corporate communications

Social Media – Reinventing Public Relations?

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , .

Today’s episode of the popular social media-themed soap opera “You’re ‘Avin a Digital Turkish, Ain’tcha?” revolves around a glorious piece of nonsense from someone who’s made the cut here before – a fond welcome, blog snorkellers, to Brian Solis, Principal at FutureWorks PR, San Francisco Bay Area. (As I may have said before, if you’re the sort of person who enjoys pulling their own ribs out and carving small netsuke figurines from them, then you can enjoy more of Brian here.)

It’s the blurb from his book ‘Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media Is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR’ and I reproduce it here in full, so that you too can enjoy the sensation of your brain refusing to believe its eyes and doing its best to hide under its duvet until the bad mojambo goes away.

“Marketing and communications, as is, are dying breeds. They’ve moved away from the public and instead concentrated on broadcasting “top-down,” disconnected messages to as many people as possible.

What we’ve learned and what we know are quickly fading into irrelevance and obscurity.

We now need to expand our scope of participation and outreach by also identifying, understanding, and engaging the everyday people who have plugged-in to a powerful and democratized online platform for creating and distributing information, insight, and opinions – effectively gaining authority in the process.

The very people we had always wished to reach through traditional channels are now the very people we need to convince and inspire directly in order to remain part of industry-defining and market making conversations. This is a new era of influence and in order to participate, we have to rewire our DNA to stop marketing at audiences in order to genuinely and intelligently humanize our story to connect with real people and the online communities they inhabit.

Putting the Public Back in Public Relations is a critical and mandatory process to shine in today’s social economy. It will help businesses forge meaningful relationships with those who will bridge specific benefits to distinct groups of consumers in order to cultivate a loyal, vocal, and hyper-connected community of customers and influencers.”

Did you enjoy that? I particularly liked how we must stop marketing at audiences (did he deliberately use ‘at’ instead of ‘to’ – it’s not clear) and how we must genuinely and intelligently split infinitives and humanise our story. And what (in the name of all that’s holy) is ‘bridging benefits to distinct groups of consumers’?

Obviously, different people, and different schools of thought, will have different takes on Mr Solis’s meanderings. Personally, I’m not a fan of social media evangelism, I don’t regard it as life-changing and I’m not even sure it’s actually – when it comes down to it – very important as a comms tool. Mr Solis seems to be saying that the future is community and collaboration, and that, through social media, the audience will dictate the shape and future strategy of the business.

I’m not saying this is untrue – in fact I think it’s been true for quite some time. I just don’t think that social media invented audience participation, nor do I think it’s the best way of getting the end user involved.

Look at Microsoft (‘I’m a PC’) and RIM (Blackberry ‘All You Need Is Love’) – both campaigns are all about community, but they didn’t need (and in one case, didn’t really use) social media to get where they are. They (sensibly) used market research.

And as for social media reinventing the ‘aging business of PR’. Please. PR (Corporate Communications) is what it is – social media is simply a new channel, and whether it’s good or bad has yet to be seen.

To put it another way, a new type of hammer does not fundamentally reinvent the way you build houses. Nor, usually, does it require the acquisition of a specific hammering skillset, or the hiring of expensive hammering gurus.

This is Shiny Object Syndrome at its worst.

Public Relations – Making News In The Digital Era – Or Any Era

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , .

Came across this today, which is a post containing ‘seven strategic steps’ to making news in the digital era. For ease, dear blog snorkellers, I reproduce them here. These steps, according to their author – a communicator of some note – focus the ‘news making’ process to ‘shed old-style communications practices, like press releases, that no longer work’ in order to ‘begin making your own news online in a compelling manner to engage audiences’.

Here they are:

  • Advocate change
  • Avoid compulsively marketing and promoting
  • Start listening and engaging in conversations
  • Embrace storytelling
  • Use plain language
  • Reach out to fewer to achieve more
  • Become the credible voice and face
  • Don’t be afraid to try something new

Initially, I looked at these and thought – here we go again – another set of Utopian guidelines for engaging in the global conversation, where everything goes with the flow and there are no real goals, objectives and outputs; where you’re not supposed to expect anything in return and virtue is its own reward. Not new-style communications, more the absolute antithesis of what lies at the heart of professional business communications.

