We are very lucky to have an amazing independent weather outlet in the Philly area. The folks at Phillyweather really get into the science of the weather and why it affects us in a particular way. When forecasting, they’ll make a call, but only after presenting all of the models and possibilities. They present the weather then get the hell out of the way. Which, if you ask me, is much better than the rigmarole you see on most morning newscasts.

The image above was tweeted from their Twitter account recently, and it really struck a chord with me. While I think that most PIOs understand that we need to get out of the way and let the doctors and chiefs and subject-matter experts do the talking, I wonder if even that small bit of control (talk now, not another time) is too much.

Think about it this way: message control does not cover just the message (the what, basically). It’s also about the who, the when, the where and the how. Who speaks, when they speak, where they speak and how it’s said all tell volumes. For my seasoned PIO friends out there, how many fights with news agencies have you gotten into over just those questions? These things are important because they affect how the message received and perceived.

Now, I’m not saying we should allow our employees to call up the media whenever they want and spout off on whatever topic comes to their head. Far from it. I think, though, that there is a middle ground. And that’s because of what social media gives us.

Your agency’s blog (you do have one, right?) is probably full of posts by your Executive, or your communications staff. (Or really hopefully at least there are some posts.) And then something newsworthy happens and you ask a subject-matter expert to write about it. In a format that they’re not familiar or comfortable with, under a deadline that they feel stressed about, and to readers who don’t know this lady from a hole in the wall. This is supposed to be helpful?

My point, and it naturally follows from last week’s post on having others write for your agency, is that we need to get the hell out of the way. Let your agency shine through every day. Give your experts the podium they deserve. Build them a following (or let them build a following).

Everyone who does the work we do knows the world is changing. Our traditional gatekeepers–the media–are going away, getting fired, or getting outgunned by citizen journalists. That means that the role that they provided us with (being a medium upon which we could conduct messaging to the public) is going away. This is the next true calling of PIOs and communicators: to be the media through which the public and our agency’s really smart guys and gals can talk.

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard the news. The federal government has been caught red-handed snooping through your cell phone calls and your internet interactions. I’m sure that by the time this publishes, there will be further revelations and much blame, laid at the feet of just about everyone including the White House, Congress, whistleblowers and the American public.

While the topic concerns me greatly, that’s not the facet of this absolute disaster I think is relevant to you all. (I plan to conveniently ignore the legality or illegality of the topic today.) For us and our ilk, I think this classic saying best describes what’s happening now:

Trust takes years to build, but seconds to destroy.

And unfortunately for many of us who work in government communications, I worry that the public will concentrate on the first part of that description of us (government) rather than the second (communicators) in light of this most recent, and latest in a series of unhappy events.

I mean, it’s not like we’re that highly trusted now, right? According to the worldwide, annual Edelman Trust Barometer, the US government is trusted by less than half of its public. You think this disaster will help?

What do we do when we have no trust left? This is not your fault, or my fault. (I check the logs, no one from the White House or Congress reads this blog. Hi NSA!) But we are the ones that have to deal with the fallout. We’re the ones who shout life-saving advice and recommendations into the ether, with nothing more than the cloak of, “they do this job because they are true believers; it’s certainly not for the money,” to protect us from the liars, the sycophants, the paranoid and the deniers. What do we do when that last shred of trust is gone?

Years we’ve spent building trust and relationships and good vibes, only to be painted over by the broad stroke of a brush meant for someone else. Someone who stepped too far, someone who took a bit too much, someone who is not us.

I don’t have an answer. All I have is the heavy sigh of a government employee who has seen this show before, who is too tired of fighting upstream every day just to do good in the world. What do we do when all that we’ve ever had going for us is gone?

A couple of weeks ago, I had the distinct pleasure and honor of hosting PIO Marcus Deyerin’s personal after-action from the Skagit Bridge Collapse. Marcus’s very first “Quick Tip to Remember” dealt with power:

Back-up power was critical. I’ve carried around a NewTrent 12KmAh backup charger in my PIO bag for several months, and used it a couple times prior, but this is the first time it seriously saved my bacon. I recharged my phone from near dead 3 times over the course of my involvement during the response. It’s worth every penny. [There are certainly other brands/models out there - this is just the one I have]

I loved this tip, because I carry something similar around and it has come in handy more times than I can count. Saved my bacon is exactly right. I wanted to call more attention to this excellent tip, but it stood very well with the rest of Marcus’s posts.

Yesterday, though, in the aftermath of a devastating tragedy in Philly, it became an issue again. Yesterday morning, a building being demolished collapsed unexpectedly into an occupied building. Thirteen people were rescued and, as of my writing this, at least two were found dead.

(As an aside, I ran my Health Department’s social media presence during the rescue and recovery operations–from the Raleigh-Durham airport–using nothing more than my personal phone, a Geofeedia search, and my personal Twitter media lists.)

Yesterday evening, as I continued to monitor the situation, I saw the first confirmation on Twitter of what sounded an awful lot like a body being found.

A group of firefighters have surrounded an area of the rubble, cutting apart boards and poking sticks through the debris—
Aubrey Whelan (@aubreyjwhelan) June 05, 2013

I headed over to the reporter’s Twitter feed to see if I could learn more and saw this tweet sent just minutes later:

Heyo, Twitter: Anyone have a portable charging device that's iPhone compatible? I am at 22nd and Market if you're feeling charitable.—
Aubrey Whelan (@aubreyjwhelan) June 05, 2013

She had a scoop and was rapidly losing juice, losing power in her phone. If only she’d seen Marcus’s quick tip about having a battery back-up.

I think eventually she found power because she continued posting for several more hours, offering detailed descriptions of what ultimately was a recovery mission.

