PR Crises and Social Media; What’s Your Plan?

A bad news story for your company hits traditional media. You kick in the standard damage control processes and try to move beyond the issue; it’s always worked before. Except this time a prominent or even not so prominent blogger picks it up…and it spreads. Have the rules changed? Can you move beyond the story like before?

Certainly, except it may take a little longer than before, and there may be “aftershocks”. When the Blogosphere picks up on a story it can suddenly take on a life of its own. Sometimes there’s no real need to respond, other times you must respond. There are ways to manage a crisis point with Social Media, but the issue can stay hot in the Social Media world a little longer.

In most bad news incidents, the best strategy is to acknowledge the issue, state your proposed resolution and then move on to more positive stories, knowing that in traditional media, the story will blow over fairly quickly. Bloggers and microbloggers however, can add their own opinions and what was a small issue spirals out of control. Not responding can make the perceived issue worse and carry on for weeks or months.

Deciding whether or not to respond is something you need to determine with your PR team or Social Media agency. Deciding how you respond is key, along with follow up. Once you’ve said something in the Social Media sphere, it will live on. This means you may be held accountable at a later date as someone may inquire in a few months to see if you’ve lived up to the proposed solution. If not, you’ll suddenly have another crisis, this is what we call “aftershocks.” Developing a good plan for a PR crisis should always include the Social Media angle today.

With Social Media, the vital point to remember is that a story can live on far longer and resurface at any time. Sometimes you can take the high road and not respond, deflection is still very much possible, but going about it is very different in Social Media.

The SEC Nods at Social Media: What Does This Mean?

The SEC in the U.S. has updated its guidance relating to public companies and their use of corporate websites for investor disclosure. Quite significantly, we think, they have recognized Social Media in the context of Social Networks and how groups of investors can discuss information and the impact on a company stock. The last time any such Internet related guidance was issued was 2000. Even the SEC acknowledges things have changed. Quite a lot. Oddly enough however, the new rules will not be posted on the Web until the print version has appeared in the Federal Register.

Some of the interesting points:

Sarbanes Oxley: Although as yet unclear, the SEC is saying that information posted on a website does not necessarily fall under Sarbanes Oxley rules. There is no direct translation of this in terms of Social Networks; as in do conversations need to be kept on file internally? If so,  data storage companies will be a good investment. We think this regulation needs some further clarification that may come out when it is printed and then on the Web.

Participation: The rules now cover anti-fraud and direct participation by a company or company person presenting information in a blog or other form of Social Media (presumably this covers vlogging and microblogging.) One wonders; will a “comment” or blog entry by a company representative be followed by three long legal paragraphs about disclosure warnings and statements of speculation?

The How: The rules will apparently clarify “how” information posted on a website will be considered public. This may impact Content Management Systems and controls for corporate blogs. This may also impact the “who” for who posts information to the Web.

These new rules essentially say “Social Media is here to stay and we have to figure out how public companies can play here.” Such significant changes in SEC rules are most often driven by incidences resulting from cases where the issue in question has resulted in fines or other legal actions and inquiries. Anyone know of any significant legal cases around Social Media and public companies?

Canada has a very fragmented regulatory system, so likely any changes in Canadian practices will come from Ontari’s OSC and be adopted in various forms by other Provinces. Changes however, will undoubtedly come to Canada. Such regulations are important to protect investors and we think this is a good move by the SEC; what do you think? Will the rules let companies be more open or will they become more “closed”?

The New Jobs & Titles of Social Media

Social Media has definitively hit business and is slowly working its way into the ranks of  government departments at varying levels. So where are Social Media professionals coming from and what will the requirements be for Social Media professionals?

A brief search of Workopolis and Monster and a couple of other smaller and regionalized online job sites brought up several varying titles such as; Online Communities Coordinator, Manager of Web Communities, Social Media Marketing Manager, Online Communications Officer, Director of Social Media, Social Media Development Manager, Social Media Coordinator and a few others.

Quite a wide variety. I decided to look at the types of companies hiring for these jobs and salary ranges where available. What I found was of 120 jobs offered (USA and Canada) that fit into “Social Media” related, over 80% were in marketing/advertising agencies, the others were a mix of technology and Web companies and only 3 non-technology companies focused on consumer products. No business-to-business and no government. All were looking for some degree of marketing experience or public relations background. One even wanted 8-10 years of Social Media experience (I wish them luck there.) In terms of wages, they were remarkably low. From the low 20′s to mid 30′s for someone who’s going to be speaking on behalf of the company and its brand? All reported to a director or VP, and there were no senior management jobs available in Social Media (that I could find anyway.)

