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My Talk at Blog Indiana Bloomington, January 2010

January 30, 2010 By

I had a chance to speak at Blog Indiana’s first regional event in Bloomington, Indiana, at the Sproutbox office. (Sproutbox is a venture capital firm that works directly with startups to help them launch. And they’ve got a killer office, complete with liquor cabinet and three in-wall beer taps from the Upland Brewing Company.)

Shawn Plew and Noah Wesley from Blog Indiana were kind enough to ask me to speak, so I talked about promoting a blog with social media. I discussed some of the tools I use to help our clients, as well as my own personal blog.

Special thanks again to Sproutbox for hosting us, and to Scotty’s Brewhouse for providing us with some great food.

Filed Under: Communication, Presentations, Social Media, Social Networks Tagged With: , , ,

Are You a Pioneer or a Settler?

January 29, 2010 By

Are you a pioneer or a settler? Do you blaze trails, follow them while they’re still rough, or wait until there’s a nicely paved road?

Being a settler is easy. You just tread down the same old path everyone else has, making sure it’s safe. But being a pioneer is tough. You’re the first to pass this way, you’re not sure if you’re heading in the right direction, and some days you’d swear you’re going the wrong way. But the rewards are well worth it.

So how do you pioneer your new niche? How do you become a leader in your field, especially when there is no niche, or the people in it are not connected? In this case, it’s actually easier to be the pioneer, rather than to be one of many. By the time the settlers are finally getting involved, there’s a traffic jam on the road the pioneers have paved. But by this time, you’ll be way ahead of the pack.

Becoming a Pioneer

Here are a few tools and techniques you can use to establish yourself as an expert in your chosen field. Before you start, make sure you have identified your niche, know who the players are, and actually have some content on your blog or website.

  • Find your flock. Use NearbyTweets.com, Twitterment.com, and Twitter Search to locate them and start following them. Avoid those “get 2,000 followers per day” spam programs, and earn your followers the honest way.
  • Talk to strangers. Read and comment on the blogs of other people in your industry. If there aren’t any, find logical allies to your industry. If you manufacture marbles, and you’re the only marble manufacturing blog out there, find marble collectors and marble players. Leave comments on their blogs and respond when they leave comments on yours. Not only do you build up some link juice, you create relationships with potential customers.
  • Share knowledge. If you find articles that would be of interest to your audience, share it with them on Twitter and your blog. Write commentary about the articles on the blog, and share those as well. If you can become a source of knowledge, people will look to you for answers.
  • Consider video. Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibrary.tv and the author of Crush It, has built a social media footprint like an elephant’s by using video to sell and promote wine. Do video posts of you sitting at your desk, pontificating about industry goings-on. Publish excerpts of you speaking at conferences and events (this is also useful if you’re trying to build a speaking career).
  • Build your contact list. As you meet new people, keep your contacts organized in Gmail. If you use Outlook, sync it up with Gmail and keep that list fresh. Gmail is the go-to contact list by every social networking tool out there. Want to find friends on Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube? They’ll import your Gmail contact list with no problem.

These are just a very few steps to get yourself started finding your niche. I haven’t even touched on LinkedIn or creating an industry-related social network yourself. But these are enough steps to get you started.

What other tools and steps do you recommend? Leave a comment, and we’ll try to feature it in a future blog post.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Filed Under: All Posts, Networking, Social Media, Social Networks, Tools, Twitter Tagged With: , , , ,

Newsday Has 35 Paid Subscribers for Online Newspaper

January 27, 2010 By

I can’t decide whether to feel schadenfreude or pity for Newsday, the Long Island daily newspaper. They have 35 (yes, thirty-five) paid subscribers for their online newspaper.

The New York Observer reveled in schadenfreudic glee as they reported this news:

As in fewer than three dozen. As in a decent-sized elementary-school class.

That astoundingly low figure was revealed in a newsroom-wide meeting last week by publisher Terry Jimenez when a reporter asked how many people had signed up for the site. Mr. Jimenez didn’t know the number off the top of his head, so he asked a deputy sitting near him. He replied 35.

Michael Amon, a social services reporter, asked for clarification.

