The more sustainability professionals use social media outside of work, the more likely they’ll be to experiment with social channels and platforms for sustainability communications. But choosing the hottest new channel or biggest network is no guarantee of social media success.

2012 is fast living up to its billing of being the year of Big Data. And it’s getting a bad rap from privacy experts. But does Big Data have to be bad? Here’s how it can be used to make business and society more sustainable.

Banks like BBVA, Bendigo and Adelaide, BNP Paribas and VanCity have proved themselves leaders in social media sustainability strategy. Their approaches could help David Cameron’s Big Society Capital.

It’s been just over two weeks since the aptly named, under-the-radar NGO Invisible Children released to YouTube a classic piece of agitprop video, KONY2012. And what a two weeks! The video has been viewed more than 100 million times and Invisible Children have been lauded for their actions in shining a spotlight on the atrocities carried out in central Africa by Joseph Kony, leader of the Lords Resistance Army. At the same time the very success of KONY2012 has shone an equally bright spotlight on both the finances of Invisible Children and the factual accuracy of the video.

Time and time again, that traditional marketer and PR mentality — dominated by the desire to create an impressive, big bang of a campaign without really thinking how it’s going to play out in real time and in an online world where everyone talks back — lets brands and agencies down.

This week I was invited to chair a roundtable on the topic of green communications and, specifically, what the experience of McDonald’s recent McStories Twitter misadventure might tell us about social media sustainability communications.

British Gas is looking after your most vulnerable neighbors, an initiative that’s not just noble, it’s gotten the social web buzzing about a big-hearted utility. Yes, you heard right, big-hearted utility.

Coca-Cola has set down a marker for CSR and sustainability communications through its Arctic Home collaboration with WWF. The centrepiece, up until last weekend, was an interactive online site where fans of Coke who made a donation to Arctic Home were able to enter a virtual Arctic environment and track polar bear sightings while corresponding with field scientists.

One year ago, we published the inaugural Social Media Sustainability Index, a trawl through 287 major companies in North America and Europe to identify who was using social media tools and thinking to communicate sustainability. …

Do you feel stressed, overworked, unable to manage your time and priorities amid a daily deluge of messages, tweets, updates and Inmails?
No, this isn’t some corny infomercial for a new gadget solution. Instead …