For the past fifteen years Fineman PR has been publishing a list of the Top 10 PR Blunders for the year. What is different about this year’s list is that many of the blunders happened in the social media sphere, either directly by the organization or by a slow response to something published on a bolg or social networking site. Two of these blunders were people who were actually able to right wrongs by using social media and the web to publicize the issue.
In an interview with Bulldog Reporter’s Daily ‘Dog, Michael Fineman, President, Fineman PR said, “In the old days, you had to get on top of a crisis in the first 48 hours. Now, it’s the first 48 minutes. In those minutes, you have a responsibility to contain the crisis and alert any audiences that may be in danger or are being impacted by the crisis. Your response must be instantaneous.” Social media has pushed PR professionals to consistently monitor the news, blogs and social media outlets, and it has drastically changed the time frame within which we have to react.
Anyone who knows anything about social media will tell you that to succeed you must be transparent. While we would always advise client to be so, it is more important now than ever. Everyone makes mistakes and the best advice is to be transparent, take responsibility and/or set the record straight, as appropriate.
What is also made clear by this list is that an employee’s actions represent the company (United Airlines and Dominos). Today it is easier than every for those actions to be apparent to the public and communicated to the public quickly and in scale. Customer service and public relations may be making a movement to be intertwined more than ever. Some of the more prominent Twitter success stories (Comcast and Dell) are companies who have used the service to proactively addressed customer dissatisfaction. Maybe CCSO, Chief Customer Service Officer, will even become a new job function.
Please check our Social Media Pricing, Reputation Management Pricing andSocial Media A La Carte Pricing to choose the right social media strategy for your profile or business.
This post is quite true. For crisis management to be handled there has to be a system of dual ownership between PR and Marketing. In addition, using brand monitoring tools such as Radian6 to resolve what’s being said out there.
An example is the 4 carriers did not do a good job of disseminating information about the Samsung Galaxy Tab. Most of my information came from information with access to leaked memos.
It boggles my mind how many companies find crisis management problems because of a lack of transparency. Social media is simply highlighting the problems that already exist.