There was a time not that long ago when protecting the reputation of a corporation, brand or organization was easier. Some things such as the disreputable or inappropriate conduct of an employee were able to stay private in line with the old saying “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas”. Today, as the media has been transformed from mass media to masses of media, as hundreds of thousands of people in the world own smart phones with camera, video, and audio enabled devices connected to thousands of social networks and millions of blogs, “What Happens in Vegas Goes on YouTube”.

The crisis communications protocols of today are designed to protect and defend an individual, company, or organization facing a swelling public challenge to its reputation, brand and community image in the traditional media paradigm. However, in today’s new media environment, conversations about organizations or companies take place each and every day, often without our knowledge and participation until a groundswell of public discontent can be reached very quickly. In order to better protect the reputation of your company or organization, new crisis communications protocols that integrate social media strategies must be put in place to meet the new challenges of today.

Today, as the mainstream media downsizes, new and accessible communication platforms and technologies such as blogs, social networking sites, RSS feeds, and other formats are growing, and have the potential to reach more people with more relevant messages than ever before. New voices are gaining influence through the 25 to 50 million blogs, 2900 social networks, 400 million active Facebook members, and 50 million daily Tweets that make up a part of the new media space. Anyone can create content and distribute it freely, and this has made it increasing difficult for companies and organizations to control the messaging that protects their reputation. Whether it is video sharing, photo sharing, blog comments or widgets, the sum of all media channels equates to a powerful archetype for exposing and diffusing public opinion. Social media is pervasive and transforming how we communicate and share information. The filtering and aggregation qualities of social media enable good and bad news to travel at astonishing speeds and has magnified the urgency of crisis communications. For example, in January of 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 went down in the Hudson River at 3:29pm: content related to Flight 1549 first appeared on Twitter at 3:30pm, and the first blog coverage at 3:38pm. The 60 minute response window is gone in the new media age. Below are some key strategies that are an important part of an updated crisis communications plan that incorporates social media strategies.

1.  Identify your crisis team: Pull together a select and comprehensive team of experts from     investor relations, government relations, crisis communications, outside lawyers, general counsel, digital communications, human resources, and executive leadership. Your crisis team should have a plan of what needs to be done and who should do it. Work with your team on imagining your nightmare scenarios and prepare for them. Having digital communications experts on your team is a must.

2. Monitoring 24/7 is important. The news cycle has changed. Every minute and hour of every day is a potential crisis in the social media age. The old concept of “Take Out the Trash Friday” Is gone. In political offices for members of Congress or the White House, Friday’s (or Holidays) were the best time to disseminate negative information that needed to get out, because even if it was covered, no one actually saw it.   

This age old protocol was a part of the traditional mass media paradigm, and is becoming a thing of the past. An excellent example was Sara Palin’s Friday resignation from the office of Governor of Alaska on July 3, 2009. The media talking heads, spurred by the blogosphere reran her press conference all weekend and even by Tuesday of the following week the press was still questioning her motives. The holiday weekend and Friday afternoon did not slow down the story; it only was revved up by bloggers.

In fact one of new dirty little secrets of the new media is that bloggers love stirring up publicity over the weekends, when the traditional media, corporate communication and public relations elites are enjoying the weekend and do not have the time to respond to issues. This should be a concern to every crisis response team, as in the new media age, the most activity and speed of information is occurring in the micro blog communities such as Twitter. Timing is still important in regards to traditional media, but that 4pm dead time when traditional print media is writing toward deadlines and television reporters are having footage canned and packaged for the evening broadcasts is no longer downtime in the new media age.  

It is important that you and your organization are always proactively listening and setting up digital listening posts is essential. These can be done through the setting up of Google Alerts and Twilerts for key words related to your business or organization such as company or product name, and key executives to capture internet, blog and micro blog activity. Unfortunately, the hate and die factor “I hate Microsoft” or “Die Air Tran” should be added to get a true sentiment of your opponents. The “I Hate Your Company.com” phenomenon is real, and domain names for potential gripe sites should be secured before any potential opponents or plaintiffs’ attorneys do. (Recent studies have shown that only around 35% of companies own the domain name for potential gripe sites. Consistent domain names combined with search optimization of press releases and statements are a vital part of protecting your company or organization’s reputation). Monitoring you company or organization’s presence online 24/7 can help you develop an appropriate response and at what level. 

3.  Review context: Do not panic and jump the gun and respond to what might appear to be a crisis. Dig a little deeper and make sure you understand what is being said and why. You don’t want to enter into conversation until you have a firm analysis of the situation. It is important to know exactly who is doing the talking and gauge where it might lead. An adversarial blogger who is extensively linked or micro blogger who is tweeting to 1.1 million followers is a problem, while a blogger without key links or micro blogger who is tweeting to 17 followers is not.  You will need to find out who’s angry and how angry they are, and identify if the uproar is isolated or widespread. The new social media is great in measuring raw conversations and emotions, but it also has powerful analytical tools, that allow you to measure and quantify instantaneously how many people are posting comments to a blog, re-tweeting to a tweet, or viewing a YouTube video. The social media is a constant auction of ideas that measures public opinion in real time. As you develop a plan of worst case scenarios, set quantifiable benchmarks that are triggers for evaluation of strategies and next steps or response.  In order to be able to examine and properly frame the context of an issue, you must be willing to listen to the conversation. Learning the language and culture of the blogosphere and micro blogosphere will help you find out what is being said, place it in the proper context and decide how to respond.

