The lizard is currently working on an update to the Crisis Solutions crisis comms book. I've made a start on the social media chapter:
Social Media
When this book was first published, only three years ago, it wasn’t deemed necessary to include a section on social media. How times have changed and how social media has changed our lives and no more so than in crisis communications.
These figures are changing at an astonishing speed, but at the time of writing Facebook has 700 million active users, of whom 50% log on each day. Looking at it another way Facebook is now used by 1 in every 13 people on the planet. More than 250 million users access Facebook on mobile devices and mobile users are generally twice as active as non-mobile users.
Twitter may be the younger brother to Facebook, but their statistics are in many ways just as impressive. Twitter has more than 100 million active users and the number of users increases by 300,00 a day. In a single day 230 million so-called tweets are sent – that’s 640 a second. Twitter’s search engine gets 600 million enquiries every day.
Talking of search engines: Google is the market leader by some distance, but interestingly the second most used search engine isn’t Yahoo or Bing, but is in fact YouTube another hugely important part of the social media world and owned, of course by, Google.
As has been well documented in the traditional media, newspapers, magazines and even TV news channels are in serious, even terminal decline. Local newspapers across the US and the UK are closing at an alarming rate. But if the old media is suffering the new media is thriving and often the old media is now heavily reliant on social media and citizen journalists.
When it comes to business, Soc media can be usefully divided in two. There’s the use of social media for sales and marketing and then there’s the use and sometimes misuse of the new media in a crisis. The two must never be mixed. (See Eurostar case study).
It’s important to use and get to understand social media in normal times and have a formalized social media policy in your crisis communication plan. If you are new to social media it may be beneficial to talk to sales and marketing who will almost certainly be using it already. Get familiar with its power and reach.
Companies and organisations have always had enemies both internal and external. The difference now is that social media allows individuals to exert an unprecedented level of pressure, often using tools and technologies that brands use to market themselves.
Combine that with the proliferation of camera phones that have ready access to social media that is unimpeded by deadlines or TV slots and it at least in part explains the speed and power of the new media.
What to do?
Companies need to develop plans and resources and what is right for one won’t be right for another, but here are some thoughts and guidelines.
Internal audiences
· Determine polices with regard to staff usage of social media
· Make sure these are widely communicated
· Determine how the company plans to respond should there be a violation
· Determine how the policies and actions will build trust rather than harm the firm’s reputation.
· Should staff be allowed to blog?
· If they are – can they use the company’s logo?
Staff complaining about their boss or their company is nothing new. But because of social media, what was once chat around the water cooler can now go viral.
Employment contracts need to reflect this reality and staff should be given a clear series of guidelines. Then bottom line may well be that if you criticise the organisation you work for on a social platform, there is a serious likelihood you will be fired.
In the past it was often difficult to get in touch with a journalist or talk to the media. That has entirely changed and often staff members who post status updates or tweets are unaware that journalists are using what they say. It is now extremely common for newspapers and TV news to quote social media comments to illustrate or convey a story. Hence the need for clear staff guidelines.
External audiences
Companies may well want to be part of the social media revolution, particularly the marketing department, but most opportunities contain some risk.
Once again a clear thought through strategy is required. You may like the idea of a Facebook fan page for instance where happy customers can leave positive comments about you. Bit of course when things turn ugly and somebody doesn’t like your company then the comments can become very negative. To that end many firms just use Facebook as a source of information about the company and don’t allow comments. The downside is that such a strategy will likely limit the reach of that particular Facebook page.
In general terms if negative comments are posted on Facebook or Twitter then it is unwise to try to rebut them on those particular platforms. Getting involved in a slanging match on the new media may well be a fight you can’t win.
If you use social media, whether it be YouTube, Twitter, Facebook or Linked-in, the over-arching objective should be to drive people to your website where they are able to read your messages loud and clear.
Once a social media plan is developed, run exercises and simulations that aim to create such an attack and try as far as you can to see if your plans work.
Social media must now form part of your vigilant media monitoring. Blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter hashtags (themed discussions) that feature your company mustn’t be allowed to fly under the radar.
There is sometimes a temptation to just let young people handle social media, they may have a feel for it but the basic rules of crisis communication still apply, albeit at a faster pace, so make sure seasoned communication professionals advise on the planning.
Such is the power of social media that if you don’t take control of a crisis you can be sure that the new media will grab it out of your hands.
