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.

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?

Social Media, Kids Toys and Corporate Strategy? Yup.

Marketers want to maximize revenue from Social Media. Companies are struggling to learn new conversation skills in the Social Media realm. Perhaps we can garner some perspective from childrens’ toys. Not the ones parents buy in a store. We’re talking the ones that get made of cardboard boxes, string, tape, markers and craft paper. The toys kids really play with. Continue reading »