Conversationblog

Now that the (ash) cloud has settled on the European continent I thought it would be good to look at the use of social media during this crisis.

Just to recap: an ash cloud from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland prompted governments in Europe to close the airspace in all Scandinavian countries, Belgium, Germany, France and other parts of Europe for about a week.

Apart from the thousands of flights grounded and the millions of people stranded across the globe the ash cloud also had serious financial impact with more than 1 billion euro lost in the tourism industry alone...

As we can imagine this was the ultimate test for thousands of crisis plans and PR professionals in different industries and governments.

In this blogpost I will focus on the use of social media during this period and specifically on the excellent work EUROCONTROL has done in this context.

The European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, is an intergovernmental organisation made up of 38 Member States and the European Community. Their primary objective is the development of a seamless, pan-European air traffic management (ATM) system.

As you can imagine this organisation was the "go to" European player during the crazy week of the ash cloud.

In order to give you an overview of how they used social media channels in the context of crisis communications I interviewed Aurélie Valtat, the Online Communications Manager at Eurocontrol.

Below the Q&A:

Q: What kind of social media communications channels were in place before the crisis and what was their purpose ?

We launched our corporate social media presence in September 2009, by first evaluating our existing online reputation, and then securing profiles called "eurocontrol" on the main social media sites.

The next step was the actual launch of our four main channels which was done concurrently on 1 December 2009:

• EUROCONTROLTV on Youtube,
• A Facebook & Twitter account
• A Linkedin company profile & EUROCONTROLers group.

At the same time our website and electronic newsletters were adapted to always feature the "join us" icons for these 4 channels. The objectives of our social media channels are the following:

1. Increase traffic to our website
2. Improve our visibility and credibility at large, but primarily targeting aviation partners and national / European decision-makers
3. Develop and nurture a sense of community among the European air traffic management (ATM) community
4. Serve as almost real-time communication channel where appropriate.

Q: Where these channels part of the crisis communications plans in place at Eurocontrol or did you find out during the crisis that they could be included in your crisis communications ?

All communication channels were included in the crisis communications plan, because our current website is based on an old technology and content is only visible 40 minutes after it was pushed to the live environment. But the extent to which social media would be used was actually not mentioned nor planned.

Q: How many people "managed" the regular updates during the crisis and how did you manage the response/feedback ?

Our social media profiles are normally updated by a trainee. During the crisis, I decided that I would take over, due to the sensitive situation. So I Aurélie Valtatwas basically on my own, feeding Twitter, Facebook, and the public website (I'm also EUROCONTROL's corporate web editor, so I would edit/approve all content published) with the latest info.

The process for gathering the latest info was the following: I was sitting close to the press office which would issue all official updates, I had access to the NOP portal (the operational information portal for aviation professionals) and I had contacts in the CFMU (the operational centre managing air traffic flows across Europe).

With these contacts I was capable of both updating the social media channels almost real-time but also of responding to any request concerning the opening or closing of airspace in Europe.

I mostly interpreted for the general public the maps, charts and information available on the NOP portal, which was also a steep learning curve for me.

Q: Are their any specific tools you used to manage these channels ? (CoTweet, Hootsuite etc...?)

At EUROCONTROL we are using Hootsuite to manage our social media profiles (Twitter, Facebook page and Linkedin profiles) and found the tool to be very handy during this crisis situation.

Q: How did you monitor the online crisis communications situation ? Did you have a listening post in place before the crisis ?

There was no listening post in place before the crisis on that specific topic, because in this case we were at the centre of the crisis. Indeed the recommendation to stop air traffic has been made by us and then transmitted to Member States, so we knew exactly when the crisis would unfold.

In general, of course, we monitor online conversations mentioning EUROCONTROL and relevant keywords through various tools (Backtype, Social Mention, etc.)

Q: Overall, what are the main learning points now that you were able to use social media during a crisis ?

There are a few lessons we've learnt from this crisis regarding the use of social media:

• Keep it simple - 1 person was enough to manage the Twitter and Facebook activity (although during the weekend I was glued to my screen from 09am to 12pm and could have done with some help), this made it easier to manage the flow of information published and its consistency across the different channels. This however requires someone with both good language skills (questions were asked in several European languages) and sound political judgment as the topic and situation was highly sensitive for us.

• Act like a person - this may sound trivial but it was the human touch of our feeds (+ the exclusive nature of the information we possessed) that ensured the success of our Twitter account. Be simple, be honest, be authentic, but all this in a professional way. I have my personal opinions on this but I believe the fact that I am a woman did make a difference here. Many followers were just amazed by the empathy they could feel on the other side of the feeds, an empathy that wasn't faked (as some of my family was stranded too I could really relate to their situation).

