At the Blog Business Summit this week my blogging Yoda's Robert Scoble, Buzz Bruggeman and Anil Dash tackled the thorny topic of crisis communications. They emphasized how blogging can help when things get bad by projecting a human face or voice for an organization and by providing a forum for soliciting specific feedback from customers. In the immortal words of the Hulkster, "Amen brother."
These thoughts directly reflect several conversations I had today during a private meeting with the Internet Manager's Consortium at Coca-Cola Headquarters in Atlanta. The group's members all hail from Fortune-500 companies and are charged with running their global Web sites. They are just beginning to fully appreciate just how blogging and citizen journalism are changing their jobs. With this in mind, here are five steps every company should take to prepare for a PR crisis that might emerge from the blogosphere...
- Continually Listen and Analyze - Use the various tools to listen to what people are saying about your company, brands and/or clients in the blogosphere and on sites like Flickr and del.icio.us. Figure out which bloggers have the greatest potential to become your vigilantes and group them into hubs. Analyze their tendencies and those of their readers. Watch the time stamps of their in-bound links and comments to assess who reads them and how quickly they respond to posts. Map this network out like the FBI charts the mafia.
- Develop a List of Vulnerabilities - Conduct a thorough
group audit of all your organization's vulnerabilities. Be honest with
yourself. Are there people who blog who might already have a beef with
you? Find out for sure if any of your disgruntled employees are already
blogging - or have blogged.
- Build a Lockbox Blog - While times are calm, build a
special crisis communications blog and keep it locked down under
password protection. Figure out your key messages (based on your
vulnerabilities), which employees will write the blog and under which
kinds of circumstances they will be tapped. Consider how moblogging and vlogging (video blogging) might be used
to vividly depict how your company is responding to a
crisis - particularly in a product recall. Also be sure to address
where the blog fits into your broader crisis PR efforts with the
mainstream press. Blogs are not a panacea.
- Build a Network of Blogging Allies - As the trio suggested
today up in Seattle, continually nuture your network of blogging allies. This will make it easier to turn to them in the event of a crisis. Regularly feed them news
links in good times that are unrelated to your company or cause. This
will earn you points in the "favor bank." In addition, consider
developing a network of non-blogging influencers who you might be able
to call off the bench to blog on you behalf when lightning strikes.
Again, blogs aren't the only place to wage the battle. Don't ignore Flickr and del.icio.us networks either.
- Ride the Long Tail - Last but not least, don't forget the law of the Long Tail when planning for a blog PR crisis. As the Kryptonite example showed us, bloggers typically have the greatest impact at the beginning and end of a story's lifecycle. Use this to your advantage. If you're in a crisis and you have generated some positive mainstream/blog coverage that hits your key messages, be sure to feed those links to the bloggers who are on the "back nine" of the analysis tail.
These are just some tips to get your started. Just like with the big media, the key to surviving a blog PR crisis is preparation and detailed planning.
