Crisis Communication & Social Media

I previously wrote about using social media as part of a crisis communication plan. About a month ago, Tonya Garcia of PRNewser tackled this topic using General Electric as an example of how not to use Twitter to deceive the public. More importantly, Ms. Garcia detailed three steps that will help turn a negative PR event into a one that will not sting as much.

The article focused on using Twitter to help set the record straight, but in my opinion other social media platforms can be used just as effectively. For example, Facebook can be used to host Q&A chats and post responses.

The point isn't about which social media platform would work better in this situation, rather this should serve as a reminder for public relations professionals to include using social media as part of your crisis communication plan because it's the quickest and most direct way to communicate with all of your audiences. Just make sure you tell the truth.

Interactions on Social Media Platforms

Social media platforms have created additional direct methods of communications between many groups of individuals that public relations professionals must be aware of. They consist of (in no particular order or terminology): Consumer/Brand, Consumer/Media and Brand/Media.

In these models, public relations professionals are a part of the “brand” and even in the model that features only the “consumer” and “media”, the “brand” (PR professionals) must follow their communication because the feedback going back and forth is important. The image or perception of the brand can also be affected and needs to be monitored as well.

Since the media are on multiple social media platforms, communication directed to and from journalists is increasing due to the simplistic methods social media provides. This pattern shift shows that journalists are not only speaking to their followers and/or fans through their traditional publication medium, but also through social media platforms.

Social media platforms allow journalists to voice their opinion - or additional opinions - on subjects or events they have covered, opined or even have no direct relation to. That last part adds to the monitoring that public relations professionals are responsible for.

Jeremy Porter from Journalistics.com commented in an Internet article:

“What has changed is the direction of the arrows in traditional mass communications model. Back in the day, you had your message, the medium and the mass. Rip that page out of the book and throw it away. Today, you have people interacting with people. It’s two-way, with a lot more listening going on. You still rely on a medium to communicate your message – but you use it to listen now, and there are a lot of media options.”

“Mainstream” Journalists Use Social Media

An early, but crucial battle that social media platforms won in the communications revolution is when the “mainstream” media began publishing news on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. That move signaled to the world that social media platforms are legitimate enough to deliver their most important type of news -- breaking news.

At the same time, using social media platforms have turned the job of journalists from being ready to report the news at anytime to actually reporting the news at anytime on a consistent basis. So not only do social media platforms bring a new breed of journalists for public relations to interact with, it changes the behavior of “mainstream” journalists.

This is another, but important paradigm shift that public relations professionals must be aware of.

Mainstream Media vs. New “Social” Media

Is there a difference between a blogger who has been granted permission to cover an event, sits next to a reporter from a newspaper and updates his blog every ten minutes compared to a person on Twitter who has a large following with a desire to report on the same event?

Determining if there are any differences is one of the first steps in deciding if someone who only uses a social media platform is a "legitimate reporter". That determination will most likely fall on the shoulders of public relations professionals.

Internet websites and blogs have pushed the news cycle from 24-hours to continuous. Social media platforms pushed the new news cycle even further from continuous to immediate. Personal opinions on what a "legitimate journalist" should be or the method of how they report flew out the window years ago when Internet websites and blogs became accepted sources of news.

If the general public continues to accept social media platforms as a source for breaking news, public relations professionals will have no choice but to accept them as part of the mainstream media.

As the communications revolution continues to unfold, public relations professionals must follow how trends are changing and be flexible with them, even if that includes accepting social media platforms as legitimate sources of media.

Always Being "On"

While the evolution of social media has many exciting advantages, it also has carries some drawbacks. Public relations professionals must be aware of the negative aspects of social media because they can be just as harmful as the advantages can be helpful. The drawbacks range from being on the preverbal corporate clock every second of the day to producing statements that reflect poorly on the image of organization or company.

24/7 & Every Second Counts

It goes hand-in-hand with the continuous news cycle and takes the 24-hours a day, seven-days a week approach of the Internet to a new level. Whether it’s the media, consumers or rivals in the business field, everyone is always “on” in the social media universe. And because one of the advantages is being able to "respond" quickly, a public relations professional must be able to deal with any type of negative situation just as immediately while using social media.