“I heard you say 35 people,” he said, from Newsday’s auditorium in Melville. “Is that number correct?”

Mr. Jimenez nodded.

Man, I haven’t written with that much malicious glee since Ann Coulter had to have her jaw wired shut.

What’s worse is that Newsday has had their newspaper behind a paywall, newsday.com, since October 2009. (I’m not going to hotlink newsday.com, since you’d have to pay to read any of the stories anyway.)

Apparently, this new website cost Newsday $4 million, and they have grossed $9,000.

That doesn’t mean there are only 35 people reading the website. Anyone who subscribes to the paper or has Optimum Cable gets free access — about 75% of Long Island. I’m not sure how many subscribers there are to the paper, but it’s a nice little out to give free access to cable subscribers as a way to boost subscription numbers.

Still, other dailies considering going to a paid-only option may be feeling a little more panic than they’re already feeling, having laid off most of their local writers and getting local content from non-local providers, and then wondering why people aren’t subscribing anymore.

We can learn or surmise a few things about the newspaper industry from Newsday’s crappy subscribership and the Indianapolis Star’s not-so-slow descent into USA Today: Indianapolis Edition.

  • Readers have gotten spoiled. We’re used to getting our news for free, so we’re a little hesitant to pay for something we can get elsewhere. Since the Star is nothing more than an Associated Press outlet these days, I can hop over to AP.org if I want some national news.
  • People want local content. And not-so-surprisingly, we want it from local sources. The Indy Star is getting local content from Metromix, a company based out of Chicago. Long Island’s Newsday is putting local spins on national stories. “What LIers Want to Hear In Obama’s Address” was one of today’s headlines. Why would people want to pay for something like this? If it was truly local news, I would care. But it isn’t, so I don’t.

If newspapers truly want to make money online, they need to consider going back to truly local news, written by local reporters who have more experience than a journalism internship and six months of covering school board meetings. Let the national news outlets cover the national news. Make your newspaper the best and only source for local news.

This is where the small weeklies and dailies are going to survive, and even succeed by focusing on local content, with only a brief mention of world and national affairs.

Photo: Nitroglicerino

Filed Under: Communication, News, Traditional Media, Writing Tagged With: , , ,

Want to Improve Your Writing? Be Intentional

January 26, 2010 By
My Moleskine at Hubbard &Cravens

Years ago, I had a chance to hear one of the Philadelphia 76ers speak about how he became a professional ballplayer. Now, I couldn’t tell you who the guy was even if he walked up to me today. But one thing he said always stuck with me.

When he practiced shooting the ball, he was always intentional when he practiced. When he practiced his shooting, he didn’t screw around. He didn’t goof off, and he didn’t take shots he wouldn’t normally take. He wasn’t a sky-hook shooter, so he didn’t shoot Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s famous shot. He didn’t do backward shots or trick shots. In short, every practice shot he took was a real shot.

“I don’t shoot these shots in a game, so I don’t waste my time practicing them.”

It’s the same for writing: if you want to get good at it, you have to be intentional with it. (Actually, this is true for getting good at anything, but I’m a writer, so I’ll stick with what I know.)

My Moleskine at Hubbard &CravensWhat does that mean? Writing is one of the most intentional activities we can do. It’s not like shooting trick shots in basketball, or going for a slow leisurely ride instead of a training ride on your bike. You’re either writing or you’re not, right?

Actually, no, you can even screw around when you’re writing. It’s in your attitude, rather than your subject matter. It’s reading when you should be writing (and no, “I’m doing research” doesn’t count). You can be just as intentional writing an email as you are a novel, or writing a comedy sketch as you are a marketing piece. It doesn’t matter where, when, or how you do it. Chris Brogan will write wherever he can find the time. And I carry my laptop and a Moleskine wherever I go.

How do I write with intention?

When I’m writing, I always have three questions in the back of my mind.

