A lot has been said about the importance of "Social Networking" and the need for entities to understand and use it, but for those new to the subject this can be a confusing task. I am sharing my symplistic approach to using it in the hope that it may help others. 

WHY BOTHER WITH IT IN THE FIRST PLACE? From my perspective, it helps me keep up to date on what is being said about my company and a number of subjects that are important to my business and secondly it helps me collaborate with other professionals on those topics and enables me to provide input to help others and contrubute to the emergency management and busines continuity profesion. It simply helps me gather useful information and helps me provide information.

GATHERING INFORMATION: This process is partly automated and partly manual. I set up Google Alerts (  http://www.google.com/alerts  ) to automatically send me information, text and videos, via e-mail about my company and a number of subjects ( CSA Z1600, NFPA 1600, EMAP and emergency incidents etc. ) that are of interest to me. I also recieve e-mail updates to any discussion topics of interest in the emergency management groups on the Linked In ( http://www.linkedin.com ) professional network. I use TweetDeck (http://www.tweetdeck.com ) to follow information from a number of organizations and individuals on Twitter (http://twitter.com ) and to search Twitter for subjects of interest. TweetDck will consolidate Twitter and Facebook ( http://www.facebook.com ) postings if Facebook is part of your social networking strategy. I periodically check You Tube (http://www.youtube.com ) for emergency management related videos and maintain a categorized list of videos of interest in my You Tube account.

PROVIDING INFORMATION: In addition to sharing general information about my company and the services we provide on my web site ( http://memci.ca ) and on my Linked in profile (http://www.linkedin.com/in/williammackay ) I try to contribute to topics of interest in discussion groups sponsored by the Ontario Association of Emergency Managers ( http://www.oaem.ca ), International Association of Emergency Managers (http://www.iaem.com ), Disaster Recovery Information Exchange ( http://www.drie.org ) and other discussion groups of interest all of which are hosted on Linked in (http://www.linkedin.com ) As I come across emergency management and business continuity or technology items of interest during my work I try to share them as memci on a daily basis basis on Twitter (http://twitter.com/memci ). These "Tweets" which are less than 140 characters usually link to another web site or document or to this Blog to provide more detailed information. 

It likely goes beyond the simple approach but MEMCI.TV (http://memci.tv ) is a work in progress in collaboration with my associates to take our information sharing and collaboration to the next level.  Hope you found this information useful. I look forward to receiving your feedback.