Community Risk Reduction plan, Cutting Edge County is giving those same stakeholders an opportunity to become skilled and practiced in their use.