Floating to the Top: How Content Strategy and a Crisis Plan Literally Rescued Us from the Flood

Maybe you’ve seen videos like this, where cars float downstream in what’s normally a quiet, little creek and thought, “Thank God that’s not us.” Only on August 11, 2018 it was us. Imagine being a community volunteer organization that finds itself under 4 feet of water after an unprecedented flash flood.

We lost 80 years of supplies in 30 minutes almost 90% of what we owned. Our crisis plan coupled with content and social media strategy learned from WordCamps saved us. Our coordinated efforts achieved massive media coverage, an army of volunteers, and more money raised in three days than we dreamed possible.

This presentation will cover the following that any business owner/volunteer organization can follow:

  • Crisis communications plan
  • Content strategy for your pages
  • Content strategy for your posts
  • Incorporating the social media that is right for you
  • Interaction with the media
  • Valuing your volunteers
  • Relationships with competitors

Speaker

By Laura Byrne

Laura started off her career with educational non-profits, where marketing was part of everyone's job description. After dabbling in in Microsoft FrontPage for a few years, Laura found WordPress in 2006 when she and a friend decided to build a website with a blog and forum for fans to discuss a then little-known book called Twilight. What started out as an obscure website, rapidly grew into the most popular Twilight website on the internet with millions of visitors each day from around the globe.

Thrust into a vortex of viral website management meets Hollywood, Laura's marketing arsenal exponentially grew, as she hit the ground running with new skill sets in SEO, social media strategy, podcasting, event management, and more.

These days, Laura works for WebDev Studios. She’s created/written content for over 50 WordPress sites mostly in the non-profit and entertainment worlds.

Laura currently resides in North NJ