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Editor's Notes

• #3: How many of you know what social media is? How Many of you use it? Define social media Why it is important in government Why people are afraid of it Why we should use it¡­.must use it. How! Overview: 21 Twitter Feeds with over 8,000 followers; Five FB pages with over 1100 followers; 126,691 views on YouTube in FY 2010; Flickr: 796 items / 27,561 views Recently experimenting with Tumblr and with video podcasting.
• #4: Define social media Why it is important in government Why people are afraid of it Why we should use it¡­.must use it. How! Here are just a few of the notable social media stats: - 96% of millennials have joined a social network. - Social media has overtaken porn as the number one activity on the web. - 1 out of 8 couples married in US met via social media. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is females 55 to 65 years old It took radio 38 years, TV 13 years, the Internet 4 years, and the iPod 3 years to reach 50 million users--while Facebook reportedly added 200 million users in under a year. Eric Qual Socialnomics video seems intended to convince businesses to invest in their social media strategy--"25% of search results for the world's top 20 largest brands are links to user generated content and 34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands," the YouTube clip warns, asking "Do you like what they are saying about your brand?"
• #5: Here are just a few of the notable social media stats: - 96% of millennials have joined a social network. - Social media has overtaken porn as the number one activity on the web. - 1 out of 8 couples married in US met via social media. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is females 55 to 65 years old It took radio 38 years, TV 13 years, the Internet 4 years, and the iPod 3 years to reach 50 million users--while Facebook reportedly added 200 million users in under a year. Eric Qual Socialnomics video seems intended to convince businesses to invest in their social media strategy--"25% of search results for the world's top 20 largest brands are links to user generated content and 34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands," the YouTube clip warns, asking "Do you like what they are saying about your brand?"
• #6: Here are just a few of the notable social media stats: - 96% of millennials have joined a social network. - Social media has overtaken porn as the number one activity on the web. - 1 out of 8 couples married in US met via social media. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is females 55 to 65 years old It took radio 38 years, TV 13 years, the Internet 4 years, and the iPod 3 years to reach 50 million users--while Facebook reportedly added 200 million users in under a year. Eric Qual Socialnomics video seems intended to convince businesses to invest in their social media strategy--"25% of search results for the world's top 20 largest brands are links to user generated content and 34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands," the YouTube clip warns, asking "Do you like what they are saying about your brand?"
• #7: Okay ¨C so social media is here to stay. So what do we do with it? Let¡¯s start with what we DON¡¯T do with it:
• #8: Mapped out a plan to make sure our social media was integrated with the other, traditional activities going on in the communications office¡­. Work with your public information officers, marketer or other communications professionals. Social media must be incorporated into an over all communications plan or strategy. Before you start a Twitter or FB account ¨C think about some things first: Who is your audience? What do you want to talk to that audience about? What are you going to say? What¡¯s the best way to get it out there?
• #9: Rockslide as one example¡­ NCDOT launched 16 different Twitter feeds during the 2009 hurricane season, giving residents and visitors who may not have had access to landline telephones or computers the ability to get updates on road conditions via their cell phones. The department also relied on those feeds ¨C which target regional areas of the state, heavily traveled interstate routes such as I-40 or I-95, and the ferry system ¨C to alert motorists about dangerous driving conditions during the two snow storms North Carolina experienced in 2009. Twitter, along with NCDOT¡¯s YouTube and Flickr pages, served as critical communication tools during the debilitating rockslide that closed a seven-mile section of I-40 near the Tennessee border in October 2009, creating a 53-mile detour. The department used Twitter to deliver daily updates on work to clear the debris, as well as information on the detour route. YouTube helped put a local face on the process through recorded interviews with NCDOT employees working on the project and video of them accomplishing tasks critical to reopening the road. Regularly posting photos on Flickr showed the public how quickly that work was progressing and gave media a way to easily include pictures with their stories. The clean-up effort took nearly six months, and social media enabled NCDOT to maintain public confidence during that time.
• #10: Crisis communications is another¡­. In September 2010, those Twitter feeds, plus the department¡¯s main Twitter feed played a major role in its efforts to keep the public informed of road closures and conditions during Hurricane Earl.
• #12: We made sure that our Tweets pointed people to places where they could always receive MORE information, whether it was from our traffic information page, where they could find info on road closures, or other sites - be it governmental, news, or non-profit groups, like the Red Cross.
• #13: Cross promoted Flickr, YouTube, FB, with Twitter
• #14: Hurricane¡¯s over ¨C now what? Did we just stop? No¡­.continued to tweet about road conditions, but also the things NCDOT does AFTER a storm, posted field photos and continued to re-tweet¡­.and it positioned us well to do the same thing all over again with TS Nicole. We¡¯ve built on that community base and continue to grow our followers¡­
• #15: And we are using that community to help make NCDOT better¡­.by actively soliciting input and ideas¡­and actually talking back and forth with our followers. That scares folks ¨C but that is what SOCIAL MEDIA is about. If we are going to use it, we have to use it within the context of dialogue --- community. Yes, it is a great way to get our messages out, but we can¡¯t just be on Facebook with our megaphones¡­.monologging. You¡¯ll find once you engage, people are really quite happy you did. So, yes, make the comments active, make all your sites public¡­that¡¯s the power of these tools!!