Then I looked at them again, and realised that these steps are no more or less than a beginner’s guide to media relations. In point of fact, the press release has been dead for 10 years, and these steps are how you develop a relationship with your sector journalists (print, broadcast and online – but mostly print). These steps are your route map to a one-on-one live encounter with a hack who you hope is going to give your business/brand/organisation a good hearing. These are the seven strategic steps to running your conversation over lunch.

As such, they’re very useful.

Social Media – Think Of A Topic, Any Topic……

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , .

Today, blog snorkellers mine, we roll our eyes skywards in reaction to the latest piece of misengendered and spurious horsehit to grace the pages of the ‘industry’s bible’, the toilet-tissue-esque PRWeek. (Hello, PRWeek, hope you’re well.) This week’s issue has a story which you can find here, on the Week’s website, entitled “Comms Chiefs Predict First ‘Internet Election’ in The UK” (their inverted commas, not mine.)

All well and good, you might say, heaving a sigh of relief that the ‘bible’ has refrained from printing pictures of drunken consultants baring their bottoms out of hotel bedroom windows following yet another product launch and nine-hour lunch.

Unfortunately though, it’s neither well, nor good. Let’s face it, the next general election is not going to be an internet election, not by any stretch of the imagination, if only for the simple reason that only 59% of the UK population have internet access. The first shots in this election have already been fired and they were fired via outdoor. No, I’m not going to ignore the government’s Twitter Czar and the fact that social media and the wider web will be addenda to the main marketing agenda, but it’s not going to be an internet election. IT’S NOT.

And guess what? When you read the ‘story’ in the ‘bible’, you find that the ‘Comms Chiefs’ of the headline, who have, apparently, predicted the first ‘internet election’, have actually DONE NO SUCH THING. In fact, they could hardly be less predictory.

Once again, it’s a simple case of being so over-awed by social media, and so sucked up by the hype, as to try and shoehorn the miserable stuff into anything and everything that has even the smallest communication element.

Once and for all. The Emperor has no clothes on. Social media is not the dawn of a brave new world. It will not replace (although it may add to) more traditional and more direct comms tools. Social media does not affect everyone. Its coverage is by no means blanket. Some people don’t understand it, some people don’t like it. Not everything has to have, or needs, or requires, a social media element.

So please, don’t try to roll everything in social media in the hope that some of it will stick. And don’t make baseless claims.

Thanks.

Social Media – What Value Conversation?

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , .

After my recent assertion that all this ‘conversation’ voodoo was little more than the next great excuse for not doing very much at all (and being paid, often quite highly, for not doing it) – my reasoning being, simply, that ‘conversation’, as she is hyped by the social media gurus, doesn’t actually exist – I come face to face with this. It is a listing and explanation of the ‘ten most common stages that businesses experience as they travel the road to full social media integration’, created by someone called Brian Solis, who, apparently, is a principal at new media agency FutureWorks. (Should you be the sort of terrifying masochist who seeks out opportunities to peel your fingers or pick at your eyes with fishhooks, you can connect with him on Twitter or Facebook.)

Frankly, dear blog snorkellers, where do I start? It’s delusional and, if it got into the hands of the weak-minded (you’re not weak-minded, are you?) could be seen as dangerous. Take this, for example:

“At last, 2010 is expected to be the year that social media goes mainstream for business. In speaking with many executives and entrepreneurs, I’ve noticed that the path towards new media enlightenment often hinges on corporate culture and specific marketplace conditions. Full social media integration often happens in stages — it’s an evolutionary process for companies and consumers alike.”

What on earth does he mean – goes mainstream for business? No-one, as yet, and as far as I can see, has managed to make business out of social media. Not even the social media owners are actually making money out of it. Does no-one remember the dotcom bubble of 11 years ago? It’s not the messiah, people, it’s a very naughty boy. 2010 will not be the year social media goes mainstream for business – it might be the year when business pisses away a significant proportion of its total marketing spend following the advice of Mr Solis and his peers, however.

I also cannot help but noting the use of the phrase ‘the path towards social media enlightenment’, deliberately imbuing his subject with some quasi-religious significance and tacitly implying that those who do not run towards social with open arms are both unenlightened and somehow heathen.

And then there’s the assertion that ‘full social media integration often happens in stages’ – as if it’s something that happens all the time, the new normality, an inevitable metamorphosis that will change us all – thereby bestowing credence on what are, after all, little more than crackpot theories.

