Tagged: training

Hoot Suite on the future of social media

Hoot Suite CEO, Ryan Holmes

Here is a good piece from Hoot Suite’s CEO, Ryan Holmes (thanks to Alex Robinson for spotting this).  It demonstrates the extent to which organisations are starting to move into what I see as the second phase of social media: shifting away from seeing it as a channel and message challenge, to being a behaviour identification and response challenge.  (See this I wrote a while back and also points six and seven of my Simplicity Manifesto.)

This is the point where social media becomes understood as a business process, rather than being defined (and measured) in terms of communications outputs (content, reach, frequency etc).

That said, I think there still is a central role – someone I call a corporate DJ (rather than a social media manager) and their role is to to basically listen to requests and source the responses required.  Likewise there is still a centralised function- which is not about producing the content or managing the conversation but in facilitating the process of decentralising social media (training, process management) and spreading it into a business.

 

How to make your crisis plan ‘social media compliant’

Enough of the theory (for the time being).  There is a very practical impact of social media that affects every organisation right now.  This is the fact that every crisis management plan and process is now out of date – unless it has been made ‘social media compliant’.

If you now have a crisis, you have no time or space within which to hide.  You are essentially in the business of performing ‘live’ within a rolling 24/7 press conference.  This requires different skills and preparation – just as doing live TV is different from making a documentary.

However, this is not all bad news.  Social media allows you to communicate directly with the people you need to influence, without having to rely on the filter of the media.  This can make it easier to get information out much quicker, to dampen concerns and emotions and to limit the extent to which a crisis can develop or spread.

There are five things an organisation needs to do to make their crisis preparation social media compliant.

  1. Monitor social media in real-time
  2. Establish a management process that delivers a response that is quicker and more specific to the needs of social media, rather than adapted only to the needs of traditional media
  3. Create an information publication platform that is optimised to spread information effectively through social networks
  4. Re-purpose your existing information so that it can spread easily through social networks
  5. Incorporate social media into your crisis training.

Looking at these points in more detail. Continue reading →