Monthly Archives: July 2011

Internal Communication

Published on 30th July 2011 by . Leave a Comment

Don’t keep employees out of the loop

Many businesses plan for ways to communicate with the public and media during crises, while neglecting internal communication plans. While obviously external communication is important, well-informed employees are a necessity for proper crisis management.

In this quote from a New York Examiner article, PR pro Phill Mann explains why:

Consider this: If a chemical plant in New Jersey has an explosion, are you more likely to seek out – and trust – information issued by the company, or from your neighbor who works at the plant? How will you feel if your neighbor tells you, “I have no idea what’s going on. They haven’t told me a thing?”

Who will more likely embrace the challenge of helping the company rebound after a crisis subsides: a well-informed employee or one left in the dark?

Who will more likely Tweet or post accurate, on-message information – a well-informed employee or one who was told nothing beyond, “Keep quiet”?

The basic thinking is this: some percentage of employees will break the rules, including those regarding things like confidentiality and social media. If information is going to get out from sources other than official spokespeople, it’s better that it be the right information. In addition, ensuring that employees are informed inspires much higher confidence and in turn better productivity, never a small thing in business.

The BCM Blogging Team
http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/

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The Big T

Published on 26th July 2011 by . Leave a Comment

Don’t be caught off guard

You’ve signed up on Twitter and things are going well. You’re posting links to events, useful information, and company blogs, perhaps even beginning to interact with some active stakeholders when suddenly you notice your company name and #FAIL are appearing in many of the same posts.

A crisis is breaking, but you aren’t sure what to do. This is, after all, the Big T, and you’re new here. Luckily, the Internet is full of resources to help, including this list from media training expert Jane Jordan-Meier of “Five Rules for Managing Twitter When a Crisis Strikes:”

  1. Act Fast: Has always been thus, but now it is a MUST. Organizations MUST, MUST, MUST respond within one hour of the news breaking.
  2. Monitor Early and Often: Even a simple Google alert will help. And there is a vast array of social monitoring tools out there.
  3. Have a Triangular Approach Ready: If the situation escalates out of Twitter, use three different methods of communicating to your key stakeholders in a crisis – Twitter, your website or blog and at least one key media outlet.
  4. Remember We’re Human: We as humans are still incredibly irrational, and constantly make decisions based on our intuition, or whatever we feel like at that moment. We will construct our stories according to our reality.
  5. Don’t Just Listen – Hear: Twitter and social media in general are very empowering and powerful motivators when others want to silence us. Iran and Egypt are just two that come to mind. In a crisis, we want someone to hear us, someone to care.

On one end, technology has driven crisis communication with the ever-increasing need for speed. On the other, the sheer volume of daily impersonal communication makes that human touch ever more powerful.

Find your way to use tech to deliver this touch via Twitter, and you’ve found the winning combination that will not only see you through crises, but attract and keep active followers.

The BCM Blogging Team
http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/

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Recovering from Social Media Crises

Published on 25th July 2011 by . Leave a Comment

Mistakes happen – fix them with a plan

While Twitter and Facebook  are great at attracting potential customers rapidly (potential being the operative word), you can lose them just as rapidly via a silly or careless remark.

Just weeks earlier one of the bosses of a PR firm got annoyed with negative remarks being dished out by journalists (isn’t that their job?) about their client’s video game and tweeted a rather angry response. Something along the lines that he would be reviewing who would be getting the next game release.

Triple whoops! Journalist swooped on him and criticism of the game transferred to criticism of his remark. The result? The video game manufacturer sacking the PR firm, issuing an apology to journalists. The PR boss not only had to apologise to journalists, his staff and his firm but he also had to make quite clear that the tweet was his own work and not the viewpoint of his firm. The fallout and damage to the reputation of the firm could linger for a long-time.

