LaughlinOutLoud

A crisis can occur at any time, at any place. It’s a serious situation. Something bad has happened to a company, community or individual that requires immediate attention and action. It can be a workplace injury; a shooting at a crowded mall; a fire at a restaurant; a chemical spill at a plant.  All of these situations can occur. We just don’t know when. So it’s important to be prepared for crisis communication. Preparation allows us to manage the situation and respond right away.

There are two key words in the last paragraph. Manage and respond. They’re part of the old school communication model and definitely part of the new school.

Social media, primarily Twitter and Facebook, has changed the way public relations professionals manage and respond to a crisis. It’s a critical part of planning now.

Sure, the fundamentals still apply and provide the foundation for responding and managing a crisis situation well. Social media adds another element though. Suddenly, employees, community activists and passersby, among others, can be sources of information for the media.

So how do you successfully incorporate social media into your crisis communication plan? And have you updated it recently to include social media? If you haven’t, now’s a good time to dust it off and give it a look.

Crisis Communication Guidelines 2.0

1. Does your company/organization have a Twitter feed or Facebook page? If so, who oversees it and how do you plan on managing the flow of information? If the company/organization is not active on social media, it’s time to participate.
2. Who on the crisis communication team uses and is knowledgeable about social media? If there currently isn’t someone, a person needs to be identified to lead the effort.
3. What employees or staff members have Twitter accounts and Facebook profiles? It would be good to know in advance. Often, they can be sources of information for the outside world and you’ll want to develop employee/staff guidelines for a crisis situation, so the message is controlled, consistent and factual.
4. What reporters do you know that are using social media? What media outlets? It’s imperative to round up this information and connect with them so you can provide timely updates and know what’s being said about your brand and the situation.
5. Developments can happen fast in a crisis situation and often information is disseminated on-the-go. Are you set up to be mobile? A good starting point is to have a laptop, Wi-Fi connector and smart phone available. If you don’t have a smart phone, is there one ready? Is it loaded with the proper apps and addresses? Is there an extra battery and charger set aside as well?
6. Are you set up to share information online and via social networks? In other words, posting written and video statements to the company/organization website, a newswire, PitchEngine.com, Twitter and Facebook?
7. Are you optimizing your online content? It’s important that this happens and a skilled professional who understands search engine optimization assist with it. The better this is done, the higher up you’ll be on search engine result pages. Who’s your go-to person to accomplish this?

These are just a few thoughts for incorporating social media into your crisis communication plan. If you haven’t done it or have not reviewed your plan recently, there’s no time like the present.

What else would you add to this list?

A recent post about social media on Clickz by Christopher Heine resurfaced last year’s mammoth of a digital ad story where Skittles took, according to critics, a “reckless” jump into the social scene. The well-known company replaced its website with an uncensored stream of consumer posts, filling their home page with content that any rational advertiser would see as corporate suicide – and they took a lot of flack. How could they make such a careless decision – leaving their website open for public vandalism and letting social conversations reshape perceptions around their brand?

The results? Well, beyond the large amount of publicity they gained through word of mouth buzz and coverage of their social stunt, “The brand increased its presence on the social site from around 600,000 fans, pre-Twitter-experiment, to 3.5 million by 2009’s end.”

Many corporations are calculated risk averters. Standards, rules, and processes are put in place to avoid any chance of threat, error, or failure – something that is most often associated with the “unknown”.  Social media – although having been around for a few years now – has a mountain of unknowns due to the transparency that takes place between consumers and brands.  I mean, what’s riskier than putting your trust in the hands of strangers – allowing them to push out messages you have no say over?

Apprehensive to abandon their control, many brands manipulate the medium to protect themselves from potentially harmful consumer messages. As a vehicle fully driven by consumer conversation and content, this ultimately stifles the potential of social media. Ironic how the piece of social that businesses are most scared of… is the secret ingredient that makes it so powerful.

It’s brands like Skittles who have fully embraced social media for what it is that are getting the most out of what it is powered to do. I commend brands like Skittles for their bravery. They put a trust in their consumers that few other brands have the strength to do.

