Be Ready

The Economist this week looks at how bloggers impact corporate reputations and the value that listening to the conversation has overall. Every company - and I mean every - must have a plan for how they will handle a blog crisis. Increasingly, many firms should have a blogging policy too. The larger and more distributed your customer base and workforce are, the more critical this becomes. I wrote a primer on this a year ago, which you can find here.

It's surprising how many organizations think a blog crisis can't happen to them. They're unprepared. Sometimes when I go speak to large companies they are surprised by just how many of their employees and customers are blogging. Blog monitoring and crisis planning needs to be elevated to mission critical in corporate communications departments around the world. It's not right now, but I am seeing signs that interest is picking up.

Taking this a step further, it's also important for PR agency account teams and their clients to look at every press release from a crisis management POV. Pretend you're Bill Cowher, coach of the Steelers. What might go wrong? How might bloggers react to your news? One hopes favorably, but one never knows. Be ready. Have a gameplan.

Technorati Tags: Blogs, Public Relations