Not for Emergency Use! Coast Guard’s placing disclaimers on some sites

Over the summer, July in fact, I wrote a piece on CGBlog about the potential pitfalls of an organization such as ours would have if they didn’t thoroughly think out their social media strategy (The Coast Guards problem of Social Media Liability). The post honed in on the fact that the Twitter generation would, unless told otherwise, think that Coast Guard social media outlets could/would be used as an emergency (911) service.

There is a perception that may be implied by some of our official Twitter users that this is indeed a means of communication. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s something that needs to be dealt with soon. As we continue our service wide adventure into the social media rabbit hole there is no doubt we won’t be able to get ourselves out of it, but we can mitigate problems of a cave-in.

As I was snooping around the social world the other night I came across the LANT Area Twitter account and wouldn’t you know it, it seems that someone- again perhaps I’m wishful- took my advice and a statement that ‘this official account isn’t to be used in an emergency’ has appeared (see the ‘lil picture above). I’ve also seen it on the LANT Area Facebook page but haven’t really seen it elsewhere yet. Well none the less its a start and I’m glad to see a ‘big picture’ social media policy beginning to take shape.