Social Media

Social media... to some it's an incredibly useful business continuity tool, but to others it's an area fraught with potential disaster. Both views are valid. If, however, you have a plan for using social media in a crisis and/or responding to social media crises, you can avoid, or at the very least, mitigate a catastrophe. Do you have someone who monitors social media? What happens if they find negative comments? Do you know how to respond? If not, it might be helpful to look over the articles below and meet with your team to come up with a plan for dealing with the negative and using social media to your benefit.

There are both positives and negatives about the use of social media as a business continuity tool. (Item #1)     Handling negative social media comments is the topic of this brief video. (Item #2)     What can you do to avoid costly mistakes in developing and implementing social media strategies geared toward improving your organization's crisis management? (Item #3)    

We can all learn from the mistakes of others... (Item #4)     But we can also learn from their successes. (Item #5)     It is important to remember that stakeholder engagement via social media must be geared toward building social capital and stakeholder trust well before a crisis occurs. (Item #6)    

As always, I look forward to hearing about your concerns with regard to business continuity. If there are any topics that you'd like to see covered, email me at [email protected].

Bob Mellinger, President
Attainium Corp

1. Social Media Can Be an Effective Business Continuity Tool

Social media has taken the world by storm, allowing mass communication over large distances in ways that just a few years ago would have been impossible. While outlets like Facebook and Twitter are commonly used for personal communication, they can be valuable tools for business continuity professionals. Because social media is a relatively new phenomena, many BC professionals are exploring its uses as an industry tool.
http://www.continuityinsights.com/articles/2014/09/social-media-can-be-effective-business-continuity-tool

2. Video Advice on Negative Social Media comment

This video covers some thoughts on how you might address negative commentary appearing on Facebook, Twitter and other Social Network sites. We hope that you will find this useful in building the communications aspects of your organizations Business Continuity Management process. The short video shares advice on what you can do to mitigate the situation if you find the organization being criticized on Social Networking Sites.
http://www.continuityforum.org/content/news/148109/video-advice-negative-social-media-comment

3. Social Media and Crisis Management: 10 Common Mistakes

If your organization is already on its social media journey, you may want to think of yourself as a traveler. It can be an exciting time out there on the road, but it can also be a challenging time - especially if unforeseen problems arise and you make mistakes. While many mistakes can be easily rectified, others can have severe consequences.
http://www.drj.com/articles/online-exclusive/social-media-and-crisis-management-10-common-mistakes.html

4. Six Examples of Social Media Crises: What can we learn?

It is not uncommon for a large company to have to deal with a social media crisis and some handle them better than others. We recently hosted a webinar on How to Effectively Manage a Social Media Crisis that produced some interesting examples and highlighted what we can learn from them.
http://oursocialtimes.com/6-examples-of-social-media-crises-what-can-we-learn/

5. Shining Examples of Excellent Social Media Crisis Management

We hear so often about the flubs, flops, and disasters of social media crisis management by brands. I wanted to take a few minutes and look at some of my favorite moments of crisis resolution (and prevention) by brands online and highlight the things they are doing right. By focusing on brands doing it right, we can encourage good online habits in other corporate responses. Good social media habits and good corporate stewardship are the building blocks to a brand that does well online (and off).
http://www.exacttarget.com/blog/shining-examples-of-excellent-social-media-crisis-management/

6. Q&A on Social Media and Crisis Management

While social media offers new ways to communicate, it must be systematically monitored to enable effective social media use in times of crisis. Following is a Q&A session with Oliver S. Schmidt, managing partner of C4CS.
http://www.disaster-resource.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1710:qaa-on-social-media-and-crisis-management-an-interview-with-oliver-s-schmidt&catid=4:human-concerns