Social media plays a massive role in communicating major incidents. But it can also play a role by those on the frontline to tell their story as this post from a senior West Midlands Fire Service officer shows.
Thinking back to about 2007 (I really can’t even remember the year), I was a huge Facebook fan and posted almost hourly... I loved it.
Then @philliploach, who’s now our Chief Fire Officer, introduced me to Twitter. In those days, Twitter was still a small thing compared to Facebook. I can hear the “Facebookers” now: I’m never going to use Twitter… You can only type 140 characters… It’s rubbish. That was, indeed, my first impression. However, I pursued it and I found even early on it allowed you to reach different demographics to Facebook, MySpace, etc if you let it.