Short Survey (2 questions) - Features of a Dark Site

I just launched a very short survey on the needed features and content for a Dark Site.

These are sites which function as a central online crisis communications system and are generally managed by crisis communicators.

Please take just 2 minutes to give your input. Results will be published here on my blog.

Many thanks for your help !

New guidelines for emergency management and social media published

A guideline document on how to integrate social media in emergency preparedness planning has just been published after weeks of hard work.

Kortom, a non profit organisation bringing together more than 700 government communicators invited me to collaborate on this new guidelines some months ago. Together with other very motivated volunteers we split up in working groups around the topic os social media and emergency management.

The trigger for this was the dramatic event at Pukkelpop where several concert visitors died. Although the work groups didn't specifically focus on using social media at concerts or large scale events, the recommendations can definitely apply there as well.

The recommendation guidelines have just now been translated in English an I can share them here as well as on the Emergency Wiki where I also contribute on this topic.

Several focus areas are being discussed in this guidelines; from preparedness to organisational aspects over how to effectively integrate social media channels for crisis communications.

The document should make its way to several government levels like cities and provinces and hopefully will be read and implemented by most.

Feedback is still welcome; either by emailing info@kortom.be or sending a tweet with the hash tag #smic

It was really a pleasure for me to work with the team in my group and I do hope these kind of initiatives will continue to grow and receive the attention they deserve. At the end of the day, if well implemented and managed, they save lives.

Crisis PR and Social Media for Emergency Management Tweets of the week.

Here's an overview of links, tweets and other resources I found interesting over the last week with regards to #CrisisPR and Social Media for Emergency Management (or #smem as it is tagged on Twitter).

Enjoy and if you found other interesting information on the subject, do let me know.

• This Is Not a Test: The Emergency Alert System Is Worthless Without Social Networks - great article on how people might miss an emergency alert without social media integrated to it. Found via: @k2sqrd - original article from Gizmodo.

• 16 Best Practices for Social Media Crisis Communications from BlogWorld - A good list of how to work with social media in the context of crisis communications. Very good tips and rules.

• 30 Reasons to Use Social Media in an Emergency - Again a very good list, focusing on the positive features of social media and why you should use it, integrated with your emergency/crisis plan.

• And last but not least a great resource list (articles, documents and more...) on social media and emergency management from Idisaster2.0.

Happy reading and keep safe.