Schwan: Behind the scenes, a blizzard of social media

Stick with me on this one.

Almost everything you need to know about effectively using social media, you can learn from the federal government.

OK, technically it’s one fairly small sliver of one federal agency.

But when I started noticing what the Sioux Falls office of the National Weather Service was doing with social media, I had to ask who was behind it.

Turns out, they all are.

“Our entire staff of meteorologists are required, basically, as part of their job to be involved with social media,” said Todd Heitkamp, the office’s warning coordination meteorologist. “Whether it’s developing their own posts or reposting or retweeting, everyone is expected to be involved.”

That was clear when I stopped by in the thick of the blizzard Feb. 2.

“This Twitter feed is going nuts,” meteorologist Mike Fuhs said, staring at a monitor turned into a social media dashboard.

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Two feeds on the screen show him what’s happening on Twitter. Two more track Facebook. The office runs accounts on both platforms.

“We can post tweets and respond to people,” Fuhs said. “We do a lot of retweeting interesting stuff to get the word out.”

Next to him, meteorologist Tim Masters was compiling a 14-slide PowerPoint that he would turn into an animated graphic to show the motion of the storm. He was anxious to finish and post it because the most recent graphic online “is getting to be like half an hour old.”

Across from him, Phil Schumacher was finding social media reports sent in by weather-watchers across the southeastern part of the state.

“We just got this report from Yankton – 5.7 inches,” he told me. “Any good reports or photos, I’ll repeat.”

He, too, was making graphics. One showed a radar map on half the screen and two photos submitted by citizens showing how conditions had deteriorated.

“So people can put together what that radar picture means,” Schumacher explained. “I put times on them so it doesn’t get confusing. It took me about 15 minutes.”

He’s the head of research and training in the office, by the way.

“Did you ever think you’d be doing this at work?” I asked him.

“Probably not. When I got out of school, there was hardly an Internet,” he said. “But I’m glad we are because I think it’s such a great way to tell people what’s going on and show what’s happening.”

Across the room, an iPad was propped against a window, its camera pointed outside capturing video that would be made into a time-lapse clip.

“It’s comparable to an ER,” Heitkamp said. “If someone walked in, it would look like chaos. But it's organized chaos. Everyone has a job to do, and they do it well.”

Heitkamp already had recorded and shared one 30-second video update on the conditions and would do several more before the day was over. At one point, he and Masters traipsed through snow to show viewers how to properly measure it — avoid the drifts.

They used to record four- or five-minute weather briefings but quit that approach.

“We started watching the analytics, and people started dropping off after 30 seconds,” Heitkamp said. “We know the attention span of an individual is very short.”

People are paying attention, though. A growing number of them.

The National Weather Service Sioux Falls Facebook account has more than 35,000 followers. It has almost 13,000 on Twitter.

“We’re the highest weather-related Facebook account in the tri-state area,” Heitkamp said. “We can’t complain about that.”

I’m sure some could. I asked him if he thought the office was cutting into a market typically controlled by local media.

“I fall back onto the fact that we are responsible for providing forecasts and warnings to protect the public, and this is a great way to provide that information,” he said. “We’re doing our job by informing them. We’re trying to work with the media to tell the same story.”

I applaud them for meeting people where they’re at with information they want to have. It’s quite a departure from how I used to picture the National Weather Service — I said “stuffy.” Heitkamp said “pocket protectors." And it’s a good example for any organization trying to figure out how to reach people.

“Know your audience,” Heitkamp said, when I asked for advice for businesses looking to learn from his success. “And what we’re trying to pinpoint is know what the message is. Too often, the message gets lost because it’s intertwined with too many other things. The message has to be clear and concise.”

And then, figure out the best way to share it, he said.

In this case, that means clear, concise graphics. Short videos. Occasional question-and-answer sessions allowing the public to submit questions.

It also means looking for opportunities to engage your audience in less obvious ways. The weather service has shared photos of the northern lights, for instance, even though they don’t directly connect to weather. The office has recorded cold weather experiment videos showing what happens when water is thrown in cold air, and it shared video of kids celebrating a snow day.

“We have to walk carefully,” Heitkamp said. “We still need to be professional as federal government employees and a professional agency and to be a trusted source, not to hype it up but to tell the facts.”

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I also give them a lot of credit for opening up access to the office social media accounts to so many employees. Too many organizations make telling their story online just one person’s job. Or one department’s job. In this case, the office provided and continues to add social media training and then lets the staff take it from there.

Granted, it’s a small staff, but this approach has – as intended – “put a face to the weather service,” Heitkamp said. “We have an interest in our community, and we’re human and social media really … has allowed us to show a different side of ourselves.”

Most people like to do business with people. They like to get their information from people — whether it’s a weather update or a new product announcement or a program that’s starting.

Social media provides enormous power to do that if used effectively. At the weather service, the real challenge in reaching an audience comes when the snow stops, the warnings expire and it’s just a partly cloudy day.

We all have those days in sharing content about our own businesses.

“There’s a story to be told every day,” Heitkamp said. “We’re not there yet. We’re getting better. But pick something out today. It may not even directly relate to a sale or anything else but that people would find of interest that would drive them to your website or your Facebook page. Drive them to your source of information, so when you want their attention next time, you’ve got it.”