Right off the bat, I’m going to admit that this is pretty much a filler entry. I’ve been mostly laid up this week, working from home because I’m stricken with something that’s either a sinus infection or the flu (variety unknown).


I thought about turning my illness into an entry discussing how the CDC and other public health entities are using social media to monitor and respond to conversations about H1N1 and other health topics. Or maybe fashioning some clever way to connect the metaphor of viral distribution back to actual viruses.


But then I realized that with my clogged sinuses turning my mind to mush, the deepest contemplation I’ve pursued recently has involved gazing into used tissues. Prodigious work, no doubt, but not very useful to the world at large.


Similarly, I looked into, then abandoned a few lines of inquiry relating to physical status updates and social status broadcasting and… something. (It pretty much trails off from there.)


Even looking into that old standby, my heretofore-reliable slushpile of socially bookmarked del.icio.us links, yields a scattershot collection, nothing that I could unify into a coherent theme, especially in my semi-addled state.


So, instead, I will talk about the importance of redundancy and backups when it comes to your social media efforts. (And I’m not talking about hardware or software here — I’m referring to people.)


Here in this blog, I’m fortunate to be surrounded by great bloggers and a superb management team who can pick up the slack when I or another blogger falls behind in posting, whether it’s due to travel or conferences or getting knocked down (in this case) by a literal virus.


For your own efforts, you want to minimize single points of failure for your social media monitoring and communications. At the very minimum, it means making sure that administrative rights and passwords are distributed (in a secure fashion), so that in the event of the dreaded “hit by a bus” scenario, your operation doesn’t grind to a halt.


From the authoring side: In a less-imperfect world, you’d have a diversity of voices, blogging, Twittering, and otherwise representing multiple aspects of your organization, who can take over when you’re unavailable. After all, in addition to helping to provide backup in times of crisis, building in redundancy and extra capability also helps to distribute the load in more routine times.


But what if you’re a one-man (or woman) band, where you’re doing everything yourself? That (to employ a well-worn rhetorical delaying device), is a great question. I don’t have a great answer, other than to say that setting and maintaining expectations through transparency and honest communications (see again: first paragraph) is probably your best bet.


Also, remembering that microblogging, or more passive, less authorship-intensive lines of communication like social linksharing or retweeting can help fill the gaps between your more robust works.


Finally, you can always do this — throw things open to your audience. Hey, what do you think — what coping strategies do you employ when you’re pressed for time but you need to feed the beast? Please leave a comment below.


Now excuse me while I go gaze into a tissue.




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