Social Media and Business Continuity

Is your organization up to date on the most recent developments in enterprise social media? Have you observed how social media can aid an organization? Have you considered the possible drawbacks? Learn more about establishing and nurturing an enterprise social media and collaboration strategy in this week's articles.

Is social media the ultimate BCM utility? (Item #1)   Make sure to set up social media before a crisis hits. (Item #2)   Emergency managers and business continuity planners agree that it's smart practice to include social media in BCM and COOP programs. (Item #3)  

Three common misperceptions have held back the use of social media in disaster response. (Item #4)   It is critical that social media leaders determine the purpose of their initiatives before they deploy them. (Item #5)   Social media has significantly changed how many companies communicate with their customers, employees and vendors. (Item #6)  

As always, we look forward to hearing your comments & insights regarding business continuity. If you have a topic you'd like us to cover, email me at [email protected].

Bob Mellinger, President
Attainium Corp

1. Strategic Synergy: HR, Social Media and Business Continuity

Human Resources professionals provide essential services to businesses and employees which must continue even in the face of a disaster. Social media makes available an important tool kit for HR's key role in Business Continuity Management (BCM).
http://www.portlandhrmablog.org/?p=703

2. Five Ways to Use Social Media for Continuity of Business and Recovery

It seems that social media and emerging technologies, such as cloud commuting, can be utilized for disaster communications for small, and even larger businesses, as well as for disaster recovery. There do not yet seem to be any guidelines or recommendations from federal agencies on the use of social media in business continuity.
http://idisaster.wordpress.com/2011/01/10/continuity-of-business-and-social-media-communications-and-recovery/

3. Social media in Business Continuity and Continuity of Operations Programs

As in emergency management, social media is becoming a growing consideration for business continuity and continuity of operations planning. The topic was discussed at a recent meeting of the National Emergency Management Association in Washington D.C. At NEMA's mid-year conference, a whole day of discussions was dedicated to the role of SM in emergency management and BCP/COOP.
http://www.ptsc-online.ca/forums/emergencymanagementtopicscrisisandemergencycommunications
practices/socialmediainbusinesscontinuityandcontinuityofoper

4. Harnessing the Power of Social Media in Disaster Response

Social media is transforming the Internet; today's Internet is ruled by social networks pulling contributions from millions of users. And while the emergency management community is utilizing this new medium to harness the collective knowledge of the public to direct response and save lives, the business continuity community remains largely on the sidelines of this movement. Mostly, this is due to widespread lack of understanding within the continuity community about what social media is and how it has been used.
http://www.continuityinsights.com/articles/harnessing-the-power-of-social-media-in-disaster-response

5. Seven critical questions to ask before developing a social media policy

Social media disrupts the long-standing rules of business in many ways, but crafting a social media policy is premature unless the designers of the policy answer seven critical questions first. Gartner has identified seven critical questions that designers of social media policy must ask themselves.
http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=10565

6. Twitter: Business Continuity in 140 Characters or Less

Displaying topics ranging from H1N1 and Haiti to the best local cup of coffee, Twitter has created a new baseline for effective and efficient communication. With the ease of use and scalability that social media provides, organizations are looking to understand how social media not only fits into their marketing and branding efforts, but also their business continuity capability.
http://www.avalution.com/Perspectives/_layouts/mobile/dispform.aspx?List=84617ae8-ef98-4ebb-9dda-b6f73f4b5466&View=9d53fb04-cef4-490f-8f0c-b830022392b9&ID=93