The perils of social media

The Lizard was amused by the story of the Oxford Street gunman, Twitter and the tricky nature of the English language.

Twitter users sparked a major security alert when false reports of a gunman in Oxford Street were posted on the site. Thousands feared a shoot-out was taking place after information from a police training email was leaked.

But all was not what it seemed. Go here for the full story.

A new role for Crisis Solutions' staffer

In this super, soaraway blog post we can exclusively reveal that Peter Brown, a long-time consultant at Crisis Solutions, (on the left in our stunning picture) has been wowing the audience at the South Brent Village panto. Oh yes he has!

The South Brent Amateur Dramatic Society stages a village panto every two years and this year’s show ‘Dick Wittington’ was written by local author John Palmer and first performed by the society 20 years ago.

Unfortunately the panto, which ran to rave reviews, came to the end of its run on January 22^nd, so you’ll just have to curb your enthusiasm until next time.

The ACID test

For once the recent news coming out of Northern Ireland had nothing to do with ‘the troubles’ or any kind of sectarian violence. Elsewhere, WikiLeaks was making the headlines, but in The Province it was WaterLeaks that was the big story. Large sections of the population were without mains supply and Northern Ireland Water, the company responsible, was caught up in a full-scale operational crisis.

At Crisis Solutions we give organisations the tools to create a structured crisis response. One such tool is the ACID test. During a crisis, such as that faced by NI Water, the crisis team could have used this checklist to cover the following critical areas:

Activation
Communication
Information Management
Decision-making

In this 'top tips' we look at Activation and Communication. Activation means getting the right people and resources quickly in place to deal with the crisis. For example, if someone on the crisis team is on holiday, how do we get their deputy briefed, in place and ready?

Have we considered how we maintain our capability during a crisis that lasts several days, or weeks?

Having a clear activation process, ensuring the right skills and resources are available at the right time defines the best organisations.

The need to Communicate effectively cannot be over emphasised. Identify key messages and communicate promptly with staff, the media, customers and suppliers.

Don’t allow an information gap to open up, become a trusted source for all information concerning the incident and make sure your messages keep in touch with the public mood.

Are we using appropriate media channels for each audience? Have we got the right skills available - not just people who are skilled at good news stories?

Next time we’ll look at Information Management and Decision-Making.

Crisis Solutions gets coverage in PR Week

WikiLeaks - a Crisis Solutions take

Jim Preen has been sounding off about WikiLeaks in PR Moment.

Read his thoughts here.

Happy New Year

The Lizard would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Happy New Year.

There’s an interesting article in the Economist about the PR industry (The rise of the image men) where it comes from and where it’s going. You can find it here: http://www.economist.com/node/17722733

One of the points the writer makes is that the mainstream media, the traditional gatekeepers of news, are becoming less important. So is the worth of the advertising slots they sell, and therefore so are the sort of paid-for, hard-sell campaigns that the (m)ad men and marketers deal in.

Meanwhile social networking, with its cacophony of bloggers, Facebookers and tweeters, is becoming more influential. For the public this can be confusing as they are often deafened by a barrage of conflicting views. The slick operators of the dark arts of PR see this as a new opportunity as only they (according to them) and not sales and marketing understand and can manipulate the brave new world of social media.