4.  Don’t Wait, Respond: When there is a crisis situation, you must respond quickly and in a timely manner.  The social media crisis literature is chalk full of case studies of corporations and organizations who waited and put their heads in the sand in the midst of a crisis online. As indicated earlier, micro bloggers do not follow traditional media deadlines, and often choose to start a firestorm on the weekends when an organization’s communications staff is taking time off.  

Motrin and Dominos Pizza both learned hard lessons regarding how failure to respond can lead to trouble quick.  After a controversial airing of a Motrin website commercial targeting baby sling wearing mom’s, in which it was asked “Do Mom’s that wear their babies cry more than Mom’s that don’t?” , a groundswell developed over one weekend on the internet. The groundswell produced over 15,000 Tweets, 3,500 blog entries, hundreds of counter YouTube videos from angry moms, and 400 media stories by the time Motrin responded and pulled the ad. Motrin did not have a Twitter account at the time, and Mommy bloggers joked that perhaps that “they would get one now. LOL”.  Damage to the Motrin brand among a key audience was done quickly.

In the case of Dominos Pizza, the posting of a YouTube video in which two employees inserted “boogers” into a new Dominos subway sandwich received nearly 1 million views before it was taken down 48 hours later, which already represented significant damage to the brand. When the video was first brought to their attention by a viewer in the first 24 hours, Domino’s decided to respond in a way that didn't alert more people to the story. That error was corrected when the video reached 30,000 views and their crisis team concluded tougher measures would be necessary.

While shutting down the store where the incident occurred, Dominos started a Twitter account for consumer inquiries and issued a YouTube apology which helped to separate themselves from the villains.  The Domino’s apology video received 601,490 views, but not before damage was done to the brand in 48 hours.

In the new media age, you can’t wait to respond. Small incidents can quickly spread into bigger PR problems via the web. By remaining silent you tacitly confirm attacks against you by not responding.

5.  Watch tone: Once you do issue a response, it is important that you show that you care – even when you do not know everything about the issue. You are concerned. Humbleness and Transparency go a long way.

In 2009, when the Ford Motor Company received over 1,000 e-mail complaints overnight criticizing Ford for allegedly shutting down a fan website, The Ranger Station.com, Ford’s communications team posted messages on Twitter saying it was looking into the matter and posted frequent updates. When resolution to a dispute between Ford’s lawyers and the website were resolved in a positive manner and a shut down request withdrawn, Ford’s communications team was praised for its responsiveness in containing the situation in the blogosphere.

In developing a response, acknowledge the emotions of the party’s feelings and perceptions and actions on the web. They may not be correct, but must be acknowledged and then clarifying can begin.

For example, “We're aware there's an issue; we're not ignoring it, and we're working hard to get to the bottom of it,” is an appropriate initial response. In the transparency of the new media age, you must speak to people as people.

6.  Tell the truth about the situation. Even more so in the new media age, you must take ownership of the problem as much as possible without jeopardizing your organization legally or doing further damage. This may involve bringing out points that are being ignored or underreported. But, you should be distinct, brief, and as open as possible.  In the new media age, everyone lives in a small town, and you must be open and comfortable in communicating you point effectively.

7.  Show that you are looking to the future and taking action to make things right. If a crisis brings a problem to your attention, admit it, address it, and fix it. If something is wrong and you can make it right, do it.

8. Consistent response and comments: incongruity will damage you.  In utilizing micro blogs such as Twitter, be simple and selective, don’t over complicate and congest Twitter’s airwaves with excessive banter. By sharing only the most essential content, your audience will know that the information you share is important when it arrives, and is timely and actionable. To be a trustworthy and reliable source of information, you must have a consistent message.

9. Engage Your Audience Where They Live: In the new media age, it is about dialogue and actively addressing issues to minimize unforeseen eruptions from those yet to publish or rally others against you. You must address the crowd where it is gathered. Understandably, companies don’t necessarily want to call attention to a crisis by making a big flashy statement, but it is important to engage with people to address grievances or discontent. One of the best ways to do that is to embrace the power of the micro blog community. It is important that your information is capable of being shared and linked to. Sharing and linking are essential new media realities. We must not think only of things in terms of first tier raw impressions or views, but also in terms of the exponential tiers of how many times an article or press release or video is shared and recommended and linked by others. 

In order to reach your audience and have them share and link to your information, it is also important that you chose the appropriate social media tool to reach them, whether it is a blog, podcast, YouTube Video, Social Network, or Recommendation Engine. Knowing the social media channel most appropriate to you audience shows that you have listened and learned from them, and they will be more apt to have you lead and persuade them through engagement.

Like many of us, you probably resent the new presence of Facebook and Twitter and may wish to pass it off as a trend.  But, the fact is you need to know it and you need to be prepared. Willful ignorance of the social media is the intentional obsolescence of your organization and its response to a potential crisis.

You should be prepared for the worst of what may happen in the social media to your company. What you do in the first hours and days will affect your reputation and your company or organization’s future.

Give us a call and let’s start planning and updating your crisis communications response plan to incorporate social media strategies. A social media diagnostic of where you are in the social media space is also an important first step. You may learn something about your company’s reputation that you did not know.

Patrick L. Burns is Vice President of Public Affairs at Duffey Communications. He has over 20 years experience in public affairs. He provides strategic counsel in crisis communications to numerous businesses, organizations, and elected and appointed officials.