• Don't sell anything - we didn't try to push anything about EUROCONTROL during the crisis situation, nor take advantage of the sudden surge in popularity to push certain messages.

• Stay focused - we only informed people about the status of European air traffic and answered their questions on this topic. I read tweets that were making fun of airlines who had posted annual report or budgetary information during the crisis while at the same time they weren't satisfactorily dealing with passenger requests.

Q: Do you have some metrics which give us a feel for the online impact of this crisis and how Eurocontrol handled it ?

During the crisis we moved from 350 followers to 7,300 on Twitter, from 2,000 fans to 3,000 fans on Facebook. Our public website was visited more than 1 million times during the crisis, and we increased the average no. of visits by 5000% on average during the crisis. We posted almost 1000 tweets during the crisis.

Q: Any anecdotes - (crisis situations are full of them) - that you would like to share ?

Two anecdotes I really like (among several):

An important Spanish airline sent me a direct message to thank us for the useful and updated information that we provided... This is quite amazing that an airline should thank us for that via Twitter when they have direct access to operational information from the CFMU, but I gathered that the communications people received the info faster from us than from their own operational colleagues)

A follower told me that his girlfriend had been stuck for 5 days during the crisis, and that he couldn't communicate with her during that time. Only thanks to the EUROCONTROL Twitter feed could this man bare this difficult situation. - I know this sounds cheesy but it was really heart-warming!

Learnings:

The interview with Aurélie pointed out some specifics I saw in other cases:

• The multilingual aspect of European communications: it is very difficult to find staff with strong language skills, even in Europe, but they can make the difference during a crisis communications effort.
• You have to be present on social media channels before a crisis strikes. Social media needs to be integrated in the planning and channels need to be used actively for ongoing communications.
• Integrate you social media channels into your other corporate online communications efforts and "classic website".
• Keep it simple, transparent en focused - in short; tell it all, tell it fast and tell the truth.

Timeline

To get a full overview of what happened during that week in Europe you can check out this interesting timeline on the website of Eurocontrol.

A big thanks to Aurélie (also member of the EACD) for answering my questions and for helping the numerous stranded travelers out there.

Ok, this is a typical Belgian story but please try to understand, we're a small country and federalised...

Here's the short version; on December 21 a chemical company called Floridienne Chemie accidentally drops between 300 and 600 kg of zinc-chloride in the Dender, a river which runs both through Flanders and Wallonia.

What happens next is rather unbelievable but still....

As the origin of this environmental accident lies in the Walloon part of the country the local government instance there has the responsibility to warn the other instances down river, in this case the Flemish government.

The whole procedure for this type of crisis situation is known by all involved, it is written down and it is followed... It clearly states that a FAX (!) should be send to warn the other instances...!

And of course we all know how a fax works these days.... So in this specific scenario the warning fax never came through because of an electricity failure on the Flemish side.

Apart from the fact that both responsible environmental ministers, Philippe Henry (Ecolo) & Joke Schauvliege (CD&V) played a shameful and childish blame game for about a week, it is also incredible to find out that a crisis procedure is based on sending a fax !

Here are some tips in case they both take their "communications audit" serious enough this time:

• Never, ever rely on just one means of alert... Use a cascading system where you would use the phone first, SMS second, email next etc.... I would not even include a fax or, if needed, I would fax through the internet.
• Always use a control system - you need to be certain the message or alert arrived. By phone it is quite obvious but also with SMS and email you can get a response saying the message was delivered. Even better is to agree on a "confirm receipt" sign from the other side.
• Be prepared for electricity and/or internet failures - always have "runners", people who are able to physically carry a message to others, integrated into your plan.

Several governments, even smaller local entities, use well known industrial messaging systems which have already proven their effectiveness. Of course business continuity and crisis management is serious stuff and should be handled by certified professionals.. but there is no excuse these days not to use a standardised system.

At the same time, crisis preparedness is a state of mind and a "culture" and I am not so certain that even with the finest systems in place our federalised entities and their ministers would be able to manage another crisis.

We've seen it before - when the system works they suddenly don't understand the language spoken on the "other side". Another case for having civil servants who speak the 3 national languages, but that in itself is considered a "crisis prone" discussion in my little country.

At the end of the day in this specific story, the environment and the Belgian taxpayers have lost here, and that's a pity...