It may start with a tweet, or with a blog post somewhere and a few irate comments. You're monitoring the conversation that remains low key, until a pundit grabs hold of the information, sees it as an opportunity to show expertise -- whether in theory or not -- and all of a sudden your organization's Facebook page wall comes under attack.
The posts quickly gain momentum and possibly degenerate when fans become mob.
Your community manager, who is probably part of the digital media team, or an agency: 1) is unprepared to deal with the volume and tone of the posts; 2) has little to no authority to act on behalf of the organization; 3) has no direct line to decision makers.
Welcome to the real time Web
Listening is not enough.
Because social media makes connections visible and communication instantaneous, when people are upset or angry about an issue, escalation is fast and furious. And the implications to brands built over decades of careful messaging can be devastating.
Who are the key publics
We talk about personalization and the beauty of one to one communication in social media. Well, in social media you often have a here comes everybody situation, as Shirky would say. However, there are groups or publics with common perspectives. PR professionals call them stakeholders.
Borrowing a page from crisis communications manuals and adapting it to what we've seen happen in social media so far, they likely are, in this order:
- Concerned citizens -- have shown a desire to get involved in the issue you are facing
- Employees and partners -- how is the issue affecting them in the community?
- Activists -- they have an agenda related to the issue
- Pundits -- people who are seen as influential by the online community
- Experts -- with specialized knowledge of this specific issue
- Industry -- are other organizations getting lumped into the issue?
- Elected officials -- we're seeing more examples of politics mixed in with business
- Regulators -- think about health care, pharma, chemical, financial services
- Mainstream media -- and the rest of the public not online/in social networks
What you need to figure out is: who are the key groups who have a stake in the particular issue you are facing?
Learning to listen better is central to risk communication
One of the best definitions of risk communication I've come across in my career is by Dr. Peter Sandman who explains is as it dealing with what might happen vs. crisis communication, which deals with what has happened or is happening.
As he writes at his site, he (emphasis mine)
coined the formula “Risk = Hazard + Outrage” to reflect a growing body of research indicating that people assess risks according to metrics other than their technical seriousness: that factors such as trust, control, voluntariness, dread, and familiarity are as important as mortality or morbidity in what we mean by risk. My clients tended to imagine that their neighbors, employees, or customers were upset mostly because of media sensationalism or activist distortions or their own ignorance; helping them understand the dynamics of stakeholder outrage was a prerequisite to helping them figure out how to reduce the outrage – mostly how to stop doing the things they were doing that provoked the outrage.
Of course reducing outrage is a socially valuable thing to do only if the outrage is misplaced – that is, if the hazard, the technical risk, is genuinely small. (Similarly, increasing people’s outrage, as activists do, is socially valuable only if the hazard is genuinely big.)
Indeed there are ethical issues with outrage management, as Dr. Sandman points out and has written extensively about. Applying risk communication thinking is useful especially in refocusing the organization on the nature of the risk and the key stakeholders involved (vs. shareholders).
The truth is that often you won't know what the issue is about until you ask and are prepared to listen.
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When the crisis strikes
What do you do when that happens? Borrowing from extensive commentary by Dr. Sandman about BP to the Daily Kos, when disaster strikes, tell the truth (emphasis mine):In a crisis situation the principal communication task is to communicate honestly about the situation and help people bear their justified distress. Premature, dishonest, or disingenuous over-reassurance is a cardinal crisis communication sin. So is cavalier, unemphatic dismissiveness.
That applies to a social crisis as well. Indeed, while you may think distress is not justified, your community begs to differ -- and that's what counts. Tell the truth about what you're doing, not what you think about the situation. People want action.
So as you wonder how much a brand advocate is worth, think also about what their perspective would be in a crisis -- would they be:
- an employee anxious to explain and defend why they work at your company
- a pundit eager to showcase what they know and possibly gain publicity in the process, while underestimating their own influence and potential reputational damage they are inflicting
- a respected member of a community of concerned citizens
- etc.
The organizations that apply risk communication principles to social media crisis are those who don't stop in their tracks, they are prepared to act. Giving people something to do engages them not just for marketing purposes, it's also helpful when a crisis strikes.
Do these things
While having a social media policy and setting community guidelines help get everyone on board with how the organization is approaching social media, they don't guarantee your company will not have issues.
An integrated social media strategy requires a commitment to customer-centricity, conversation, and community. This means preparation, direct engagement, and real time communication to address any issues -– potential and unforeseen -– that may arise in social interactions.
Do these things:
- be totally transparent about what's happening
- get help to the teams on the front lines
- provide timely updates -- internally and externally (take care of your employees)
- give people something to do -- doing trumps talking
- get leaders involved -- a crisis involves change
- collect and post information and updates in one central location
- respond to and clear contradicting information aggressively
Set the tone and continue listening. Most of us are not qualified to speak to technical information, industry relations, regulatory issues, etc. That doesn't keep us from having opinions on any of those matters.
Company says potato -- often experts think about the science behind something -- publics say potato -- they are concerned about things like control, fairness, and responsiveness. Address those concerns. Organizations that underestimate the power of community outrage, combined with the ability to gain momentum online, risk potentially costly crisis.
What issues are you concerned about?
A few weeks back we discussed crisis communication in social media: are you ready? This is a deeper conversation than we can cover in a couple of posts. However, risk communication thinking needs to be part of your social media strategy.So fire away with your questions in the comments. I'm working on a Webinar about this topic (stay tuned for dates and times), and you can help me address your concerns.
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