Damage Control in the Digital Age
While you shouldn't dwell on worst-case scenarios, you should have a plan in place for dealing with disasters when they arise in order to minimize the damage and speed recovery.
A Crisis Management Primer
"Crisis management" describes activities taken when something goes horribly wrong. A few examples of crises are given (mad cow disease, the Tylenol poisonings, Jack in the Box's botulism incident, etc.) that could have devastated companies or industries were they not handled properly - and when you play it by ear, you're taking a big chance.
The author provides some basic principles of crisis management:
- Your goal is to recover from the crisis and minimize its impact on future business, not to control perception or avoid blame
- Focus on the public's concerns rather than your own
- Being defensive or secretive is not productive - you must be forthcoming and honest
- Consider "the public" to be stakeholders in the future of your business
- Plan in advance of a crisis, and evaluate in the wake of one
- Coordinate and collaborate with credible sources
(EN: This is far too brief and general - consult other sources for crisis management communications planning.)
Can Social Media Make Your Crisis Worse?
The buzz about a crisis will hit the Web, and it will generally join in the frenzy - but that's not altogether bad. As with the media, you will have friends and foes among the Web's population, who will say and do as they will, but the better you treat your friends, the more willing and better able they will be to come to your defense.
News travels fast, and bad news travels faster - and this is especially true online. This means you will need to act and react very quickly. An example is given of the YouTube video posted that showed how to pick a "Kryptonite" lock in thirty seconds. The company took a few days to release a public response (they were not asleep, just wanted to plan and coordinate their response), but by then the video got millions of reviews, it was mentioned on a lot of blogs and Web sites, and articles ran in the newspaper and "hundreds" of publications.
Also, the Internet never forgets. An example is given of an embarrassing video posted to YouTube which the poster took down after a few days - but by then, millions had seen it and the video had been posted to other Web sites, where it resides to this day.
Is It Really a Crisis?
An important consideration is whether a situation really constitutes a crisis. If you overreact, you draw additional attention to a situation that really wasn't that serious, and would not have had an impact. Being trigger-happy is as detrimental, and possibly more so, than being asleep at the wheel.
Primarily, consider the source. The author classifies the individuals who spread bad news into four categories:
- Trolls - Individuals who seek attention for themselves by regularly criticizing others. People don't take them seriously, and neither should you, unless you want to encourage them. It is acceptable to ban them and delete their comments, provided you give them at least one public warning before doing so.
- Misinformed Bloggers - Individuals who have made informational errors. You can generally respond (either privately or in comments) with accurate information, and if you handle them gently, they will generally be glad to correct the error in the interest of providing accurate information to their readers
- Unhappy Customers - Dissatisfied customers routinely share their tales of woe with the public, and there are entire Web sites devoted to the practice. It is important to engage them directly and privately and remedy the situation.
- Scrutinizers - These individuals are very persnickety and enjoy finding fault with others, but they are different from trolls in that their gripes are often legitimate (and sometimes intended as a method of being helpful).
(EN: Not all criticism comes from these sources, but they are common sources of negative information that is not a "crisis," which results when both the problem and the audience are much larger in scale.)
What Is Social Media's Role in Crisis Communications?
Social media has a unique and very valuable role to play in crisis management: it enables you to get information out more quickly than a press conference, is often more creditable and appealing than a polished statement, and gathers steam from your supporters.
The author refers to the earlier example of the company that took a couple of days to rally the troops and develop a formal press response to deal with a crisis that had snowballed during the time they were getting their act together. A blog entry or Facebook comment could have gone live in minutes, enabling them to beat the 'news cycle" and kill the story before it grew to sensational proportions.
Making Social Media Work for You in a Crisis
The author presents some "rules" along with examples that support them:
Primarily, don't go into hiding. You have to get out in front of the crisis, and make sure your story is told, and your reluctance to speak openly gives credibility to your detractors. You should make an extra effort to be available to your "friends" and proponents, who will often spring to your defense.
Use your blog as a crisis management tool. It's important to get details out, and fast, and your blog enables you to pump out information faster, and in greater quantity, than any other media outlet. Moreover, it is your voice, unfiltered and unequivocal. It can also be sued defensively, to point out where details are being exaggerated and information is being taken out of context to aggrandize the situation. If your blog has been "transparent and authentic" all along, you can count on its credibility in times of crisis.
