Traditional media like newspapers, tv and radio stations are usually the last industry that come to mind when you think about social media.
At the Talk Is Cheap social media unconference for PR I attended on Nov 15th, I sat in on a fantastic presentation given by David Fleet about the opposite using the California wildfires as a case study.
The basis of David’s presentation was what the government of California’s website severely lacked in providing their people the information they needed during the crisis as compared to what the media offered: mashed up social media tools to get useful information out quickly to, say, cell phones. Because these days, those annoying little tethers let you surf the web even when you’ve been evacuated.
David’s presentation made me realize that social media tools are perfect for a crisis plan regardless if you’re the government, a corporation or whatever. Just make sure there’s already a process in place so your team will know what to do when everyone’s hyper.
And the best part is you don’t need to rely in IT or worry about any infrastructure issues.
David’s presentation goes into detail about the whats and hows so if you ever get the chance, don’t miss it.
Hi Daniele,
Thanks for the kind words. Glad you enjoyed the presentation. I think social media has immense potential for crisis communications.
As more and more ‘traditional’ news media take advantage of these tools, hopefully larger organizations will begin to do so too.
Your presentation is exactly the kind of thing I’m interested in. I call it “applied social media” :)
I’m sure social media will become a lot more commonplace as corporations become comfortable with it. If not, the entering workforce will change that.