I just got off a conference call with  the marketing folks at one of our client hospitals. We were putting together a mini-marketing plan that required a very quick communications program and somebody said, “let’s get it out on our Facebook page.”

If you’re a healthcare marketer who has boldly ventured into social media, you are certainly not alone. Out of about 5,000 U.S. hospitals, 441 are now listed on Ed Bennett’s blog on Hospital Social Networking. That’s up from 367 hospitals just one month earlier. Ed’s list is certainly growing, but I wondered, what are hospitals gaining—how many people are they reaching? So I checked in on several Facebook pages we surveyed in July, 2009, to see how their fan bases have grown over the last four months.

Anderson Cancer Center (Houston) July: 1,314 /  November: 2,248
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center July: 148 / November: 194
Cleveland Clinic July: 2,801 / November: 5,915
Innovis Health (Fargo) July: 35 / November: 287
Mayo Clinic July: 7,444 / November: 10,206
Scripps Health .July: 218  / November: 411
St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital July: 78,839 / November: 108,809

Big or small, national brand or community hospital, looking at this group as a whole, there are a few things I’d take away.

1. Be active. The fastest growing sites have lively participation and exchanges—not just announcements. Facebook’s Discussions tab is an opportunity to interact directly with consumers—both Mayo and Cleveland Clinic take advantage of this feature.

2. Be interesting, but don’t look scattered. It’s tempting to do it all: real time comments and responses, exchanges with experts and other patients, breaking news, video, graphics, photos and links. Mayo’s Facebook postings feature an expert with a short paragraph and a video link. A nice consistent way to call out the hospital “voice.”

3. Be yourself. Whether a hospital is a national icon or a local institution, your social media presence is an extension of your brand strategy, personality and objectives. St. Jude wants donations. Mayo wants to be more personal. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) has a mission “to create a healthy future.” And you see it on their Facebook pages.

From an account planning standpoint, social media is a tremendous opportunity to listen to consumers, personify our brands and make even more connections. How many? Well, the answer to that changes every day.

It’s always nice to get confirmation that we’re doing the right thing when it comes to social media.

Last night, a group of Laughlin social media staff and I attended the ‘Obama For President: Interactive Strategy’ event hosted by MIMA (Milwaukee’s Interactive Marketing Association). Thomas Gensemer, Managing Partner of Blue State Digital, shared his insights, strategies, and lessons learned from executing Obama’s social media campaign.

Although I am standing by the notion that social media is not a campaign – I will refer to it as that for the purpose of this blog.

After hearing the genius that went into creating Obama’s social media strategy, I learned that no matter the campaign size, big or small, the key to success lies in the targeting of the message. So, whether it’s email, video, photos, or an interactive platform, each social media channel should harness a different message.

Take for example Obama’s email marketing strategy. Although email marketing doesn’t necessarily fall under social media, the lessons learned from this example can be applied to any two-way conversation.

Obama’s team knew that they couldn’t send out one, mass email to all of his supporters. They knew that the message needed to cater to each specific person, their interests, and their behavioral data. Hours of research went into making sense of this data and the results came back with an interesting insight.

Out of 13 million email subscribers, there were 300 segmented groups of people with similar interests. Obama’s personalized approach raised millions of dollars for the campaign because they were targeting the right person at the right time.

Now, if the notion of customized messages, delivered at the right time, to the right person, makes sense for a campaign as large as the Presidential election, imagine it for your corporate social media strategy…

Long ago when my dad entered the job market, things were tough.  The country was in the midst of a depression and there weren’t many jobs available.  It didn’t take long before he realized he needed to tap into family, friends and trusted professionals, in order to get his foot in the door and gain employment.  He needed to network to stand out amongst the masses.

As time passed and I grew older, I soon found myself looking for employment as well.  It was time for me to begin supporting myself and I needed to see what was available in the marketplace.  So I ran to the corner gas station, picked up a copy of the local newspaper, circled a few jobs and sent my resume to 10 or 20 companies through snail mail.  Since I had never met the recipients of my resumes, I did my best to highlight my work history and achievements in a concise single page, hoping to catch their attention.

