Damage Prevention Social Media

By Mike Sullivan

Promoting safety has never been easy. We take so much for granted and significant changes often take years, even generations, to have a positive impact. Consider seatbelt safety. If you’re 40 or older, chances are you sat on your mother’s lap as an infant when traveling in the family car. And as you got older, you were relegated to the backseat with your siblings. Today, thankfully, that’s no longer the case. I can remember my own son making quite a fuss as I started backing out of the driveway — my wife and I had forgotten to buckle him into his car seat. At that very early age, habit had taken hold and he was uncomfortable not being secured while the car was moving.

The seatbelt campaign was successful — it just took years to reach its goal and was limited by the mediums available; namely, television, radio and print, but, it was also supported by legislation.

Interesting fact — Ontario was the first province to mandate the use seatbelts in 1976 but it wasn’t until 1987 that seatbelts became mandatory in Alberta. 

Damage prevention awareness has traditionally relied on the same mediums – television, radio and print. Radio continues to be effective but print and television have been outpaced by streaming services and the proliferation of online content and ignoring those trends would have been devastating.

Alberta One-Call ventured into social media with Twitter and Facebook in 2012 and it’s been an uphill climb but it’s not just about the information ‘push’, social media is a two-way street. 

“Damage prevention conversations are happening and AOC is sometimes mentioned in those discussions. If we aren’t on social media, we can’t engage or educate,” says Craig Taffs, AOC Team Leader and Social Media Consultant. Craig recalls a situation several years ago where Global News in Edmonton tweeted "Tell us your concerns about Alberta One-Call." “That particular year, there was a significant backlog of locates in the City of Edmonton and surrounding area and unfortunately, the general population thinks AOC locates and marks buried utilities and that we were the cause of the delays. We quickly began inundating Global News Edmonton’s social media feeds with information explaining the damage prevention process and the various associated roles — including our own. After a day, perhaps less, the story disappeared. Without our social media profile, we might not have learned about it and our ability to respond and educate would have been a lot more difficult.”

Since those early days, AOC’s social media management has become far more sophisticated. With almost 2,600 Twitter followers alone, a considerable milestone in our business and for context, almost 700 more followers than the Common Ground Alliance promoting damage prevention across the entirety of the United States, we needed a system to alert us of any mention of AOC across the social media landscape. So, we introduced Zendesk integrated customer support software to our toolbox. Zendesk offers a customizable front-end portal, live chat features and integration notifying us of any instance where AOC’s social media profiles are mentioned, which allows us to respond accordingly.

“Communication is a two-street,” says Taffs. “While it might appear we’re always 'talking,' we are, in fact, always listening.”