208: Hurricane Ian: How Social Media Has Changed the Way We Experience Disasters

Check on your neighbors and please don't wait out the storm. If you're being told to evacuate, it's dangerous. Those were the words of Gail McGovern, President and CEO of the Red Cross, in an urgent warning to Floridians and visitors about Hurricane Ian on the podcast this week, why some people did not heed that advice and what social media has to do with that problem. Welcome to the Indestructible PR podcast, where we use current events and tested media and PR strategies to help prevent or manage a crisis and build an indestructible reputation. In this episode, I'm going to share with you a warning and some takeaways as it relates to communication about Hurricane Ian. Hey there everyone. At the time of this recording, Hurricane Ian has yet to make a landf. I have been watching it, like many of you, and it is wavering between. Let me see. Let me just go to Twitter in real time and see what Hurricane Ian is right now. So it says Hurricane Ian set for catastrophic landfall in Florida. So at the time of the recording, Hurricane Ian, by the time you're listening to this, Hurricane Ian will have already made impact. And it's kind of scary to God to project in the future and think about what it will look like in Florida. My goodness. But this episode, I wanted it to be part hurricane warning, part hurricane content warning. Now, I had posted a TikTok earlier today about noticing a trend on social media. So I thought this would make for a very good podcast episode. So I wanna talk about just three things that I'm noticing about Hurricane Ian. The coverage of Hurricane Ian and how it relates, relates to people and their safety. Okay, so starting with the list, number one, and that is that Hurricane Ian is the first social media hurricane. Now, I know social media has been around for a long time. We're going back to really 2007, 2008. We have had plenty of hurricanes since then. But I consider Hurricane Ian to be the first social media driven hurricane at a magnitude. We're talking, you know, 4 or 5 magnitude where people are broadcasting hurricane content. That's a big difference. Go back to Katrina. Whenever I talk about Katrina, because those were the days when I started with FEMA in the recovery phase of Hurricane Katrina. That was not a social media hurricane, okay? That was a broadcast hurricane. That was a newspaper hurricane. That was a cable hurricane. But now everything about Hurricane Ian is social media. That's how everyone is tracking it. What is notable about this is the content. So more people are posting their Hurricane Ian content and there's almost this drive to get the best content that they can. Now, what I had posted on TikTok, and you can go to my TikTok, the link is in the show notes was how nervous it made me. Now, this week, what I've been doing is I get up, I usually work out. I've been running this week on my treadmill, but I've been noticing every morning I get up and I go to TikTok. Like, why TikTok? I never do that because I want to find out about Hurricane Ian. And I am noticing all of these people posting from their homes, from apartment buildings, like they're all still there. And it just stresses me out to no end. They're putting content ahead of safety in many cases. So I'm guessing you're listening to this. I'm in the past. So the future, Molly, when this comes out live, is wondering how many deaths were there due to flooding? How catastrophic was this hurricane? Did someone putting, I don't know, content ahead of safety have anything to do with it? Like they'd rather film than, you know, take shelter? You know, one of the posts that I had seen was a person filming a tornado in the hurricane or before the hurricane was coming. And it was an older guy and he was filming outside his window and his wife is in the background just yelling like, get in the house. And he's like, that tornado is going to hit our boat. But what was more important was that he held the phone out. Now, I'll admit, you know, it was riveting footage to watch, but I thought, oh, my gosh, that is so dangerous. So that's like point one is to never put your safety ahead of content. And younger people especially, I think are just so wired to doing that, is when something happens, we immediately put our phone out and we could just be jeopardizing our own safety, our family's safety, and of course, our pet safety. So that's point one. It's just noticing how many people are doing that and not to do it from here on out. And hopefully at this point when this is published that there weren't. God, they're just, oh, this hurricane makes me nervous. But I just hope there wasn't anyone that was put in harm's way or, you know, was killed because of that. All right. Second is, you know, just the importance of, you know, listening to federal and local officials, but also noticing how federal and local officials are using social media. So now, listen, if you're someone who works in communication and public relations, operations, management, you're Doing it firsthand. Or you might even be running that organization or business. Oh, my gosh. People go to social media for their answers. Now, I. I don't know if I've said this on the podcast before, but I'm working as an adjunct instructor at a college this semester and they just asked me to. To do it again next semester. I have to think on that one. But we were talking about media theory yesterday. We were talking about agenda setting, we were talking about framing, we're talking about gatekeeping. And so much of it was the impact of the press on what people see. And it's not only what they see, it's the press influencing how people are supposed to think. Okay? That's the idea behind the agenda setting theory. But with social media kind of upends all of it, you know, because the public now puts out content. When I'm on my treadmill in the morning and I'm just getting ready, I'm kind of warming up. I'm scrolling and I'm looking not at Noah, because they're not even on TikTok. FEMA's not on TikTok. I'm looking at people who are