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Slide deck from my workshop on social media for crisis communications

Here's a short version of the slide deck from my workshop on social media for crisis communications. I first presented this slide deck at an event for our Indian agency 20:20 MSL's clients in New Delhi in June 2011.

It starts with how social media is changing the news cycle across the four stages of: breaking news, context, analysis and archival.

It then looks at how social media is making it difficult to manage crisis situations across the four stages of: flash point, spotlight, blame game and resolution.

It then identifies three different types of crisis situations based on the interplay between social media and mainstream media: real world, slow burn and flash mob.

Finally, it outlines a crisis management toolkit across the four stages of the crisis curve:

- Flash Point: Track early warning signals

- Spotlight: Plot heat map of crisis flows

- Blame Game: Shape narrative via owned media

- Resolution: Opt

Updated: July 27th, 2011 at 10:41 am  |  Posted: July 12th, 2011 at 07:01 am
Related Posts: ideas crisis social media Reputation Management crisis communications

On Social Media Experts Being Clowns Etc.

Recently, Surekha Pillai channeled Gary Vaynerchuck in her DNA column and wondered if social media experts are clowns:

The industry also needs champions. I see two sets of people on the social media scenario in India. A handful of thought leaders such as Mahesh Murthy of Pinstorm, Gaurav Mishra of MSLGROUP and Rajesh Lalwani of Blogworks are on one end of the spectrum and the teeming youngsters spamming Twitter with senseless hashtags and promoting their Facebook 'like' buttons on the other. There is a huge chasm in the middle where ignorance and humour thrive.

It's interesting that just as the early majority of client- and agency-side marketers are beginning to embrace social media, I'm hearing this sentiment more and more. I think that there are five reasons driving this disenchantment:

- The proliferation of thousands of "social media experts" and hundreds of "social media agencies", even in India, who might undermine t

Updated: July 27th, 2011 at 10:41 am  |  Posted: July 5th, 2011 at 08:17 am
Related Posts: ideas Communications media dna social media

TOI Article on Whether Conversations Are Dying

I was recently quoted in a TOI article on whether conversations are dying even as new communications tools are proliferating.

I disagreed and argued that social networks like Facebook and Twitter enable us to have more meaningful conversations with both existing friends (around the day-to-day minutiae of our lives) and new friends (around shared interests that brought us together), both online and offline. In fact, it's meaningless to talk about online and offline relationships, or online and offline conversations, as all relationships and conversations now interweave online and offline.

Here is the full text of the TOI article:

Where did conversation go? No where Mansi Choksi

Where did conversation go? We haven't tasted it for years. What passes off now is like dead water: What's up? Not much, you say. We should catch up.

These plebian exchanges seem like the last shaky bridge to intimacy. There's not much to be said

Updated: July 27th, 2011 at 10:41 am  |  Posted: July 5th, 2011 at 06:28 am
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The Enabling City: A Toolkit For Hyper-Local Collaborative Social Innovation

If you are interested in participatory governance, urban sustainability, or collaborative social innovation, I recommend that you read Chiara Camponeschi's toolkit 'The Enabling City'.

Disillusioned by the idea that we can contribute to sustainability only as consumers - by buying {RED}, shopping green, and donating to far-away causes - Chiara has compiled more than forty case studies on hyper-local creative problem-solving by citizens, experts and activists that are making cities more inclusive, innovative and interactive.

The forty case studies cover the six areas of place-making, eating and growing, resource sharing, learning and socializing, steering and organizing, and financing, but share three themes:

- A participatory innovation process is just as important as the innovation itself.

- Sometime, the commons, not the market, is the most effective mec

Updated: July 27th, 2011 at 10:41 am  |  Posted: July 5th, 2011 at 06:03 am
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Google+ Might Start Something Like the Slow Food Movement Amongst Social Networks

My first thoughts on Google+, after playing around with it on my Macbook Air, my iPad and my Blackberry Touch (but not yet on an Android device): I love it.

The most interesting thing about Google+ is that it's semi-private. No automatic integration with Facebook and Twitter status updates, no trending topics, no top influencer lists. (You can use Google Buzz for all that and it shows up on your Google+ profile as a tab.)

Google+ is semi-private primarily because it doesn't use the same follow/ friend logic as Facebook or Twitter. You share updates with people when you add them to a circle. They share updates with you when they add you to a circle. You share updates with each other when both of you add each other to circles.

You filter what updates you want to see by Nearby, Circles and Incoming. Nearby uses geo-location to show updates from contacts near you and might become especially interesting when I am traveling. Circles shows y

Updated: July 27th, 2011 at 10:41 am  |  Posted: June 30th, 2011 at 05:04 am
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