Wellington Region Emergency Management Office (WREMO) recently received a well-earned high five from the International Association of Emergency Managers, taking out a global technology and innovation award for its use of social media.
The Association recognised WREMO for using social media “as an engagement tool to help build strong communities, promote disaster preparedness through clever marketing, and communicate official emergency management information during and after an event”.
They highlighted that WREMO is redefining the meaning of social media emergency management (#SMEM) with its focus on building an audience before an event. As a result WREMO’s Facebook page has the most followers per capita of any emergency management organisation in the world. (Even more importantly, it’s engagement and reach stats are also impressive.)
Many emergency management organisations around the world use social media during events but WREMO excels in using social media in-between events to build community awareness and resilience.
It’s succeeded through several factors creating a perfect storm for social media emergency management:
- Strategy: WREMO has a clear ‘community resilience’ approach focusing on building community resilience before events so community engagement is core to their work
- Culture: they have a positive, action-oriented, results-focused way of doing things that values learning and improving
- Great people (you know who you are!)
It’s a great example of how using social media well is more than just being there. Anyone can create a Facebook page. It’s what you do when you’re there that sets you apart.
Disclosure: At the time of writing I provided pro-bono social media strategy advice and response support to WREMO. The feature image shows the author (right) with WREMO manager Dan Neely working in the Emergency Operations Centre during the response to the 2013 Cook Strait Earthquakes.