Two ambulances are backing up toward the rubble. Firefighters crouched down pulling out wood fragments by hand.—
Aubrey Whelan (@aubreyjwhelan) June 05, 2013

Three medic units are now outside the Salvation Army store. Firefighters holding some kind of tarp up on the rubble.—
Aubrey Whelan (@aubreyjwhelan) June 05, 2013

My tip to you–whoever you are working in communications, public information, reputation management, social media, public relations–is this: buy one of these battery packs for your phone (Lifehacker recently did a best five comparison of them, so if you want to shop around, do so) and carry it with you at all times. You never know when you’ll need more juice.

(Personal note: This is a terrible, tragic situation. I go to bed tonight with a heavy heart. I knew that Salvation Army and had shopped there more than a few times. I know the good work that the people there did. Today was hard, and my only hope is that my work helped someone somewhere cope, comprehend or just see the valiant efforts of Philly’s finest and bravest.)

Last week, I wrote about how regular posting is good for your views. (I’m working on proving it again with a few weeks of steady posting, we’ll see how that goes.) I’m not so far up my own butt to realize that what I’m recommending (see yesterday’s post on the social-ecological model) is really, really hard. Post all the time? Do more than just message? Partner with everyone?

Well, I can’t help with all of that, but I can help with a bit of it. The idea for this post actually came from the comments of that “Takes a Lot of Work” post. (See, there’s another reason to comment; think of all the cool people you’ll meet!) The thrust of my recommendations is this: ask for help.

Help! Help from all of the folks that you work with, help from your subject-matter experts, help from experts in the field, help from non-experts who have a unique way of seeing something. Your agency’s blog doesn’t have to be shouldn’t be a one-man or -woman show. Even restricting posts to just your communications team only gives your readers part of the story. Besides the fact that it can easily lead to burn out.

Frankly, I can’t really state it better than my wonderful commenters, so I’ll cede the floor.

Raed Mansour:

Every single employee generates content without even knowing it. Studies, observations, initiatives, ideas, meetings, etc. It’s not that hard to come up with 200 words of genuine, high quality content when you have a few hundred employees, or even as little as 5 employees. Plus, it stops the “hey, did you mention what I’m working on” routine.

Leah Roman:

I know for my own blog, it has been challenging to always hit my goal of posting once/week. To help out when I’ve been on travel or on deadline, I’ve also reached out to guest bloggers- that can be a nice addition to your content. Perhaps once/week or once/month organizations can solicit a post from an expert in the field?

Different voices, different points of view, different writing styles, all supporting the one great goal of your organization. All interacting with the public, all enjoying seeing their name in print, all getting more recognition for that crazy idea they had. Why aren’t we doing this, again?

 My undergraduate degree is in sociology, which means I’ve got a theory for just about everything. One of my favorite theories is the social ecological model. Basically it means that in order to completely understand why someone is doing something, we can’t look at one facet of what they do and attempt to use that to explain it entirely. People don’t ignore hurricane evacuation warnings because of the messages, they ignore them because of their families, because the last two evacuations didn’t pan out, because the dog’s sick and can’t be kenneled, because their work isn’t closing, because they don’t have money for a hotel. I like to call it the Everything Approach.

A perfect illustration of this phenomenon is our weather warning system’s infatuation with lead time. If we can warn people earlier, goes the thinking…

Amen, right @jgarrow? MT @LSUHealthChris: All lead time in world doesn't matter if people don't respect warnings or have a plan in advance.—
Noel Waghorn (@NWaghornAP) May 22, 2013

Except that even with 36 minutes of lead time, there wasn’t much any of them could do.

Our friends over at PopHealth investigated further:

Over and over, Meteorologists kept saying- “it would be very hard to survive this storm above ground”. And then we heard that basements and safe rooms are not common in Moore.

So how can that be? How can a town situated in an area of the country ripe with tornado activity be without basements and safe rooms?

Well- as with most public health challenges, the answers are complex [and include]: Environmental, Urban Sprawl, Cost, [and] Access.

Our messaging wasn’t the real problem. The public had plenty of time to hear the warnings, and Moore had been hit by an EF-5 tornado just fourteen years ago, so it’s not like the impetus to be ready wasn’t there. People weren’t in tornado shelters because of, as Leah said, all of the other influences. Money, ability, priorities.

So much of what we do, as communicators, focuses on the message and we hope that the government funding fairy and “rest of people’s lives” fairies hold up their end of the bargain. As we’ve seen over and over again, though, they don’t. The wonderful Alex Bornkessel highlighted this idea when talking about health communications and how just focusing on messages doesn’t help:

The study shares interesting insights on the relationship between messaging and behavior change based on its 12 years of longitudinal data from the Canadian National Population Health Survey among Canadians aged 50 or older with a chronic disease. Findings show that:

• 3 in 4 smokers with respiratory disease… do not quit smoking
• Most people with diabetes or heart disease… will not become more physically active, and
• For people diagnosed with cancer, heart disease, diabetes or stroke… virtually, no one will increase their intake of fruit and vegetables.

Indeed, the reviewer of the study shares: “As many experts in health promotion are well aware, knowledge and warnings are the least effective measures to change health behaviours.”

The easy answer as to why we do things this way is because it’s how we’ve always done them. Communicators communicate. We message. We have no control over if people build storm shelters or if they start eating vegetables or not. They’re the ones who are ultimately responsible, it’s up to us to raise their awareness of the situation.

The thing is, as we’ve seen above, we don’t need messaging. We need full wrap-around, we need to approach our work from a social-ecological model point of view. We need to not only to tell them they need a storm shelter, but advocate on their behalf to make it easier for them to get one. We can’t just tell people to walk for thirty minutes after dinner, we need to make their streets safe and well-lit and make sure they have sidewalks.

You want to change a life, to save a life? Then you need to drop the awareness campaigns and make your work part of life itself.