Inside PBS Blog

This past weekend the Engage team spoke (virtually, using e-mail, of course!) about how we could help spread information and resources about Hurricane Gustav. We decided we should point users to the most valuable material from all around the Web. And there's a lot of it.

Have a look at Lousiana Public Broadcasting (we've featured them on this blog before). At the top of their homepage they link to an LPB Hurricane Information page with resources on planning and coping with disasters along the Gulf coast.

Not far away, Mississippi Public Broadcasting is making their content portable, by blasting updates via the popular Web messaging service Twitter (they're @MPBonline). They've gained almost 60 new followers in the last three days. 

MPB used a lot of personal attention and a genuine voice in their Twitter updates. Not only are they providing potentially life-saving information but they're doing it in a calm, clear way--not scary or full of hype.   

That's an innovative social media strategy if you ask me: Put your content where it can be seen and acted upon by the maximum number of people regardless whether that's TV or a mobile phone. It makes a lot of sense for everyday news and information, and especially so when people's lives and likelihoods are at stake.

Sometimes major advances in communication and information distribution happen when just one person has a great idea. We saw that this last weekend when Andy Carvin (who works on social media projects over at our partner in public broadcasting, NPR, and also a blogger on the PBS Learning.now blog) decided to make a difference.

Andy immediately set up camp and began Twittering, blogging, creating social networks and editing Wikis with the latest official--and unofficial--information about Hurricane Gustav.

News and information with a personal touch? Now that's innovative.