Suppose the department you serve in as PIO wanted to prove to the residents of your district that the bond issue for a new firehouse was justified due to the exemplary service you were providing to the community? And suppose you took money out of your departments taxpayer funded budget to purchase signs to place at the scene of past fires, MVA’s etc to hammer the pointy home and let everyone know about the great work you are accomplishing with their taxes? Obviously many citizens would feel a little uncomfortable that perhaps the department was over aggressively politicking for the new firehouse and that their taxpayer dollars were being used to not provide vital services but to pay for signs.
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Each year our Department visits the Suffolk County Fire Academy to attend a lecture and do hands on work in the techniques needed to battle fires and incidents involving flammable gas and liquids.
I always enjoy this drill both as a firefighter and a PIO. Quite frankly the hands on portion, as any of you who has taken this kind of training know is quite spectacular as LP gas creates a pretty intense fireball.
As a PIO I look forward to the drill because I get some pretty neat pictures when I am not involved in an evolution and I get plenty of food for thought on how I can let the public know about flammable gas safety.
There’s been a lot of talk recently at conferences I have attended about whether websites have outlived their usefulness and are merely dinosaurs left over from 1990s.
I think in our line of work where fact and not hype are the foundations of our websites, a no frills approach is warranted and the website model fits quite well thank you. Whereas a consumer product or service might look to gain interest through blogs, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube first, most folks who want fire and EMS information will visit our websites as the main source of information. With that said though our websites should still serve as portals to assist in integrating our traditional website and social media marketing efforts.
Mashable is a daily must read for anyone interested in social media and its connections to public relations and marketing. I read the blog everyday. Many of the postings do not directly relate to our type of PR, but many posts feature tips and tatics we can certainly use.
A great posting looks at the future of public relations and social media’s impact on the public relations field and our jobs as PIO’s and PAO’s.
The story contains allot of information, links to other stories and video but is well worth the time to study.
I try my hardest to keep up on various Awareness Weeks and Months so I can plan well in advance PR campaigns to coincide with these public education programs.
My problem in the past has been that many times I come up a day late and dollar short in taking the appropriate amount of lead time to acknowledge these events.
I have decided to list these dates early and post them both on my Outlook, Blackberry and bulletin board at the PIO desk in the firehouse.
I share my list with you and hope you will let me know if I have left any out. These dates pertain both to fire and EMS related awareness programs. I have listed links where possible, but will keep on refining the list.
If a government entity or private company has poor customer service it raises the ire of folks seeking a product or service.
Many times customer service complaint calls head to a public relations office for resolution. Why not hit the department that most worries about corporate image?
I think we, as PIO’s have a responsibilities to make sure our own offices are exemplary when it comes to customer service. Those “customers” in our business may be journalists, members of the community, government officials, our own firefighters and EMS personnel civic groups, schools etc.
I mentioned in my post yesterday that we have had three structural fires over the past couple of weeks in my hometown of Smithtown, NY. Every fire was different with its own unique set of challenges and tactics of attach. Although all the fires were different there was one common denominator near the fireground.
Each time there is a working fire an assortment of sketchy, slimy, shadowy characters appears near the fireground. Some carry business cards, some clipboards, some notebooks others camera or the obvious “costume” they put on to look like a member of the community concerned about their neighbors house burning to the ground.
Yesterday we had our third working fire in less then two weeks. In this day and age in a suburban department that is usually a years worth of major jobs.
After photographing at the scene and rotating on a hose line I went back to the firehouse to send out my incident release to the press.
Since we all send the vast majority of our PIO press releases via e-mails these days I wondered what many of you write as your subject line copy in the e-mail.
At one time, especially in the suburban volunteer fire service, when an incident was newsworthy a simple formula was established for reporting. Type out a press release (yes type), mail it to the community newspaper, enclose a picture or negative from the photos you developed at the drug store and wait a week for the public to learn more about the fire. But those were kinder, gentler times. Now instantaneous PR is a 24/7/365 job, even for volunteer PIO’s. We must always be on our toes listening to what the community, bloggers and press are saying about us.
As PIO’s most of us are constantly working to position our departments in the most positive public light possible. Much of this effort involves interaction with the media to spread the word about our professionalism and efforts. While it is great that we can create cordial working relationships with the press, it is not beneficial to either party to become “friends.” Sooner or later tough questions are going to have to be asked by the media and on the opposite side we may find a story to have erroneous facts or flawed opinions.
This past Friday we had a fully involved barn fire in Smithtown, NY where I serve as PIO. Fortunately horses stalled in the barn and other livestock where turned out in paddocks when the fire erupted so thankfully no animals were lost or injured.
In Smithtown, most property zoned for livestock has the family residence at the front of the property and the barn area set to the back.
At Friday’s fire the barn was about 100 yards set back from the access street. Incident command was also set up close to the barn. On the access street was one Engine supplying the water source from a hydrant, Fire Police and Suffolk County PD.