  • Is that the best word I can use? Is this conveying the right impact, drama, or humor? Dave Barry would take hours to write a single humor column, sometimes struggling with choosing which word carried the best impact for a joke. I’ll sometimes hit Thesaurus.com to find a good word.
  • Did I set this up for the best possible impact? In humor, setup is crucial for a joke to be funny. You can have the best punchline in the world, but if you tank the setup, the whole joke fails. It’s true for every other kind of writing too. This blog post, a marketing brochure, a speech, anything. If you want to have impact, you have to set the reader up for it.
  • How can I make this better? I edit everything. Even my emails get edited before I send them out. But I’m not always looking for punctuation errors or typos. I’m looking to make sure I’m satisfied with everything I’ve written. It usually works best if I can leave something for a couple hours, overnight is even better, and a week is a rare luxury. I have even edited some of my humor blog posts six months after I published them.

Becoming a good writer doesn’t mean taking all kinds of classes, or writing in your very special notebook with your very special pen in your very favorite coffee shop (just don’t tell my wife that; I use it as an excuse to get out of the house sometimes). It’s a matter of focusing on the task at hand and casting an eye at how you can improve. Not just the piece you’re writing, but future work you’re going to do.

Do you suck at dialog? Work on improving the dialog for the next piece you write. Then use that new level of competency as your starting point for the next time, and try to improve from that. Frankly, I used to suck at dialog, so I worked on it for months and even years. Now, unfortunately, my narration and scene description are less-than-acceptable, and I have to really focus on those.

But by writing my narration with my three questions, I’ll be able to improve my descriptions, so I can spend less time writing and more time sitting on a beach, drinking little umbrella drinks, served by. . . some kind of. . . woman wearing a dress that she bought at one of those. . . dress selling places.

Dammit!

Filed Under: Communication, Ghost Writing, Writing Tagged With: ,

Defining Two Types of Crisis Communication

January 25, 2010 By

Crisis communication has two different, distinct meanings. They require different approaches, different ideas, and completely different types of plans. And not knowing the differences between the two can create some problems if you try to use one approach in the wrong place.

There’s corporate crisis communication (CCC), and there’s CERC.

CERC — Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication — is what the government calls communication during a massive emergency, such as swine flu, a terrorist attack, or large-scale natural disaster. (And you can tell the government came up with it, since it’s so much longer and has more words than are truly necessary.)

Both are often called “oh shit PR,” but the difference is that in a CERC situation, a lot of people could die. With CCC, a lot of money could be lost. One type of emergency gives emergency first responders sharp chest pains and indigestion, the other makes the corporate lawyers pull out their hair. But they both say the same two words when something goes down.

Although these two forms have a lot of similarities, there are some important differences. And if you’re talking about social media for crisis communication, you need to know them, because they affect your strategy.

Corporate crisis communication

I’d like to say that it’s important to always tell the truth and to be as open and honest as possible. But the sad truth is that being completely open and honest can ruin a company. I’ve hassled corporate legal departments over their “wrecking” crisis communications, but they’re a necessary part of any response. They just shouldn’t control it. In CCC:

  • Transparency tends to go out the window. The emergency is usually something that will make the corporation (or individual) look bad, so the first instinct is to hunker down and contain the bad news. This often means trying to keep it under wraps. This hardly ever works.
  • The negative end result of a corporate crisis is a loss of money. It could be a hit to their reputation, credibility, or branding, but those will all effect the bottom line. And since that can be in the millions or billions, crisis communication is not something that should be taken lightly. Entire companies, like Chi-Chi’s restaurants, have been lost to bad communications. But it’s the attempt to avoid losing money that leads to bad communications.
  • Communication is about containment. Many corporate crisis PR professionals are focused on keeping their client from being found guilty or negligent. They’re not worried about whether people like them, they just want to win the pending lawsuits. So they’ll put out information that, while is not a lie,
  • The message is the biggest part of the response. There’s other stuff going on behind the scenes — product recall, legal preparations, brand managment — but the communication is what’s going to affect the public’s perception, and thus, their reaction, lawsuits, vendor relationships, etc. Information may be easy to get if you’re in crisis communication, but it’s not always easy to share.

Social media strategy: Guarded, but present. Correct misinformation, use Tweets and Facebook to communicate with customers in a brand management manner. Put on your best face, but don’t lie. Monitor the gossip sites, but don’t engage.

Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication

This is the area I came from. We wanted as much open communication as we could get. More was better, and there was no such thing as too honest. Our goal was to “prevent panic,” and make sure everyone knew what was going on. With CERC:

  • Transparency is crucial. This is information people need to know. Information about where to go for safety, supplies, or medication.
  • The negative end result of a public crisis is a loss of life. When I was at the Indiana State Department of Health, we trained for things like medication distribution during an anthrax attack. The goal was to tell as many people as possible where medication was available. Information has to be gotten out quickly and to as many people as possible.
  • Communication is widespread. The point of CERC is to get as much information out as possible, and to correct misinformation. There is nothing that should be contained or covered up.
  • The message supports the rest of the response. It’s the other stuff that’s going on — law enforcement, public health response, rescue/recovery, clean-up — that’s going to affect the public, and communication lets the public know what’s going on. If there’s medicine to be distributed, communication will tell the public where to get it, but it’s the Point of Distribution that will give it out. The problem with this approach is that the public information officers (PIOs) are trying to get information from the busiest people, which means it’s not always readily available or being put out as quickly as possible. This is one reason the PIOs have direct access to the Incident Commander, the person in charge.

Social media strategy: Strong social media strategy. More people are getting their news on Twitter and Facebook than they are in their regular media. Put information out on social media at the same time you give it to the mainstream media. Correct misinformation directly, rather than through mainstream media. Monitor the citizen journalists, and engage when it’s appropriate.

Photo: Slworking2

Filed Under: Communication, crisis communication, Public Health, Public Relations, Social Media, Social Networks Tagged With: , , ,

PR Pros Take Note: Social Media is Changing the Way Companies Communicate

January 22, 2010 By
Screen shot 2010-01-22 at 3.05.10 PM

Social media continues to grow and have a big impact on the way corporations are communicating, both internally and externally. And now we have proof.

In their paper, An Analysis of the Increasing Impact of Social and Other New Media on Public Relations Practice, Dr. Donald Wright, professor of Public Relations at Boston University (official motto: “No, you’re thinking of Boston College”), and Michelle Hinson, director of development, Institute for Public Relations, found that social media continues to have a positive effect on the way organizations are communicating.

Every year for the last four years, they have looked at the impact social media has on corporate communication, mainstream media, the perception of blogging, and the public relations industry. They surveyed PR professionals from around the world, and received 574 usable responses. The 2009 study compared data between 2008 and 2009. The results may surprise you. (Or not. You’re a hard bunch to please.)

Has SM helped companies communicate (TABLE)

In a nutshell, the belief that social media is having an effect on external communication has grown by 11% from 2008 to 2009; internal communication has grown by 7%.

Similarly, the duo found similar results when they asked whether social media complimented traditional mainstream media, or conflicted with it. In 2008, 75% believed it complimented, but in 2009, that number grew to 85%

Does SM compliment traditional media (TABLE)

While the report is chock full of useful statistics (yes, I said “chock full;” I’m from Indiana, what do you want?!), these two are rather important for PR professionals. These two stats speak volumes about what PR professionals should be thinking about social media, and how they can and should be pitching it to their clients.

  • Companies are beginning to use social media to speak to customers. The fact that this number has increased by 11% from one year to the next says that companies are starting to take notice. And this trend will only continue to grow over the next few years. If your clients aren’t using social media, point out that their competitors are. And unless your client wants to slowly melt away into irrelevance, they will start using social media to get their own message out.
  • Publicity should no longer rely on traditional media. I recently wrote a blog post for a client about Generation Y, and how some marketers are calling this 82 million-strong demographic “The Unreachables.” That’s because they don’t read newspapers or watch TV. They read Yahoo, watch YouTube, and text the bejeezus out of each other. If you want to reach Generation Y, go to where they are, don’t make them come to you.
  • Your biz dev job just got easier. If more companies believe social media is beneficial, conversely fewer companies believe it’s detrimental. As a (thankfully) former salesman, the customers I truly hated where the ones who never saw the need for whatever I was selling, and were often stubbornly obstinate in refusing to try to understand why it was important. Now, while these stats don’t mean that 84% of all companies are open to using social media for external communications, it does represent a decrease in the number of companies that refuse to participate in social media. For the salesperson, this means fewer puzzled looks and steadfast refusal to accept that their thermal fax machine is now passé.

