NewCommForum: Managing Crisis Communications in the Blogosphere

Dave Parmet chaired a panel with Brian Oberkirch, Joel Richman and Josh Hallett covering how to manage crises in the blogsphere.  This is a subject I have spent a lot of time thinking and writing about (see "PR Crises Occur at Broadband Speeds") so I found it very useful.

This panel began with a discussion of the Great PubSub Blow-up, which two of the panelists had been consulting for at the time.  Long story short, there was a falling out between the two co-founders of PubSub that resulted in Bob Wyman airing the dirty laundry of the company.  Obviously a major crisis.

The point is that a single blog post can cause major ramifications for a business.

The panel advises communicators to take a few hours to cool down after an inflammatory blog post.  Don't respond in anger.  Don't let one obnoxious blogger take you off message.  Monitor what's being said, but use your judgment as a communicator as to when to respond.

Brian emphasized that people need information in a crisis.  Josh says know which bloggers are interested in your company so you are ready to go to them in a crisis.

The time to deal with a crisis is before it mushrooms, Brian argues.  Learn from what you're hearing in the blogs.

Josh emphasizes the value of jumping into comments early to correct factual inaccuracies in order to help stem the tide of criticism in the comments.

Discussion turned to the Taco Bell/KFC rats debacle and of course JetBlue.

And Brian spent time talking about Katrina and his blogging effort in the wake of that hurricane (Brian lives in Slidell, LA just across the lake from New Orleans).  He was able to use the blog to get information about the community for everyone who was displaced.  Since the local newspaper was unable to publish in the wake of the storm, it effectively became the local news source for everyone.

Brian said look not just to blogging, but also SMS or other communications tools in a crisis, especially when some lines of communication may be disabled.  And he made the obligatory (these days) reference to Twitter.

It is simple and cheap to create a blog if needed in a crisis but you should have it in place before.  RSS is important.  Integrating information on organization home page is key to sharing info in a crisis.  Try to use tags and keywords to help your information be found.  Monitor like heck.  And be prepared with information and plans in advance.

"The crisis starts way before the crisis starts" - great line from Brian.

Joel argues that there are times where moderated comments make sense. 

A very interesting and valuable discussion.  Nice job by all involved, but special kudos to Brian who really drove home several key points in a very clear manner.

UPDATE: I should have just waited a few minutes to post and I could have included the link to Joe Thornley's summary in my original post (he was sitting 2 seats down from me, but I got tied up so still have yet to be able to say hello in person).

Technorati tags: NewCommForum, New Communications Forum, Dave Parmet, Brian Oberkirch, Joel Richman, Josh Hallett, crisis communications, blog monitoring, PubSub

Comments

[Joel Richman]

Hi Chip,

Thanks for coming to the panel and for the write up. Having a crisis communications plan for the blogosphere should be on every corp. communicator's list (if it isn't already) and I enjoyed the audience's participation. How cool was having Brian O there to talk about Katrina, too?

I want to make one correction to my statements, however. It's been brought to my attention my use of the term "falling out" to describe the relationship between the PubSub founders implies the problems were personal, rather than of a business nature.

It would have been more accurate for me to say the business situation had become untenable, and from there events in PubSub's history unfolded the way they did.

Thanks again,
Joel

[Chip Griffin]

Thanks for the clarification, Joel. I, for one, didn't interpret "falling out" as personal, but then I followed the story pretty closely at the time. To me, the term can apply to any kind of relationship.

And it was great to have Brian there. That sort of first-hand, real world experience I think helped drive the point hom to the audience that social media can play a vital role in a crisis.