And just as having a message go viral can be a great for a company or organization, it can just easily be disastrous with negative attention. Since social media platforms are continuously growing with users, the effects of a negative viral event could have a crippling effect.

Adam Singer of The Future Buzz pointed out there are "400 million active Facebook users ... 50 million Tweets per day ... 133 million blogs that create 900,000 blog posts every 24 hours ... and around 77% of internet users read blogs…" 

With that information in hand, it's important to remember that people tend to notice the bad more then the good. There’s a lot of people on the Web to see the bad news if and when it hits.

Instant Reactions and Statements

Imagine something newsworthy just happened to your company, organization, etc... Good or bad, it doesn't matter for this exercise. As the public relations official you feel a statement needs to be made, so you draw up a press release to send out to the news desks or make phone calls trying to book your CEO or president on a TV or radio station. Your problem? It takes time to issue a press release or book a radio/TV spot (then get on the air). And in all that time, there's still not statement from your office.

Social media has an answer to the problem we've all had at one point or another.

Just as social media platforms created a continuous news cycle for journalists, it also created a platform and news cycle that allows for instant reactions and statements from companies and organizations via the public relations staff. 

If at any time good or bad news breaks, a savvy public relations professional would not need to reach out to the news media to react with a comment, statement or their side of the story. Instead, social media platforms allow for public relations professionals to release their message directly and on their timeline and terms. This development is different from issuing a press release because only the media would receive the message whereas social media platforms are open to the public and media and consumers can receive the message instantaneously and simultaneously.

The same can be said about running promotions: instant, short-term and long-term. To get a promotional message delivered, public relations professionals no longer need to rely on the media to convey it or hope the intended audience visits their website in a timely fashion. Social media platforms allow for instant connections to an audience that is directly interested in the promotion message with results that can be measured just as quickly.

Advantages of Social Media: Continuous News Cycle

Social media platforms offer many advantages that public relations professionals not only should take advantage, but also must take advantage of in order to stay with the innovation curve of the trade. These range from changes in the new cycle, reaching out to and making new connections with the media and to producing instant statements to the world.

The Continuous News Cycle

One aspect or feature of using any social media platform that stands out among others is the quickness of being able to share and spread information. The information being shared could be personal, opinion based or most importantly for this topic, news worthy.

Here's one take: Any type of service that allows a reporter to deliver breaking news to thousands/millions of people in literally two seconds is going to stick around. Social media platforms such as Twitter - or Facebook with its status updates - has the ability to deliver information to an unlimited amount of people simultaneously.

What makes this different from television or a news website is that social media platforms aggregate information from different sources into one place, meaning, a user on Twitter can be following numerous news reporters and Twitter’s website or a Twitter application or program will continuously compile the Tweets of everyone who they are following and deliver the information in one place. Facebook’s interface or feed is very similar. Instead of watching multiple news channels on television or constantly refreshing or visiting multiple websites, a social media user can view information from several sources at the same time and in one place.

Why is this an advantage to public relations professionals? It is an advantage because social media platforms allow for quick, easy and mass dissemination of news and/or press releases to an audience either through news reporters, fellow followers (through forwarding, ReTweeting) or the company itself. Just as the Internet threw out the traditional 24-hour news cycle, social media is retransforming the Internet news cycle which is no longer limited to the time of how often a website is revisited, but how often any news organization updates one of its social media feeds.

Comment: Scott Van Pelt on ESPN's Sports Center

ESPN/Sports Center anchor Scott Van Pelt asked this question to ESPN's NBA Insider Chris Broussard when discussing the breaking news that NBA star LeBron James is planning to announce which team he will sign with on Thursday night on ESPN:

"In this age we live in - LeBron's now got a Twitter account, we tweet, we blog, we never stop churning out the news cycle. How likely will this [his news conference] remain a secret until Thursday at 9 EST?"

I think it was more a comment then a question. Either way, the answer is "Not very likely"