Posted on May 9, 2008
Social Media for Staying in Front of a Public Relations Crisis
BY JASON CORMIER
Yesterday, James Clark and I had the pleasure of giving an "Understanding Social Media" presentation to the Colorado Ski Country Association. Roughly 95% of the PR and marketing communications experts for every ski mountain in Colorado were attending, eager to learn more about how they could leverage this thing called social media.
The topics we covered varied from social media planning, understanding RSS, best practices for community participation and the use of new and emerging tools like Twitter. Despite the groovy buzz around social media, one of the main subjects of concern with our audience dealt with how and when to engage in online conversations.
The typical problem relates to negative activity that gets
picked up by the press. Something happens on the ski slopes related to
closures, injury, even death, and before you know it the cameras are rolling
and the phone is ringing off the hook. As a matter of practice, a marketing
communications person is often reactive - bracing for the media onslaught and
how his response will ultimately reflect on the operation, competency, brand,
etc.
One marketer brought up the fact that a few people will get an idea in their head about why a lift line or portion of the mountain is closed, and just commence to slam the people and organization running operations for the mountain. The bashing shows up on blog posts, forums, tweets, you name it.
Staying ahead of negativity and crisis is typically not about avoiding it all together. More realistically, it's about you and your organization not getting buried and completely swept down the mountain as the slide begins and gains momentum. Not much you can do to stop the slide once it starts, but your preparation and ability to quickly react makes all the difference.
Be a Participant in the Online Community Beforehand
Forum moderators, online influencers and bloggers recognize
the people who regularly comment on their web properties. They are appreciative
when the comments actually contribute to the substance of the conversations,
especially when it's from an authoritative source or subject matter expert. This
means internal PR and marketing communications people need to consider joining
conversations just as important (if not more) than creating them.
What the mind doesn't know, it creates - and typically as a negative scenario. When the stuff starts to fly, people start looking for things to grasp. Remaining silent or inserting reactive, duplicate comments across blogs and other social networks (that you joined the day of the crisis) is usually going to make things worse (see Vonage astroturf post). Get your name and your voice out today so what you say holds weight and respect for tomorrow.
