Plan for Public Relations Campaign

Public Relations Campaign Plan for Huntington County The mission of the Emergency Management Agency for Huntington County is to provide an integrated and comprehensive emergency management system that would coordinate community resources in order to protect lives, the environment, property, preparedness, recovery and response from all natural and man-made hazards that impact the county (Yates & Paquette, 2011). The county has implemented a CodeRED emergency Notification System that it uses to communicate any emergencies to the registered members of the county.

The system enables the county to telephone all targeted areas of the county, and it can dial over 50,000 number in an hour (Wentz et al., 2014). The main weaknesses of the system is that it only dials three times, and if a response is not received, it will not dial again. However, the system is smart enough to leave a voice message.

The main threats to the system is in case there is a power outage and phone lines are affected it becomes impossible to reach most of the residents who have not provided alternative mobile numbers. The system has enabled the county to reach many of its residents in a short time and deliver emergency messages promptly. The greatest challenge faced by the county is encouraging people to provide primary and secondary emergency contacts.

There are individuals who have registered with the system, but they might have changed their numbers, which makes it impossible to reach them in case of any emergency. The county tries to inform residents to update their contacts with the system anytime they change their numbers, but reaching out to residents within the county has not been easy, and the county needs to encourage people to register.

This problem mainly affects the people aged between 20-35 years who feel their privacy might be interfered with, and they prefer another method of receiving emergency messages. These publics prefer using social media to interact and receive messages. Calling or having them register with the system has proven a headache for the county. It is for this reason that the county should consider implementing the periscope mobile application. Action planning The main objective of the campaign is to encourage people to register to receive emergency notifications from the county.

The target audience is people aged between 20-35 years, but the campaign would also be geared towards all unregistered members of the community. Many residents feel that by registering and providing their personal numbers it soul invade their privacy, which is not the case, and this would be one of the main messages delivered during the campaign.

Disaster preparedness of the community would only be well coordinated if the residents have the necessary information regarding the emergency, if residents do not enroll for the system it would be difficult to deliver key messages. Huntington County has a Facebook and Twitter account, but these accounts have very few followers, which demonstrates that the county needs to encourage more publics to like and follow their social media pages.

One of the key messages would be follow us on Twitter and Facebook to receive up-to-date information regarding any emergency within the county. Once the periscope system has been setup, the county could also have messages encouraging and demonstrating how users can make use of the system. The periscope app would ensure that users see videos of what is happening at a particular moment within the county. Television and radio advertisements would be the best way to encourage more residents to follow and register with the different systems.

Running promotions can also be an effective way to have more residents register with the system. After speaking to the target audience, it was clear that most of them were not aware of the CodeRED emergency system. They did not know of the county's emergency social pages, but they were willing to register and follow the county's social media pages in order to receive emergency notifications. The county had the financial capacity to implement the campaign strategy, and there were many volunteers willing to deliver the message.

Communication In order to encourage more people to sign up for the county's social media accounts, the county needs to create more awareness regarding the uses and importance of the pages. The strategic actions for reaching the proposed demographic would be utilizing social media advertising and posts. This is mainly because this age group utilizes social media for all communications. The messages should include videos and pictures in order to be impactful and deliver the desired message.

The targeted audience can also be increased because there are older generations that have also embraced social media as a means of communication. The key objective would be to have the publics to like and follow the county's social media pages. It would be easy if all the messages contained a link to the specific social media page to make it easy for them to click and follow. The platform for delivering these messages should be radio, television, and social media.

For radio, it is best if used during morning rush hour and evening rush hour (Shimp & Andrews, 2013), television messages should be run mostly in the evenings from Monday to Thursday during primetime hours. For social media the county should make use of Facebook, and Twitter and deliver the messages mostly in the afternoon from midday until 3 pm. The proposed budget would cover radio, television, and social media advertising for three weeks, and it would amount to $50,000.

To encourage the proposed publics to sign up for the CodeRED system, the county should demonstrate to them that their privacy would not be interfered with in any way and that the system is clever enough to leave a voice message. Using this strategy most people would be willing to sign up, and this would increase the number of people in the system, which is the main target for county.

Making use of the periscope app, which many publics have already installed on their mobile devices, the county can create a video to demonstrate the importance of timely messages and information during a disaster. The budget for this campaign would only be creating the video, because most of the people working on delivering the message are volunteers, the budget would amount to $25,000.

Evaluation After implementation of the campaign, it became clear that the number of likes for the county's Facebook page increased drastically during the campaign period and the likes have continued to increase on a daily basis after.