I was just cleaning up my favorites sites on Internet Explorer. I have not updated my links section on this blog in awhile. I use these favorites for both my work as a fire department PIO and as a marketing and public relations professional for a national not for profit organization. Over the weekend I will hopefully add some of these new sites to my links page.
I present to you the most often visited PR sites that I rely on for information.
One of the challenges of writing a daily firematic blog and serving as a PIO of a volunteer department is making sure that my opinions do not affect my department negatively. This is what I must do regarding the general public’s perception of my department and this is also what I must do in the blogosphere.
I do report on my own department and how we handle public relations and crisis communications occasionally, but I would, in my own opinion, be a fool to make my department look foolish to the folks from across the country who read this blog.
My “office” at the firehouse is in a corner of the conference room. I have a desk against one of the walls. On the wall in front of my desk is a bulletin board that has all the current 2010 new clippings from press the department has received. It’s just about full, and that’s both good and bad. Good for the press we have received on stories concerning fire prevention, community award ceremonies, parade appearance and member recognition but bad for those clipping that resulted in devastating fires and MVA’s or loss of life.
Suppose we were asked as PIO’s to meet with the media directly after a structural fire where much more went wrong than right. Instead of confronting the situation and transparently addressing where we succeeded, where we failed, and what we should have done to make things run better we took a different tact. We decide to ignore the present, forget about the fire and tell the press that things would have been much worse under the leadership of the past Chief and things are going in the future to get much better. The press would look at us like we were raving lunatics.
My buddy Tiger Schmittendorf who among several things writes the great blog Tiger Schmittendorf.com sent me a note correcting a typo on one of my recent postings. I appreciate Tiger’s observation. No matter how hard we try, proofreading, which is a big part of the work we do, is not a perfect process.
This is pretty cool. Today’s post is just a bunch of useless knowledge. Mark Steiger, a firefighter friend of mine from east Texas saw my Fourth of July post about the founding father of the volunteer fire service, Benjamin Franklin. Mark MC’s a holiday parade each year. Before the festivities get underway he regales the crowd with some Colonial era useless facts. I know it’s not PIO relevant, but it’s allot of fun to read.
Meg Whitman former eBay head honcho is running for Governor of California. She has held multiple town hall meeting around the state to promote her agenda. Obviously with such open forums tough questions arise from the audience.
At a recent town hall in Modesto, Whitman was asked a question, I can’t tell if it was from a reporter or audience member, in which she was asked – “Have you or any members of your family been arrested or run afoul of the law?”
When we disseminate information resulting from an incident scene print newspapers are still responsive in reporting on the story. Currently though with print newsroom resources stretched to their limits, the human interest, safety information and feel good stories we like to float around are not in abundance as they used to be.
After my appearance last night on Firefighter Netcast, which I thoroughly enjoyed I sat down to recap exactly what my responsibilities are as a PIO. We touched on a number of the areas last night.
I’m sitting in the airport setting sail for some business in south Texas. Two areas to cover while I wait for the flight.
First, I’m honored that my Brothers at Firefighter Netcast have asked me to be a guest on their program this Thursday, June 17th. John and Rhett will be interviewing me at 9:00pm EST.
To get the link to the broadcast visit http://www.firefighternetcast.com/ Call in and say hi!
Banned for Life
I’m not one to be a big guy on quotes when I speak. Some people can quote great philosophers, writers and poets whenever they are engaged in conversation. Over the years though I have accumulated a few quotes on the art of communications to try to make a sometimes difficult subject more simplified in my own mind. Here are some of the Fire Pio’s quotable golden rules of communications –
A PR lesson for all of us PIO’s to learn today comes from none other then General Motors. When we write a release we have to look to all of our collateral (website, brochures etc.) to make sure they are all up to date and in sync with what we have written. This is just one of the problems that is plaguing GM for what I consider to be a gut reaction to a marketing scheme that has not taken into consideration all of the ramifications of what they are looking to accomplish.
The PR team at General Motors is spinning their wheels today in an attempt to clarify an internal memo that said employees should only use the word “Chevrolet” when referring to the brand, not Chevy.
Last night I attended a scholarship program for our two high schools. Each year the Smithtown Fire Department presents four scholarships to seniors who will pursue engineering degrees in college. The scholarships are in memory of two of our past members who died in the line of duty. Both were engineers by profession.
Our Chief presented the scholarships and I took several pictures of the presentation. Once the contingent left the stage one of the recipients came up to me to ask when the photos and story will be in the papers. He was excited that he was getting press and that his family and friends would see the story and his image in print. He told me that this is the first time he would have a picture and story in a newspaper.
The video that accompanies this story has been making the rounds and is real. It was not intended to be viral and it’s not a training film. The event actually did occur a few weeks back as surrealistic as it is!
Our job as Public Information Officers is to be both the go to guy and the bridge builder; we are supposed to protect our Departments from any fallout and make sure that the right message gets out. At the same time, we are supposed to help the media, and the public get information and get access to our Chiefs if needed. But the main thing is that PIO’s are conduits of information.
