Crisis management in the digital age

Over the past few years, social media has had an impact, whether bigger or smaller, on people, communities and businesses and has brought certain undeniable changes with it. Even if its revolutionary and groundbreaking effects have been exaggerated by some, one thing that social media has definitely transformed is the way in which we communicate with each other. Which means that the way we discover information and share it is also transforming.

Today's social channels are more influential and powerful than their predecessors and they insure the rapid diffusion on public opinion. In this new digital age, news of a negative event or incident has the potential to spread faster that any crisis experienced by previous generations has. All of these things lead to organisations modifying not only the way they are handling, planning and implementing crisis management, but also the way they perceive and understand what a crisis is.

One of the first things that companies need to figure out is what they define as being a crisis on the web; what is the tipping point when an online event triggers or develops into a crisis for that organisation? Once that is cleared up they can start thinking about planning, both proactive and reactive, for the appropriate crisis management solutions.


Two years ago, Brian Solis talked about reinventing crisis communications for the social web and suggested that "many, if not a majority of potential crises are now avoidable through proactive listening, engagement, response, conversation, humbleness, and transparency." The crisis management model he put forward is based on listening, observation and conversation:

This model is a proactive one that aims at reducing the need for reactive responses and crisis communications programmes.

Monitoring becomes absolutely essential in the social web and companies must be sure to set up 'digital listening posts' on all relevant platforms. It is essential to have social media channels set up and the more credible they are (number of followers or friends, quality of information), the better the company will be able to make use of them in a crisis situation or for the prevention of such an event.

Timothy Coombs said that "the rapid evolution of new media often results in the practice of public relations getting ahead of research." This applies to crisis management where the relevant literature in the field has been slow in catching up with the challenges that social media is imposing on it. This gap is mostly filled by bloggers who look at the latest ongoing case-studies (such as Toyota or Domino's Pizza) to draw conclusions and develop or adapt rules and theory.

PR companies and professionals have also had to adapt to these new realities and incorporate digital services in their crisis management offers. According to Eddie Bensilum (who was a guest speaker in the course's Corporate PR module) from Regester Larkin, all the main principles of crisis management have stayed the same, but some of the rules, especially when it comes to credibility, are different.

Social media can be either a trigger for a crisis or it can work as an escalating factor for an already existing one. Due to its unstructured nature it can severely complicate the activities and actions of crisis management. Social media creates new structures and circles of trust and it requires up-skilling and different resources to be used in the crisis management process. However, it can also be an asset for the organisation; social media can help identify potential crises sooner and, thus, prevent them from escalating further, or it can take an incipient issue for the organisation and transform it into an opportunity to shine in front of the stakeholders.

Social media adds a new dimension to crisis management, as there are now larger groups involved and a lot less time to act. News, especially negative ones, travels much faster than through traditional channels and it has a much wider reach. If before a company could buy some time while the reporters researched the story, the facts were checked, the copy edited, the newspapers printed and delivered to the public, now all it has are the 30 seconds it takes to write a 140 character message on Twitter or the 30 minutes it takes to compose a blog post. And the reach that potential blog post or Twitter message could have can go beyond what traditional media can achieve.

It has become the job of the crisis communicator today to take notice of all these things, course correct the rules, strategies, tactics and tools to be used, while still following the same management principles that have paved the way to success in the past.

PR and the Social Media Bangwagon

“Evolution is evolution – and it’s happened before us and will continue after we’re gone. But, what’s taking place now is much more than change for the sake of change. The socialization of content creation, consumption and participation, is hastening the metamorphosis that transforms everyday people into participants of a powerful and valuable media literate society.“ - Brian Solis

In class today we touched on a subject that I particularly feel attracted to and that in my own, probably biased, opinion is the future of public relations: social media. 