And that, gentle readers, is just the content of the first paragraph. There’s pages and pages of this insidious and infectious nonsense. It talks about “the conversation” (as you’d expect it would), it talks about ‘finding a voice and a sense of purpose’ and it talks about “humanising the brand”. It goes as far as to suggest that social media both merits and may cause an organisational transformation, in which it is imperative that teams and processes support formal Social Customer Relationship Management programmes.

To be fair, the document pays lip service to the concept of metrics to measure ROI – volumes, locations and nature of online interaction – but at no point does it address true value-adding business goals, such as selling more product, dispensing more counsel or lending more money. In fact it goes as far as to say ‘we report to executives who may be uninterested in transparency or authenticity – their goal, and job, is to steer the company toward greater profits’ as if there’s a special type of person whose job it is to worry about profit, while the rest of us get down and dirty having conversations, creating communities, listening, responding and adapting our products and services.

Don’t get me wrong, social media is here and it’s (probably) here to stay. Ignore it at your peril. But it is not that important. It is not something that has to permeate your business, brand or organisation at all levels. It is not the future of communication as we know it and it is not an excuse to stop what you’re doing now and enter some Utopian world where no-one’s responsible, there’s no control and you simply have to go with the flow – because this is bigger than all of us, man.

Horseshit! Wake up! This is the call of the sirens and the more you listen to it, the more chance you’ll throw yourself overboard and drown in a sea of endless, meaningless ‘conversation’.

Social Media – Why Sell, When You Can ‘Converse’?

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , .

Mark Zuckerberg (that’s the wee lad who gave us Facebook) says that privacy is no longer a ‘social norm’ – triggering panic selling of stocks in the net curtain and bathroom door sectors – and Robert Phillips (CEO of Edelman, a PR enterprise of some note) adds that “we, the people, have become media in our own right; and everyone………can now participate in the conversation, anywhere and at any moment in time”.

All well and good, but, unfortunately, the removal of privacy gives people an ill-advised sense of liberation and the belief that it’s OK to bare their souls (some of which must be, according to the laws of probability, dark, diseased, twisted, bitter and mis-aligned) and simply giving people the opportunity to participate in the conversation, does not automatically confer upon them the capability to do so. Worse, because of the insidious and ubiquitous nature of t’interweb, often it’s not conversation that we’re seeing – it’s more the foaming rantings of those whose extreme opinions stem from irresponsible journalism and too much free time.

You’ve only got to have a quick trot around the net to see that the vast majority of the ‘conversation’ is not worth the bandwidth it sucks up – it’s of no value to anyone except those involved in perpetuating it. To see that a large proportion of what those advising businesses on social media strategy would term ‘conversation’ is little more than Q&A – where can I get your product and what will it cost, are your trains running on time, can I get tickets to your sponsored gig – all questions that can (and should) be answered on a website. To see that even in those media where you’d expect to find value-adding debate, the conversations are fuelled by a lack of experience and a lack of knowledge – by the anti-privateers who believe that because they can, they should. To see that, even in 140 characters, it can still be all about them to the exclusion of everyone else.

Two things, from a comms perspective.

All of this new-age nonsense about ‘the conversation’ is simply an abdication of responsibility. From where I’m standing, it’s an excuse to give up trying to control the message. Lest anyone be unclear on this, the role of the communicator who is paid to communicate on behalf of a brand, business or organisation IS TO CONTROL THE MESSAGE, THEREBY ENHANCING REPUTATION, THEREBY INCREASING PROPENSITY TO ENGAGE (PURCHASE). All this ‘conversation’ crapola is the foundation of a nice new excuse for a failure to deliver hard, tangible, value-adding results. It – and all the wibbly nonsense that goes round it – is a nice way to get out of selling, which is, after all, what communications is. No-one likes selling and – eureka – now we don’t have to.

And as a reminder, ‘vox populi, vox dei’ is part of a bigger quotation. Which includes the word ‘insanitas’. Look it up.

Social Media – Social Media Policies in Practice

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Internal Communications, Internal Communications and Engagement, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Came across this on Mashable – it’s a story about this, which is social media policy devised and published by Australian company Telstra for the benefit of their 40,000 employees. To date, according to the company, 12,000 employees have been ‘trained’ or ‘educated’ in the ways of social media.

