While I have written how social media should be used by EMS Agencies numerous times, it is really time to show it in action with an agency that is putting these theories into practice.

LAFD.org

The homepage of The Los Angeles Fire Department is the essential hub for the department’s web presence. On it are seasonal advisories, a roll down list of preparedness pages, a Feedburner generated list of the recent posts from the LAFD Blog, and a link list of department related pages.

This is exactly the type of web presence that I previously described. The LAFD Blog and its constantly freshing content is an integrated part of the hubpage that remains the center of the department’s web presence. What I found VERY interesting and innovative about the LAFD web presence is their LAFD Alert system…

LAFD Alert

The LAFD provides an alert system to their residents. This system is actually pulled together using numerous social media applications. From an outsider looking in, it appears that it all begins with this LAFD_ALERT Google Group…

Residents who want to receive alerts can join the Google Group to receive notification of the events deemed newsworthy by the department. These events are probably submitted to the group itself via e-mail which then propagates out to…

LAFD Verified Twitter

The alerts are propagated through Twitter using TwitterMail that takes an e-mail message and posts its contents to your Twitter account. The LAFD have a Twitter Verified Account, which means that the LAFD Twitter Account has in fact been proven to be the “real thing” to Twitter.

However in Twitter the alert does not end because it continues its syndication into…

LAFD Facebook

Here in Facebook the LAFD Alerts are disseminated in status updates from the LAFD Facebook Profile using Ping.fm. This chain of syndication and information dissemination from a trusted source is exactly the point I’ve been trying to make.

Of course, we shouldn’t forget to mention that LAFD also maintains a presence on MySpace, FriendFeed, Flickr and YouTube. This proves that the LAFD “gets” social media and its benefits.

The Cost

I know that some people may be thinking, “Well they’re the Los Angeles Fire Department so their budget for this must be in the millions!”

Wrong.

Every single service that they are using as spokes in the hub (Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, Google Groups, Ping.fm, and Twittermail) to help the wheel go round are free.

In fact for that matter here is an excerpt from the LAFD_ALERT Google Group Page:

We are a one-person office with more than 300 media phone calls and nearly 500 official e-mails arriving each day.

If the LAFD can have this level of social media presence from a one person office… then what is holding your agency back?