With nearly 100 of its roads closed due to storms and flooding last month, the Rhode Island Department of Transportation couldn’t get information out fast enough. To help struggling motorists keep up with the changing conditions, the RIDOT started pumping out updates on Twitter and Facebook on a regular basis. This quote from Ragan.com describes how they did it, along with the results:
“The staff was able to use social media from home, sending links about the RIDOT home page as it was updated,” Nolfe said.
RIDOT got involved with social media in January 2009, but they’ve never seen it put to the test until recently. Nolfe’s happy to report it passed with flying colors.
The flooding has resulted in triple the number of fans for the department’s Facebook page and its Twitter account, @RIDOTNews, has nearly 1,000 followers.
Nolfe said that by consistently using the same Bit.ly-shortened URL for the link to its updates, RIDOT tracked more than 8,000 hits to its home page in a week via social media links alone. The RIDOT home page normally picks up about 2,100 hits per day, but because of the flood of both water and information, it recently peaked at more than 83,000 hits per day.
By already having an established presence on the Web, the RIDOT made their crisis management infinitely more effective. In addition, the department gave itself a fantastic reputation boost by going above and beyond to help the public in their time of need.
The BCM Blogging Team
https://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/