I’ve said,  in previous posts, that a good social media policy might actually be seen, or used, as an employee benefit – Telstra’s policy is exactly that. This is something that has, quite clearly, taken time, resource and investment to put together, and has been formulated to educate employees and provide them with a skill, or skills, which are applicable in their day-to-day lives as well as their work lives. I particularly like it because it doesn’t shy away from threatening disciplinary action should anyone contravene the policy.

What it doesn’t do, however – and it’s telling – is explain how employees can help the company through their social media activity. It doesn’t explain the company’s social media strategy. It might be said that it begs more questions than it answers. It strikes me as a guide to social media – all well and good – but not a social media lever. It’s about stopping people making inadvertent (or deliberate) mistakes – rather than ’embracing the social media opportunity and bringing everyone in to the conversation’ (as I imagine the cyber-hippies would have it).

This is not a sign that social media has become mainstream and infiltrated Big Corporate – rather it’s a sign that Big Corporate has recognised the damage that can be caused by social media and is attempting to mitigate its effects.

This is pre-emptive issues management, nothing more or less.

Social Media Damages Brands – No Sh*t, Holmes

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Crisis Management, External Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , .

Now I know that this story, from Communicate Magazine’s super website, is more about social media exacerbating a crisis, rather than social media starting a crisis, but the principle holds true.

Social media, by its very nature – independent, free-thinking, anti-establishment, rapid-response, quick-to-anger, react-first-think-later and accessible by all sorts of random wingnuts – is dangerous. Everyone should have social media as part of their crisis plan – here’s my post on the subject – and they should have a rigid social media policy in place, governing what employees can and cannot do with it on company business and on company time.

In fairness, however, in the cases of KFC and Hennes, social media is not to blame.

It’s the stupid, stupid people who decided that running ads that could be misconstrued or shredding clothes rather than donating them to charity (respectively) were good ideas. And it’s the communications people who probably knew about this stuff, but didn’t have the authority, the gravitas or the balls to fulfil their role.

Which is to stand there, and in their best Alistair Campbell, shout “There is no f*cking way that you are doing that.”

Public Relations – Just A Bit Of Fun, Surely?

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Public Relations and tagged , , , , , , , , .

Another day, another story to make your mouth drop open in astonishment, partly for the right reasons, mostly for the wrong ones. My favourite free paper (that’s London’s super soaraway morning Metro, blog snorkellers mine) ran a smashing piece this morning about a New Year’s ad campaign dreamt up and executed by Cadbury House Hotel (Bristol) Health Club and Spa (yep, slow news day all round).

Simply put, the ad campaign is a picture of an green, bug-eyed alien, stretching out his (her?) long green forefinger, with the copy ‘Advanced Health Warning! When the aliens come, they will eat the fatties first!’ Followed by the usual gubbins about ‘join now get a discount yadayadayadayada’.

Well. It works for me. Bit near the knuckle perhaps, but suitably off the wall and much better than anything I’ve ever seen coming out of a health club (which, frankly, wouldn’t be hard, in fairness). But, of course, it’s fattist, isn’t it. The Metro article quotes an unexplained Vicky Palmer (45) – doesn’t say who she is or what she does, but I’d like to imagine she’s a doughnut taster for Greggs (who doesn’t spit them out) – who thinks the people who came up with the idea deserve a kick up the backside. There’s also a spokesperson for the Beat Eating Disorders association (that’s got to be made up, right – an association for people made ill by food, with the acronym BED).

The serious point, in amongst this silly season japery, is that this is actually quite fun. (Like the Heineken Christmas poster which showed a nativity scene and the caption ‘Congratulations – it’s a girl!’, followed by the payoff  ‘How refreshing, how Heineken’.) OK, if you really, really try, and squint a bit, it might be construed as possessing the tiniest possibility, just a whiff of one, of needling the most sensitive of the overweight. Those, perhaps who are overweight through no fault of their own. And believe that the aliens are on their way. And that they’re aliens with a taste for people.

Which, let’s face it, isn’t very many, is it. Sorry, fatties, most of you are fat because of the pies. Stop eating the pies and things will get less large and wobbly, trust me on this one. And if you’re a fatty and believe in people-eating aliens, I’d stop washing down the pies with Tennents Super, if I were you. (Here’s a topical article.)