There are a lot more data points the study demonstrated, and a lot more surprising results that bloggers, social media pros, PR pros, and the mainstream media can all learn from. We’ll discuss some of them in future posts.

Filed Under: Blogging, Communication, Public Relations, Social Media, Tools Tagged With: , , ,

Why Lawyers Shouldn’t Do Crisis Communications

January 20, 2010 By

It irritates me to no end when the lawyers and MBAs feel the need to get involved in PR and marketing decisions. You can tell when they’ve had their fingers on a press release or written statement, because they come up with such gems as “We feel terrible for our customer. We are grateful that the customer is now recovering.”

This little beauty came from the owner of a KFC in Canada, after 15-year-old Kendell Lakin — heretofore referred to as “The Customer” — burned herself on a serving of hot poutine, after suffering an epileptic seizure and falling into the dish.

(Poutine is a dish of French fries covered with gravy. Not to be confused with “putain,” which is the French equivalent of the F-word. I’m sure French-Canadians have great poutine-putain jokes.)

The new social media society is all about people and relationships. We don’t refer to 15-year-old girls who burn their faces as “The Customer.” They have names, personalities, and pissed-off fathers. Calling them “The Customer” will piss them off more.

If you want to avoid looking like cold-hearted corporate monsters, stop depersonalizing people and reducing them to a genderless wallet.

(Note: I completely understand the need for attorneys. They keep us communicators out of trouble when we’re about to do or say something stupid. But while they do important work, they shouldn’t be in charge of the actual wordsmithing.)

Crisis communication folks need to seize the messaging away from the Legal Department. CEOs need to remember that hiding behind the stacks of legal books will only anger the public, not placate them. The madder they get, the deeper they’ll cut.

People who remember Chi-Chi’s restaurants will also remember what happened to it. After 4 people died and 650 people fell ill from a hepatitis A outbreak in Pennsylvania, the corporate staff avoided all contact with the news media.

In an article on Levick Strategic Communication’s website, they pointed out where Chi-Chi’s made a huge mistake that ultimately led to their bankruptcy and closure.

Right from the start, Chi-Chi’s made a critical communications mistake common among big corporations facing product liability lawsuits. In an effort to minimize risk, Chi-Chi’s top executives avoided direct contact with the news media. All communications with reporters came through antiseptic one-page statements that had a crisp “just-the-facts, ma’am” feel.

When Chi-Chi’s Chief Operating Officer Bill Zavertnik did finally arrive in Monaca more than two weeks after the outbreak was confirmed last November 3, he read a brief statement to reporters, took no questions, and then returned to corporate headquarters.

From that point forward, communications from Chi-Chi’s and its parent company, Prandium, in Irvine, Calif., came chiefly in the form of news releases and prepared statements written in language designed almost solely to avoid exacerbating the class-action lawsuits against the restaurant chain.

To make a long story short, people got madder and madder, and the class-action lawsuits are what killed the restaurant.

In other words, avoid saying stupid things like “We feel terrible for our customer. We are grateful that the customer is now recovering.”

You’re not going to avoid making people mad. But giving your apologies in some sanitized, half-hearted written statement that sound like they were hatched by some corporate lawyer will only make things worse.

In a lot of instances of corporate crisis communication, you’re going to need the lawyers to keep you out of trouble. But keep the pen out of their hands. They can edit, but they shouldn’t be creating. They need to leave it to the pros.

Filed Under: Communication, crisis communication, Public Health, Social Media Tagged With: , ,

Why Are There So Few Trend Setters in Social Media?

January 19, 2010 By

I noticed an interesting trend, and I’m ashamed to say I’m part of it.

There are very few trend setters in social media. Very few pioneers. We’re mostly settlers.

We all try to be as cutting edge as we can, but we’re sometimes at the mercy of what everyone else is talking about. We pay close attention to luminaries like Chris Brogan, Jason Falls, Jeremiah Owyang, and Gary Vaynerchuk. We wait to see what they’re talking about, and we talk about that. And we all hold up their discarded sandals, like that great scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

I do it too. I see an interesting article on Jason’s blog, and decide I’ll comment on that. Or I’ll see something Doug Karr wrote in the Marketing Technology blog, and piggyback off that. But it’s rare that I write about issues that those guys didn’t write about first.

