Fort Hood shooting brings hundreds to donate and talk on social media

On Nov. 5, while the public pressed the refresh button on news sites searching for updates about the shooting at Fort Hood, and as ambulances howled toward central Texas hospital Scott & White, the hospital’s Web and creative editor, Aaron Hughling, was tweeting.

Down the hall, Hughling’s PR colleagues and hospital executives were sitting in the hospital’s makeshift crisis command center, fielding phone calls from the media. Downstairs, emergency room doctors were treating 10 of the most seriously wounded shooting victims. (As of Nov. 17, three patients from Fort Hood still remain at Scott & White, all in fair condition. The rest have been transferred or released.)

At 3:10 p.m., Hughling wrote, “We are watching hashtags #fthood and #forthood for updates on the mass casualty incident on Ft Hood today.” He then sent three tweets within 30 minutes with a link to a statement from the hospital, a phone number for the media, and a note that the ER was closed to all but patients from Fort Hood.

Later, many of his tweets focused on blood donations, and that evening, Scott & White became a top trending topic on Twitter, with more than 400 retweets to Hughling’s post about blood donation. His effort to spread the word on Twitter and other social media helped the hospital collect more than 1,000 units of blood at the blood center and in mobile donation trucks.

“The community immediately stepped up and it was just phenomenal,” Hughling says. “At one point, we actually had to turn people away,” Hughling says. “They turned away … something like 600 people.”

Social media in a crisis

Scott & White, the only Level 1 trauma center in the area, is about 30 miles from Killeen, Tex., and Fort Hood, where the shootings happened.

Opportune timing

Scott & White had discussed getting involved with social media for 10 months, but it didn’t do so until recently—just prior to the shootings at Fort Hood. Aaron Hughling, Web and creative editor, launched a YouTube page at the beginning of the year, followed by a Twitter feed and a news blog in September, and a Facebook fan page and community blog in late October.

Though Hughling’s colleagues followed a crisis communications plan, he was the lone social media person, improvising at times as he handled the hospital’s presence on five network sites and two blogs.

“During the initial hours, there were crazy rumors about the number of shooters, victims and deaths. As our social media guy, I just went to Twitter and started looking at what people were saying,” Hughling says. “It was apparent that the blood thing was big, and I didn’t want to leave any place online unmanned.”

Launched on Sept. 11 of this year, the Twitter feed had about 225 followers. That was until Nov. 5, when Hughling posted 43 tweets in three days and brought his total to 400 followers in the process—a 78 percent jump. On Nov. 7, Texas Gov. Rick Perry mentioned Scott & White to his 19,000 followers.

“This was an example of how to do social media well and how good things can happen with it,” Hughling says. “Thankfully, we were there on social media; it would have been a huge missed opportunity if we weren’t.”

Another high-traffic venue was Scott & White’s YouTube page, which had launched at the start of the year. In just three days, the channel received more than 600 views, compared with its previous monthly average of 380 views.

On the day of the shooting, Hughling posted the hospital’s press conference to update the media and public on the victims’ status. It garnered more than 400 views.

The day after the shooting, Hughling posted a video of a woman interviewed while waiting in line to donate blood. Some people had made the two-hour drive from Dallas or Austin to donate blood closer to Killeen, and some waited in line as long as four hours. That video got more than 100 views on YouTube.

Hughling also monitored Facebook and YouTube, and he updated the hospital’s home page.

“I only had time to individually respond to a handful of people,” he says. “People gave us overwhelmingly positive statements, and sometimes the news media would ask a direct question on Twitter.”

Hughling spent his time over the next several days dispelling rumors, dispensing information—mostly about blood collection—and directing news media outlets to the command center.

He expressed hope that the hospital’s future social media efforts, especially those that involved crisis communications, would include contributions from more staff members.

A slow start

As at many health care organizations, Scott & White took its time getting into social media. For the past 10 months communicators and leadership at the hospital discussed how to handle health information privacy and legal issues, as well as any negative comments that might arise online.

“People tend live in a negative place” with social media, Hughling says, “but an event like this where you can read comments and cry because it’s so positive, this is why we’re here. This is why we did this. People now have easy way to talk to us. We have not received one negative anything since any of this has happened; all of the comments have been positive with this horrible tragedy.”

The news blog , averaged about 18 visits per day prior to the Fort Hood shooting. On the Saturday following, it received 184, and on Monday, 232.

The hospital’s Web site saw a similar increase in visits. On Thursdays, the site normally averages 5,000 visits per day, but on the Thursday of the shootings, it peaked at more than 15,000 visits—a 525 percent increase. It’s gone back down a little by now, but Hughling says it’s still tracking above normal.

The community blog, is community- and patient-based, so it’s not a major source of Fort Hood news. Once it posted the blood donor video, however, visitors to the site tripled in just three days.

The hospital’s Facebook page saw a large increase in fans—from 182 to 330 in three days. On Nov. 6, Hughling linked to a blog entry from the community blog thanking the community for responding and for donating blood. It got seven “likes” and two comments, one of which read:

“God Bless the doctors, EMTs, nurses, and staff can [sic] to the aid of our soldiers and continue to care for them. We are grateful for the services provided my [sic] Scott & White Hospital and all the donors who responded to the need for blood donations.”