Presenting on Social Media at the Crisis and Consumer Response Conference – Sydney 2013

I was lucky enough to be invited to present at the SOCAP Crisis and Consumer Response Conference in Sydney on 21st March. The topic was on social media and crisis communications and I spent some time discussing my thesis which looks at social media and disaster management with a focus on the Brisbane floods of January 2011 and January 2013.

Social Media and Crisis Communication

The conference was fantastic with some great insights from large Australian organisations on how they were implementing crisis comms planning within their organisation, or in some cases how social media was used in a crisis. I was presenting alongside Derek Laney from Salesforce.com who is an excellent speaker and he discussed the American Red Cross approach to using social media in a crisis.

Natural Disasters and Social Media

Part of the Q&A during our session looked at how specific organisations such as Brisbane City Council have used social media to effectively connect with residents during a natural disaster. Some of the key points were how to ensure that your organisation is ready to use social media during a disaster, but also, to evaluate and learn from the process so you can continually improve. My research examines this from the perspective of an organisation, where learning how to apply academic theory and organisational structure to crisis comms can improve your approach overall. One of the most interesting aspects of the session we held was how many people in attendance were just starting their social media journey and still needed some help to get things activated.

Public Speaking and Social Media

As always it was a pleasure talking to people about social media and crisis communication. All large (and many small) organisations should be considering how well prepared they are for a crisis and whether they truly know how to engage and mobilise should that time come. Sydney as always was beautiful and I’m looking forward to the next presentation where I can waffle (and educate of course) on social media in a crisis.