Are there particular industries or companies that attract a larger portion of “social media risk” than others?
A colleague of mine recently asked that question and I thought I would share a version of my response.
Rather than focus on vertical industries or specific brands/companies, it might be more instructive to look at three different categories of the types of anger or scrutiny that can snowball when pushed downhill by digitally networked communities. Here are three that I see regularly:
“First, admit you’ve made a mistake.”
This is one of the axioms that crisis management hawks, magpies, peacocks and parrots typically offer when capitalizing on the latest crisis du jour. Often, these pundits flock to broadcast media to provide requisite talking-head “expert opinion” that helps to legitimize a common media storyline – that a company is bungling its crisis management response by resisting a public apology and acknowledging a mistake.
The irony here is thick, because much of broadcast media itself does not live up to that axiom.
Check out this excellent article in The New York Times, where David Carr deftly draws a distinction between correction approaches of print vs. broadcast media that distort or misreport a story. Although print media does a slightly better job of correcting the record, his report acknowledges significantly heavier headwinds when broadcast media misrepresents the facts during a crisis situation.
Why? Here’s a key callout:
Continue reading Headwinds: Correcting the Record on Broadcast News
A Ketchum colleague recently shared this post from the Chief Product Officer of Forbes Media. In it, she describes the Forbes new model of “Entrepreneurial Journalism,” where freelance writers are paid by the size of the audience they attract.
I’m a loyal Forbes subscriber, but I’m disappointed with the direction here. I believe this will have negative implications for crisis management.
Why? Several reasons:
Continue reading Reputation pitfalls of demand-based journalism
There is a growing industry of “prize-riggers” (my term) who band together to manipulate the results of online contests, giveaways and sweepstakes.
In this blog post on PRSAY, the official blog of The Public Relations Society of America, I categorize different types of prize-riggers and offer tips for PR pros to consider.
Go to the link and check it out. And if you have comments, you can share them there or below.
Fellow blogger and crisis manager, Bill Salvin, recently posted on three keys for crisis communications in the digital age. The keys he shares are honesty, speed and images.
Here are excerpts from each key:
Honesty: Let everyone on your team know that your integrity is the most valuable commodity you have in a crisis and it must not be compromised.
Speed: The dynamics of a crisis can change based on external events. Once identified, empower your team to make the tactical decisions required to communicate events as they unfold.
Images: People believe what they see over what they hear. You can have great talking points and a great spokesperson destroyed because the words are out of sync with the images coming from the scene.