Years went by and soon my kids needed a job.  They searched the big job boards.  Within minutes, they could copy and paste their resumes into the online submission portal, sometimes with only a simple change to the subject line.  Off it went and within minutes they got an automated response from the HR department, thanking them for their patience as all the applicants were screened.  It was a cold and impersonal way for them to get their personal information out there, but it was quick and efficient for them and the HR people.

Come into the present and we find we’ve come full circle.  As in the days of my dad’s job search, jobs are few, times are tough, and we find that one of the best ways to land a job may be through a “connection.”  So I thought we’d put together a few ideas that might help you with your own job search.  Things that may help you get “connected.”

Know your target company. Research them, friend them on Facebook, follow them on Twitter.  I know this sounds weird, but if you get to meet this special person (HR rep or company rep), you might want to treat it like a first date.  Listen intently, show an interest, bring your best attributes to the table and, most importantly, know something about them so you can talk about them too.  Make a connection.

Set up a LinkedIn page and make sure it’s up to date. This way you’re linked or can become connected.  Plus, once set up, recruiters can find you too.  (Yes, we search LinkedIn to stay on top of our industries and follow talent.  We also use it to research you.  And you can research us too!)  Use LinkedIn for networking purposes, joining groups and organizations, and positioning yourself as an expert on a certain topic.  Answer group questions and participate in discussions.  Again, get connected.

And, if possible, set up a website for yourself. Include samples of your work, creative pieces and writing, as it pertains to your profession.  When you write or talk with a recruiter, include your link.  It’s another way to be connected.  Remember, HR people and recruiters are digital creatures too.  We’re out there sharing your social space, looking for a few good people.

But first, take a look at Ogilvy’s and Crispin’s new web-sites.

These are new designs that position both agencies as leading edge by using aggregated media stories about them and their clients as an opening screen.

I love the urgency and energy.  In both cases, the clutter that I’ve been fighting professionally all these years has become the organizing concept.  In a weird twist on Marshall Mcluhan’s insight of the medium becoming the message, we’ve seen the Bauhaus movement toward white space and simplicity yield to a supernova of design.  These sites are like trying to read the Congressional Record on acid.   Yet they work.

There’s a wonderful irony at work here.  Agencies are using clutter to demonstrate their ability to cut through it.  These sites serve as a vivid demonstration that the loss of control a lot of marketers are experiencing puts an even greater emphasis on ideas that elbow their way into our consciousness.

Maybe what we’re seeing is the transitional period from white space to white noise as a design maxim.

Facebook has been quite adamant that they would not allow people to change their “Username” after you have selected it. However, it seems Facebook may have taken a step back because they have updated your “Account Settings” to allow you to change you username, as a one-time only service.

One has to wonder if the influx of change requests and complaints have made Facebook change their mind. Will they do so for “Pages” as well?

Digging a bit deeper in the interface, Facebook has not yet given Page administrators this ability. While changing your username may be valuable to those who made a mistake or chose one without much though, this is likely one of the more valuable features for an administrator.

Another important note, if you have been unable to secure a preferred username you should check with your Facebook account team. They may have black listed trademarked names to proactively protect your brand. With a little help from Facebook we were able to change the username for one of our client’s “Pages”.

In our ongoing pursuit of actionable insights, we track trends. Like the fact that in the last month, the 55+ crowd on Facebook increased by about 76%. That’s staggering for one month. It’s led to a tectonic shift. There are now more people over 35 on Facebook than under 24. Let’s hold on while all the college kids reading this immediately shut down their Facebook accounts. Okay, ready? Back to it.

Huge, big, cultural-shifting numbers are great. But the promise of tracking – particularly when it comes to social media – is that we can pinpoint… people.

So, headlines-be-damned, we can learn things like: There are 3,100 people in Portland, Maine who “like coffee” enough to make it a part of their Facebook profile. And that number jumps to 10,920 people for Portland, Oregon.

For a brand that understand where it’s going and how to get there, the possibilities – and opportunities – are endless.