That off my chest (it’s a weight off my chest, actually), the point is that just because there are some people who are overweight through no fault of their own, and are unhappy about it, and are trying to do something about it, does that mean that whole field of fat is out of bounds to the communications and marketing industries, when they’re attempting to have a bit of fun to spice up an otherwise deathly dull product proposition? I really don’t think it should be. No more should religion, sexuality, musical taste, hair colour or any other of the great taboos – as long as it’s tongue-in-cheek and quite clearly possessed of no intention to offend or alienate (if you’ll forgive me). (And I know the liberals will tell me that one man’s definition of offense and alienation is another man’s Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown, but could we just be sensible here and agree that there are boundaries and definitions which are reasonably clear to everyone, if they can be bothered to look.)

The good bit, of course, is that the Cadbury House Hotel gets a splendid piece of publicity, and the Metro gets to publish a picture of the fragrant Ms Allyson Wicklen (20) who lost 5st to become the Slimmer Magazine Junior Slimmer of the Year. Well done to her.

Oh, and by the way – fatties? The aliens ARE coming and I can see no reason at all why they would waste such a great resource. They ARE going to eat you.

Crisis Management – The Idiot’s Guide To Creating A Plan 10

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Crisis Management, Crisis Management Guides, External Communications, Public Relations and tagged , , , , , , , , .

Key to crisis management and business continuity – and, clearly, enshrined in the crisis management plan that (if you’ve been following this series of occasional diatribes) you’re on the cusp of completing – is employee communication, for reasons which should (really) be obvious. In case they aren’t, here’s a taste.

Your employees are your greatest asset and your largest potential liability – if they’re on side, then you have a network of ambassador/evangelists, spreading your messages. If they’re not on side, mind, then you have an uncontrolled flow of misinformation, biased opinion and perhaps even vitriol

When disaster strikes, your employees need to hear from you – preferably before they hear from anyone else

In the case of a crisis, your employees will need to know what to do and where to go, and they’ll need to know quickly

Most importantly, in the crisis scenario, your employees will need to know what NOT to do and to be reminded what policies and rules they are governed by, as employees

These are just a few of the things you should be considering, and incorporating within your plan, and within the communication process around the finished plan. I’m certain you can think of others. (And if you can’t, then sit in a darkened room, or have an ideas shower, or go and see your boss, or whatever it takes for you to be able to think of others. Because there are some others.)

So, briefly – because I know you like brevity, dear blog snorkellers – here’s some of the mechanisms you need to have in place and a selection of the communications issues that you might need to consider. It’s not extensive or complete – I want you to think for yourselves.

  • Have you got an ‘employee hotline’ number? This is a dedicated telephone number that any number of employees can call at any point in time to get an update on their employer’s status. That update is, normally, something along the lines of ‘This is the XXXXX Corp Employee Hotline – at the present time, it is business as usual’. Obviously, it would be best to prepare a selection of messages that can be put on to the hotline as soon as something occurs. ‘This is the XXXX Corp Employee Hotline – an event has occurred at/near the XXX site. All employees should remain at home unless otherwise directed. Further details will be available at (time).” Or similar. You get the idea.
  • If you’ve only got a few – or a manageable number of – employees, do you know where they all live? Do you have their telephone numbers and personal email addresses?
  • Does your workforce have access to the company’s computer systems when they’re away from the office – if not, is it something they should have?
  • Do you have, or is it worth arranging, some kind of text message alert system for your employees?
  • What are you going to say to your people – there might be different messages dependent on who it is and what they do – those who may be indispensable in a crisis and those who can stay in bed.
  • Who’s going to take responsibility for employee communications and welfare (because it might not be you, the communicator) and how is the interface between internal and external communications going to be handled?
  • How are you going to remind people of your social media policy and how they should be behaving?

Bear in mind that these are just a few of the things that you should be thinking about, and that there will be more – and that they will change and develop as your crisis unfolds. The key point here is about scenario planning – preparing everything before hand so, when the time comes (as it inevitably will) you can act immediately. An ill-informed workforce left to their own devices and free to speculate are at least as potentially damaging as any crisis or issue that your organisation may be facing.

Crisis Management – The Idiot’s Guide To Creating A Plan 9

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Crisis Management, Crisis Management Guides, External Communications, Public Relations and tagged , , , , , , , , , , .