The author also suggests launching a separate blog specifically for damage control, but in some instances this has been dismissed as a desperate attempt to control the spin of a crisis (and if it's taken offline after the crisis ends, it looks like an attempt to sweep it under the rug).
In addition to using your own blog, monitor the Web closely to see what is being said on other blogs, and use comments (or e-mail the author) to mitigate the damage when appropriate. The author also mentions that comments "spike" on twitter at the onset of a crisis (the example of a Motrin ad that some found offensive - the company noticed the increase in twits and blogs, and went around to each one, posting an apology, to control the damage - worth noting, they also made the apology into a graphic, so it didn't register on the search engines as text).
Respond to a crisis through the same channels in which the crisis seems to be occurring. If there is a YouTube video that's causing embarrassment, post a response on YouTube rather than doing a press release (which won't be seen by the same audience, and may call attention to the problem from channels that may not have picked up on it). As a specific example of that, passengers on an airline flight that was stuck on the tarmac got the idea to post YouTube videos from their cell phones - the CEO quickly posted a video with his apology to the same site, so that anyone who saw the complaints would also see the response.
Many individuals turn to search engines to get information about a crisis - and while it may take a few days for a search engine to "discover" and list articles about the crisis, you can buy advertising right away that will redirect people to your side of the story. It also makes sure you get prominent placement on the page, even when the search engine picks up the other sources.
If your Web site is prepared in advance to accommodate social media, it will serve you better in times of crisis as well: individuals looking for information already know where to go. It may also be a good idea to provide a prominent link to materials and information related to the crisis. Ensure the information is in a format that others can reuse easily (do not put press releases in a PDF, but provide text that can be copied) and written in "bites" that can easily be adapted for various media
Social Media Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
(EN: the author suggests he's going to present some common problems, but it's a mishmash of prescriptive advice instead)
First, have a "lightweight" blogging policy rather than having to run everything past legal and marketing before it can be posted. It should be simple to have a list of quick rules - don't disclose any trade secrets, don't say anything derogatory about a competitor, etc. - and allow individuals who operate the blog to act under their own discretion, guided by those rules. (And especially in times of crisis, don't clamp down). It's also important to extend this policy to employees who operate personal blogs. A few examples are given, which mainly focus on maintaining confidentiality of proprietary information being respectful to the company, employees, partners, and customers; making it clear that your blog is personal and not a company production; and ensuring blogging activity doesn't interfere with work responsibilities.
Second, when embarking on a social media campaign, test it first on a few smaller outlets before attempting to get it out to the larger sites. This can be seen as similar to the way in which companies do a "test" of advertisements in a small market before running a national campaign, on the principle that they can monitor effectiveness and backlash.
(EN: this seems like good advice, but it's got me wondering: you can't really isolate a site from the Internet. What goes on a small blog could be picked up by a larger one, or found in a search engine, and you can't really control that. What's more, giving something to a small blog "first" could ruffle the feathers of the larger and more influential outlets, who dislike being scooped by a smaller blog and feel you're not giving them sufficient esteem.)
Finally, make sure that you own your social media campaign assets. While it is generally a good sign that an independent enthusiast has such ardor for your firm that they created a Facebook page for you, you really ought to do it yourself to have control over your own "namespace" and ensure that the unofficial" fan sites" do not steal the thunder (and undermine the authority) of the legitimate outlet.
(EN: Of importance, you should be proactive about this. I know from experience how difficult it can be to get your namespace away from a fan without alienating them and turning them into an enemy, or an opportunist).
Sidebar: The Blogger's Code of Ethics
The author provides a "sample code of ethics" that seems worth preserving intact:
- I will tell the truth.
- I will write deliberately and with accuracy.
- I will acknowledge and correct mistakes promptly.
- I will preserve the original post, using notations to show where I have made changes so as to maintain the integrity of my publishing.
- I will never delete a post.
- I will not delete comments unless they are spam or off-topic.
- I will reply to emails and comments when appropriate and do so promptly.
- I will strive for high quality with every post--including basic spellchecking.
- I will stay on topic.
- I will disagree with other opinions respectfully.
- I will link to online references and original source materials directly.
- I will disclose conflicts of interest.
- I will keep private issues and topics private, since discussing private issues would jeopardize my personal and work relationships.
(EN: I'm not clear on the source - I think he means to credit someone, but mentions a few different companies that have adopted similar codes, so maybe this is an amalgam?)