There are tons of materials on the subject -especially online- and more than enough (self-proclaimed) experts that preach about the unbreakable bond that PR needs to build with social media in order to have a glorious future. And, of course, they are always sure to add convincingly build arguments and cleverly constructed examples to serve as proof of just that. Brian Solis, Shel Holtz, Todd Defren, Scott Monty, just to name a few of those whose blogs I find myself regularly reading. Some are more convincing than others; some insist on the world domination of new media, others tend to be more moderately opinionated on the matter. But they all view social media as the future.

And the thing is, if you're mesmerized by the influence that social media undeniably has on the world around you, but especially by the impact it exerts on your own life (like I tend to be when I wake up in the middle of the night because there is something I just *need* to tweet about), you will surely embrace all of it, jump on the bandwagon and stubbornly fight off all that try to prove it wrong.

Social media has creeped into our daily lives and has somehow become addictive, an extension of our material life, a place to cultivate our digitally enhanced alter-egos. And oh how well does it all mix with public relations! There is obviously no way of knowing what will happen to the industry in 10 years from now; we can't even predict, all that accurately, what will happen tomorrow. But if I had to take my best guess I'd say that social media is the trend to look out for and the driving force behind what PR will be at that point.

All the stats are there and proof of how efficient platforms such as FaceBook or Twitter can be has surfaced on numerous occasions (just think of all the buzz that social media, and social media alone, created around the iPad launch this week). It's up to the PR professionals to start rewiring their brains in business mode when it comes to how/ what to post on their blogs or update FaceBook statuses with, and figure out the proper way of using all these new tools in the advantage of their company and clients.

Because the hardest problem that a PR practitioner will ever face in the area is how to use social media to their advantage. Even though when you think about it in terms of 'updating information on Facebook' or tweeting 140 character messages on 'what's happening', you feel that it should come naturally (I mean, after all, it is something that you pretty much do every day), it may actually be harder than it seems once applied to an organization's or client's needs.

How do you time the release of the information, what kind of message do you want to send out and how do you make sure it doesn't get distorted on the way (we all pretty much know that social media = lack of control), how much information is too much or what social media platform best fits the profile of your client and the requirements of their audiences. Not to mention the whole issue surrounding measuring and evaluating results or that of defining the new ethical boundaries, if any left at all.

Information flows faster and more uncontrollable than ever before; and what better glimpse at this reality that a simple analysis of the dynamics of Twitter trends or of viral campaigns such as Facebook's 'What colour's your bra?' And if PR has come to terms with the loss of control over that information, it's about high time it start gaining some of it back.

All of the sudden we have all these multitude of voices that are automatically invested with power and that create a lot of new third party endorsers. PR practitioners have to come up with ways to manage these voices, identify those which are most relevant and powerful, and shift the power balance towards their client or company. And multiple voices also come with a benefit: two-way communication is more enhanced than ever. This is an exceptional opportunity to find out exactly what the public is thinking about and if social media hasn't told you that it means that the online tools are not being used properly.

In this new digitalized world, monologue has given way to dialog, professionals to amateurs (these days we seem more likely to trust in the words of bloggers than in any 'official information' we receive) and authenticity seems to be the key. But is transparency also a core integrated element of social media? It is definitely a top requirement in the social media scheme of things, but how realistic is it really? Gatekeepers have always been there to serve their purposes and social media is no different: the gatekeepers are there, just not as obvious as before; unspecialized users tend to be oblivious to their existence, but they are real. The public wants honest non-biased opinions in their grand search of the Truth, but it doesn't always seem to be feasible. Of course transparency is the basis of building trust and relationships, and these two elements are key to good public relation practices, but there is such a thing as too much information and honesty don't have to equate with utter vulnerability. And it's again the PR professional's duty to find the perfect balance between the two.

Used correctly, social media is capable of offering the PR professional the means to send out controlled messages while giving the public the opportunities and exactly the information it needs. And once PR learns how to manage all of the above, and starts using social media the way it was intended, the benefits are there to thrive in.