In this post – number 9 of a series, and, dear blog snorkellers, if you’ve missed the rest, you might want to read them just for context – we’re going to have a look at the role of social media in both creating and handling a crisis situation.

Before we go any further, by way of declaring my interests, I must say that I am not a fan of social media. I do not believe it is a valid (or valuable) communications/marketing tool. I believe there are still too many unknowns and thus it remains more of a threat than an opportunity. Those who are rushing headlong to embrace social media appear to have forgotten one key learning from traditional media. It can bite you. There is no reason to suppose that social media is not the same. As of yet, there is very little evidence of any business, brand or organisation actually getting a return on their investment in social media. On the other hand, there are plenty of examples of businesses, brands and organisations getting into trouble because of social media. All this being said, social media exists – no-one can or should ignore it. The best you can do is limit your corporate exposure to it, by controlling the part of it that you can control, which is your interaction with it.

Social media can create a crisis for you, or can propagate one when it happens to you. And it never takes time off – it’s on all the time.

Ill-advised comments or content posted to a social media site by your employees – eg Dominos Pizza in the US and the UK electrical retailer, Dixons Stores Group – can cause you problems, as can commentary from unhappy customers, or trading partners. Decisions you take as a business, marketing material you produce, changes to your product line-up – all these can spark off a backlash via social media. Because of social media – and the wider internet – everyone has a voice, a voice that is instant and has global reach.

And this voice can be equally active in the case of a crisis that’s not driven by social media. In the case of an incident at your premises, or an accident involving staff and/or customers, or a problem with your product, or a gaffe by a senior executive – these things will be posted to social media within minutes. Mobile device penetration by population in the UK is over 100% – some people have two or more, d’you see? – which means that there’s always someone with a camera and internet access.

In terms of dealing with social media in a crisis management plan, you’ll be glad to know it shouldn’t be that difficult. It’s simply a question of incorporating elements of your social media policy into the plan. (And if you haven’t got a social media policy, now is the time to get one.)

Policy – your policy should (amongst other things) outline how your organisation and your employees interact with social media, when you’re using company facilities and are on company time. It should also contain information and guidelines around social media usage ‘best practice’ – both in and out of work – which should be promoted as an employee benefit.(Helping you to protect yourself and not f*ck up!) Most importantly, there should be a clause which specifically deals with crisis situations, where employee posting to social media is expressly forbidden, on pain of dismissal. Some people will say I’m being too draconian – but this is the only way to ensure your employees are not tempted to ‘participate’ – even with the best of intentions.

Monitoring – you could outsource this to an expensive outfit of social/digital media gurus, who will blind you with science and then steal your wallet. On the other hand, you could save your money and – once a day – spend half an hour on Google, searching for a selection of key words pertaining to your business. These could include your brand names, your company name, the names of your external communications staff, and the names of your c-suite. This is, of course, not scientific, and stuff will slip through the net, but if the issue’s big enough, chances are you’ll see a mention of it. Once you’re on to an issue, it becomes easier to track down where its epicentre is.

Reaction – things move fast with social media and in the blogosphere. Your standard, pre-prepared response statements (neatly filed at the back of your crisis management folder) will not suffice here, however. They’re OK and they’ll work with journalists looking for an early response to a crisis situation, but social media is not staffed by journalists – it’s populated by individual members of the public, none of whom want to listen to a corporate message. What you’ll have to do is translate your reserve statements into social media speak – humble, to the point, on a level, using language that everyone will understand (jargon-free). Put your case, and if there’s something your company/organisation needs to do to set things right, then do it. As quickly as you can. On the other hand, if you’re being mistreated, say so, and seed that message as far as you possibly can. You may have to set up your own Facebook group or Twitter feed – make sure you know how to do it, and what the basic rules of engagement are. Make sure that instructions on how to do it, and the rules of engagement are in your crisis management folder for everyone to see. Remember that social media is not a sales tool, does not tolerate corporate bullsh*t and is the soul of brevity. Ensure there is only one message coming out of your camp.

This is only the beginning – you’re going to want to go away and think about this (oh yes you are) – and you’re also going to want to think about how you ensure your people know about what you’re doing in a crisis situation. Your people are your greatest asset and one of your greatest liabilities – I’ll deal with them next time.