SiteVisibility’s Jo Morley has been back at Speed this week as part of our job swop programme. She’s been working on crisis management, examining how media is changing the way PRs plan for and deal with crises.
Here, in her very own words, is a post she has penned about what she’s learned this week.
Social media is starting to have a powerful effect on an organisation’s reputation and is forcing all companies to evaluate their PR and communication strategies.
Social media crisis vs crisis on social media
After an discussion with Speed’s Scott McLean about distinguishing between a crisis that happens as a result of social conversations or an actual crisis that plays out via social media, I started looking into examples of both and set out to discover the best way to manage reputation via social platforms.
The challenge with social media is that you have no control. Comments or accusations can be completely unfounded but get picked up and take momentum across the internet. A untruth or bad consumer experience could be front page news within hours, as a result of journalists searching social media channels such as Twitter.
Paperchase came under fire for reportedly plagiarising an artists’ work. Thousands of Twitter users picked up on the story and within hours it was one of the top trending topics both in the UK and globally. At the peak of a ‘Twitter storm’ it was trending with #paperchase.
Paperchase at the time had no Twitter or Facebook presence and so could not react to the story as it was happening and crucially, where it was happening. As it turned out, it had bought the work from a trusted agency who later admitted the mistake and took full responsibility.
The need for Speed
Speed is everything. A slow response leads to an assumption of guilt. Unless you very quickly respond in the right way, through the medium on which the crisis has broken, why should anyone believe anything else?
An example comes from Quantas airlines, which had to ground a flight after a small engine fire. There were no injuries and the plane made a safe landing.
However, at the same time as Quantas made a statement about the incident, photos appeared on Facebook and Twitter of people in Indonesia allegedly holding pieces of the plane. This led to chaos and confusion for friends and families who had no real idea what had happened.
Risk management
Brands are understandably terrified of social media platforms as a huge risk to reputation management and are now often placing customer service on channels such as Twitter above traditional email and phone. The most important thing to understand and consider are what are the risks and do you have platforms in place, that you actually use, to deal with these risks should they occur.
United Airlines provides an example of how not to deal with a social media reputation crisis particularly if it is unavoidable. It took a huge hit to both reputation and share price after failing to deal with a customer complaint properly.
A musician had his guitar damaged on a United flight and after failing to get any real response from the airline for more than a year he took to YouTube with a video he had made himself entitled ‘United breaks Guitars’. The video went viral and after four days had more than 4 million views. The company’s response was poor. It eventually Tweeted that it was looking into it, but by then it was too late.
Google-sink
The company reportedly lost $180 million revenue as a result. It also had an astounding effect on the natural Google rankings as the YouTube videos started ranking higher than many of its own pages. This is something that will become more and more significant as Google places more emphasis on social search, and social platforms such as YouTube and Twitter feature more prominently in Google’s top rankings.
So what is the best way to deal with crises that unfold on social platforms?
Social media crisis management
As all of these examples show, it is vital to not just have social media platforms but to actually use them. If Paperchase had an active Twitter account with a significant number of engaged followers it could arguably have averted the situation by going directly to the angry mob and getting its side across
United Airlines has also been criticised for not issuing an apology on YouTube, the benefit of which would have meant the video would show up along with the artists.
The other consideration is the speed of your response. Social media is instantaneous and if you don’t get your side across quickly then it may be too late. However, it is still important to think before you post or you could actually do more harm than good.
Paperchase adopted a strategy over speed technique for how it handled the situation. The company took time to explain the situation, with the accurate facts. It explained in detail that the design in question had been purchased from an agency and gave the agency the courtesy of writing a statement of its own before its name was made public. Was this the right thing to do or not? Probably not, but it has given me plenty to think about.
For me, this week has given me a really interesting insight into reactive PR something that I was not hugely familiar and has again reinforced the idea that PRs and digital agencies should be working closely together to manage a client’s reputation, as is anything happens it could have a huge effect from rankings on Google to share price and reputation.
To find out more about my experiences of online PR and social media follow me at @jo_morley or read my blog.
In 2012 if a company creates a social channel as a marketing vehicle it is inevitable that customers will use it as a mechanism for customer service and sales.
I’ve just read an excellent book called 
“Some PR professionals are throwing themselves into social media without listening, planning and measuring. That’s like trying to fly a helicopter in a blindfold.”