Scenarios like the one described in this quote from a 79PR article are marring reputations on an almost-daily basis. While you can thoroughly check the credentials of whoever is responsible for running your social media campaigns, anyone operating on knee-jerk reactions is headed for trouble.

A social media crisis management plan serves not only as a set of guidelines, but checks and balances to make sure things don’t get out of control. Negative attention from journalists is basically a given in business, and a good written plan would have omitted the part about posting comments that embarrass one’s employer and self, perhaps instead offering ways to reach out to doubtful media sources.

As far as recovering from the crisis, the game publisher was right to cut ties with the PR firm, but could have taken things further to really turn this crisis into a positive situation. Because they already had the attention of journalists (albeit negative), it would have been the perfect time to create a campaign that invited and encouraged reviewers to give the game a fresh look.

The BCM Blogging Team
http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/

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Twitter Hashtags Evolving

Published on 21st July 2011 by . Leave a Comment

Back in 2008, I suggested that an eyewitness tag on Twitter, such as #EW, would help people identify relevant material from the vast torrent of tweets that were being posted about Mumbai.

In 2011, Twitter users have taken things beyond my rather simple idea by organising a number of separate hashtags to relay information.

Rather than only using one hashtag (#Mumbai) as many people did three years ago, today the Twitter users of Mumbai have started posting to:

  1. #mumbaiblasts, for information relevant to the attacks
  2. #here2help, for people who can offer assistance
  3. #needhelp, for people who are in need of assistance
  4. #mumbaitraffic, for updates on the transport situation

This quote, from a FrontLine Club blog post by media researcher Daniel Bennet, explains how users are evolving the extremely simple “hashtag” method, used on Twitter to enable fellow users to search out posts by keyword.

Major disasters, both natural and man-made, have pushed this evolution due to the sheer numbers of people that turn to Twitter for crisis communication. Without these more specific tags, finding relevant information during a major crisis would be a needle-in-haystack exercise.

You can take advantage of these advanced tags for business as well. Try creating one for special events and asking fellow promoters or sponsors to use it on their Twitter feeds. Hopefully this will result in regular users discussing the event picking it up as well, allowing anyone searching for the information to find it with ease.

The BCM Blogging Team
http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/

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Digital Crises

Published on 16th July 2011 by . Leave a Comment

New study shows pervasive lack of preparedness

Burson-Marsteller, the global public relations firm, has just released a study surveying corporate perceptions of the state of crisis communications in the age of social and digital media. It amounts to a wake-up call for business leaders who defend reputations and brand equity in today’s digitally connected marketplace.

The survey canvassed more than 800 business leaders in the U.S., Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America. An overwhelming majority of them—79%—said they believe their company is less than 12 months away from as potential “bet the company” crisis moment. Most of them believe that that crisis will arise from within the online space. Corporate leaders in nearly every industry, regardless of size or geography,- acknowledge that the dark clouds of impending digitally fueled crises are gathering. They also believe they know with some certainty how soon a crisis will occur—within the next year.

Yet, despite that conviction, most are still totally unprepared to manage and emerge successfully from crises fueled by a digitally powered news cycle. Nearly half of those surveyed said they lack even a basic form of effective online reputation monitoring. Not only are they not prepared, they don’t even have the most rudimentary tools to know if their reputations are under assault.

This quote, from an excellent Forbes blog post by global digital strategist Dallas Lawrence, gives telling insight into attitudes involving digital crises. Polls and studies have long revealed the fact that, while most organizations understand the need for crisis management, far fewer actually put it into action, and apparently the rise of social media hasn’t changed that much.

The study mentioned, available at the Burson-Masteller website, goes on to reveal many more contrasts between understanding and action, such as 66% stating they “believe new media has significantly increased the potential cost of a crisis,” while only 47% have increased internal resources for crisis response.

If you were told someone would break into your home within the next year, would you up the security? Looking at these figures, a lot of business owners would just sit and wait for it to happen.

The BCM Blogging Team
http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/

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