Over the last few months we’ve had more and more conversations about how new technologies, including social media, are impacting on organisations’ planning for business continuity and notably crisis communications. However, social media is also, in our view, a key support for traditional business continuity activity, particularly through:
- helping to provide an early warning of a potential crisis through social media monitoring
- creating clear guidelines and educating employees about how to engage with audiences through social media platforms (and their responsibilities)
- enabling stronger relationships to be developed with key influencers in advance of a crisis occurring – hepling to make your audience more pre-disposed to supporting you when something does happen
- having a clear strategy and plan of action for using social media when a crisis does hit
As part of this we’ve recently spoken with SunGard Availability Services on the subject in a webinar (opens in a new window), and contributed to an article in Continuity Central magazine by Michael Bland titled “Don’t panic – it’s only Facebook“.
Do you have a social media element to your business continuity or crisis planning activity? How would use you social technologies to help you when things aren’t going to plan?