weather experts. They're sitting at their command stations, you know, people filming outside the door. How many, you know, just how many people are using it as a resource. But what an opportunity if that. If you work for an organization to use, you know, social media when there is an event. So if you're an organization that is managing a crisis or, you know, managing an incident, let's say if there's a power outage or there's a hurricane or there's a storm or, you know, anything where there's an incident happening, like incident management. Think about how live video could help your organization get the word out. Think about that. And do you have the resources for live video? Because that's what people are going to. Okay. And that's the next piece of it. It's not only just having social media. It's more than Facebook, it's more than Instagram. This is one of the great reasons why you have TikTok is you can have live video. It's one of the great reasons why you have Twitter is you can have live. You can go live, you can give people breaking news, you can give, you know, people use Twitter as an aggregate. That's what I had said on a TikTok last week and noted I was talking about the try guys and the big brouhaha over the try guys. Ned Fulmer had an affair and he had to Come out with a statement. And I referred to it on TikTok. Funny side note, I had mentioned on the TikTok that I go to Twitter, that's my go to site for breaking news. And the head of marketing, consumer marketing from Twitter, wrote to me, replied on my Twitter account, hey, Molly, I'm a huge fan of your account. You know, I should probably go to it instead of just riffing. He said, so it's Justin Taylor. So Justin is the smarmy bum. He's the head of consumer product marketing at Twitter. And he said to me, I love your TikTok account. Always the first place I go during a PR crisis. Which is great, right, that he did that. And I wrote, you know, thanks, Justin. And then he added, I love the Twitter plug. Right? Cause I knew exactly why he liked it is because I mentioned Twitter. So what does that mean? Is that people are using. Organizations need to use these social media accounts to reach their consumers, you know, to reach their customers. Okay. And here's the last piece of it too. It's this idea of live video. Okay? Younger generations are starting to go to social media as a search engine. Not just chit chat with their friends or to sit and zone out all day. They're using social media as a search engine. What does that mean? It means they're not going to Google and typing something into Google, they're going into TikTok and typing something in to watch it firsthand. Now how I know this is because I've been told this one. Someone added me on TikTok and gave the TikTok and gave me a mini lecture about how I was standing in front of a statement and how he's chastising me, telling me that young people use TikTok as a search engine and you can't, you know, stand in front of content, blah, blah, blah. The thing is, you know, he was right. Now, my post wasn't an informative post. I mean, I was just talking about the PR aspect of it. But what he was saying was absolutely true. And noticing that even my use of it, like I will go to TikTok and use the search function to find out information. I'll go to Instagram and use the search function. So are you using social media as a search engine? So if you work for an organization, especially like with a hurricane Ian, so that means you're an agency, a local agency, state, federal, maybe something that you work local that impacts the local community. More people are using social media as a search engine. So are you there putting out your information you may think you may not have a lot of young customers that care about your business, but you would be surprised. Okay, so those are the three things that I wanted you to think about as it related to Hurricane Ian. How many people are using this type of content because a hurricane, there's nothing like hurricane content to draw people in and get views. Also that federal and local officials are using social media more and more to get out the message. And this last piece, you know, live video, people using it as a search engine. Do you work for an organization and does your organization use it? The live feature on video and using video with social media is so powerful. So that's something I'm going to get off this recording today. I'm going to talk about it with some of my clients today. In every podcast, I include one indestructible PR tip. This is an easy leave behind tip to help you, you know, build an indestructible reputation either for yourself or for your business. This is how it relates to Hurricane Ian. I had a client or pot client, I should say. I'm doing more one on one work now where I'm working as a consultant for people who need immediate PR help or they're in crisis or they're dealing with a social media crisis. And I received a note from someone saying that they're in Florida and they had to reschedule our meeting. If you work for an organization, if you're a manager because of the virtual aspect of our society nowadays, are you taking care of your virtual employees when there's an incident like this? If you have staff, remote workers, people in Florida, look out for your people in Florida. This is internal communication. You may be sitting in sunny, sunny, sunny New England or fall in the Midwest or sunny California. You could be sitting someplace else, but in Florida, it's complete devastation. At this point, they're probably thousands and thousands of people still out of power. Take care of your internal audiences, your employees, your contractors, anyone who does business with you. Make sure they're okay. Don't put pressure on them about working and help them out. That's all for this week on the podcast. Boy, when this is broadcast, I sure hope I am thinking my heart goes out to everyone who's in Florida, anyone who is in Florida when the storm hit. And I'm just wishing and hoping for everyone's safety. That's all for this week. Thanks for listening. Bye for now.