While this is all very anecdotal and by no means proper in-depth research, it would seem to indicate some interesting trends taking place. While businesses recognize the need for engaging in Social Media, the responsibility is being left to people with relatively minimal experience in the professional world. It would seem that senior management feels Social Media is just a “channel” and mostly for marketing (which in many cases is correct.) It would also seem the remuneration is fairly low in some cases where an individual has an incredible amount of responsibility communicating a company brand.

So we’ve seen Social Media start to ease into the corporate world through low-level functional jobs. Titles remain somewhat vague as do overall responsibilties. It would seem that Social Media is gaining traction, but in what way? In challenging financial times when many companies are laying off people, we’re seeing a whole new element of jobs opening up. New positions with previously undefined responsibilities means finding budget and defining purpose to organizational objectives – no small task at the best of times.

What role do you think Social Media will play in terms of jobs in the future? Is there a place for Social Media professionals beyond just marketing and public relations? How about with Human Resources? Will Social Media ever gain a seat at the Executive Table? Should it? A lot of questions remain.

Accepting The Negative in Social Media

For decades, businesses have been able to excerpt a fair amount of “control” over a message, and in some markets they still can and do. Yet this is changing. With the prevelance of Social Media and the Web as a whole, people can share audio, text and video very quickly. This has broad implications to a PR team or agency managing negative coverage over a story. So how do you deal with that inevitability? Not bother with a Social Media strategy?

I often ask a client “do you stop going to networking events and parties because someone may have an opposing view on an issue?” The answer is no. As people, we have skills we’ve developed professionally to handle situations that become contentious in social settings. A company is an entity as well, through it’s brand. It just has more moving parts and many brains. Negative commentary is inevitable with Social Media today.

Having to deal with negative coverage in Social Media is an issue we’ve seen a lot lately. It seems to be the largest roadblock to developing a Social Media strategy in many cases. In large part, we have found this is due to the fact that a company focuses on “marketing” as it’s primary conversation with the public, and most marketing is a very one-way effort; “telling” versus “conversing”, which is two-way. This isn’t the fault of business. It’s because the mediums most of us are familiar with are one-way; TV, radio, print. Social Media and the ability of anyone to begin a conversation is a new frontier for many businesses.

The fact is, a company doesn’t sell products and make profit from negative issues. Bad publicity leads to senior management firings, board changes, stock price drops, shareholder anger and lost sales and profits. In an increasingly transparent world, Social Media can have broad implications.

But the fact is, negative commentary will happen. Whether a company has a Social Media strategy or not. It’s just inevitable. It’s more than likely that most negative commentary will be minimal, localized and can be simply monitored. But it can also rapidly become an issue that spills over into Traditional Media (i.e. Rogers and the iPhone in Canada and AT&T in the U.S.) and Rogers had no Social Media strategy to deal with an online petition that hit Traditional Media and forced the company to lower its pricing.

Our view is that all businesses should have some plan for Social Media, whether it’s simply monitoring on a regular basis or deciding to actively engage in developing a conversation with its stakeholders. Accept that some negative issues may come up, but find a way to turn them into a positive. There are plenty of case studies. What are your views on the inevitability of negative coverage and what should a company do?

What’s Your Competitor Twitting About?

Microblogging – Twitter, Identi.ca, Plurk etc., all started with Twitter well over a year ago. Most pundits (myself included) wondered what the use of Twitter was. Now, 2 years later, so many people are on Twitter and others that one wonders why wouldn’t someone be involved? But as a source for competitive intelligence? Certainly. It’s just “how” it’s used.

There is now however, potentially valuable business intelligence in Microblogs. One has to know what they are looking for however. We also speculate that as it is a young service and people tend to speak very freely,  there is the chance someone may reveal confidential information for a public company. So in what ways can you gather insights for business intelligence via Microblogs?

People Indicators: People may Twit (write) about job openings or lay-offs. Valuable indicators to competitors, including the ability to anticipate upcoming financial results for public companies. You might also find potential new hires.

Positioning: With TwitUps and PlurkShops (a type of real-time conference) taking place, you can gain valuable insights into how and where your competitor is positioning themselves. Additionally, you can gather leads of attendees for your marketing database.

Market Moves: Perhaps employees from your competition are traveling to trade shows or new markets pursuing business. Their Twits about this can tip you off to what they’re up to.

Brand Strategy: You can gather a trend in a branding strategy over a period of time, understand the thought leadership plan quicker than other methods and monitor the markets response to a company brand.

Product Feedback: You can monitor the reception of your competitors product/service through Microblogging posts. You’ll also gather your own.

There are other uses, but these outline what we feel are the main ones. Perhaps you can think of others? It is important to remember though, that it’s harder to lurk in Microblogs, especially one like Purk where participation is key to learning more.

Like Social Media monitoring as a whole, you want to have a strategy in place and someone who can sift through the information to pull out the useful nuggets and direct them to the appropriate place. Giving a Business Analyst on your team access to such tools is an advantage.