I’ve done it a few times — crisis communication, entre-commuting, or getting spanked by the Canadian Council of PR Firms — but I’ve also jumped solidly on the bandwagon, pushing women and children out of the way so I could get a comfy seat.

Unfortunately, this is a rather centralized industry. We only have a few tools we use with any regularity — Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google — and so we all talk about how we use them, and the great things we’ve learned, or the trends coming our way.

I want to stop doing that. I want to be that one guy in the crowd who says, “Hold up the sandal!”

I can’t say I won’t keep doing following the pioneers, but I’m going to make a conscious effort to do it less. That’s one reason I didn’t post anything on the blog for a couple of weeks. (Yeah, yeah, that’s the reason.)

So it may mean I post fewer times per week on the blog. It may mean shorter posts, and fewer how-to posts. But we’re going to try to make our own path as much as possible, even if it runs adjacent to someone else’s. We’re just going to quit following the well-worn path that some people have meandered down.

Filed Under: Blogging, Communication, Opinion, Social Media, Social Networks Tagged With: , , , ,

Be an Entre-Commuter With Just a Latte and a Laptop

January 5, 2010 By

I’m the mayor of my office and my church.

At least that’s what Foursquare tells me. I’ve checked in enough times at both places that I’ve been declared the mayor.

Foursquare is a location-based social networking site that lets you tell people where you are via Twitter and Facebook.

Think: 50% friend-finder, 30% social city guide, 20% nightlife game. We wanted to build something that not only helps you keep up with your friends, but exposes you to new things in and challenges you to explore cities in different ways.

You check in at different places around a city, give tips and recommendations, and in general get to know your city better.

I’ve been using FourSquare a lot lately, especially after I got my new Droid phone a few weeks ago.

I’m starting to earn the reputation for being out and about all the time. I check in everywhere I go: the office, the coffee shop, the library, the grocery store. I’m not out any more than usual. I’m just telling people about it.

But it’s become a whole lot easier now for me to be out and about too, thanks to my laptop and the proliferation of free wifi around the city. I’ve become a real entre-commuter.

(Entre-commuter: entrepreneurial commuter who works out of a coffee shop, cafe, restaurant, library, or any other place with free wifi. Term coined by Erik Deckers and Paul Lorinczi to justify why they don’t sit in the office all day, every day.)

We came up with the term entre-commuter for those people who own their own business and have the ability to do it anywhere. They can do it from home, the local library, or their local coffee shop. We happen to favor Hubbard & Cravens in Broad Ripple, although I’ll travel just about anywhere around Central Indiana for good coffee.

The great thing about being an entre-commuter is that you get to network with other people, and collaborate with them on occasion. I can’t tell you the number of people I’ve met with, helped, provided connections for, and done business with, just because we both happened to be out at the same time in the same place. And meeting some of the same people in the same place several times has blossomed my network beyond the typical Chamber and other networking events.

Where do entre-commuters gather?

I prefer to patronize local coffee shops and restaurants, although I’ll hit the occasional chain once in a while. We need to support our local establishments more than the chains — the chains don’t support our local economies. The locals do.

Is there entre-commuters etiquette?

There are a few rules for entre-commuters. They’re fairly common sense, but I still see people violate them from time to time.

  • Don’t camp out. They have to turn tables during peak times. If you’re sitting with a computer and a bottled water over lunch, they’re losing money on you.
  • Only occupy tables during low times. Don’t take up a 4-top all by yourself if you can help it, and don’t be afraid to share a table with a stranger either.
  • Buy something. Spend money, and more than just a little. Don’t buy a $2 coffee and then sit for 8 hours.
  • Be respectful. This is someone else’s business, not your office. Don’t treat it like it’s your place. You’re a guest.
  • Keep your voices down. Other people are there too, so don’t have loud conversations. You’re not at the club, you’re at a quiet little shop.

Entre-commuters just need to be somewhere we can find free wifi and good coffee. Somewhere we can connect online and offline. Find your local shops and spend some time there. See if you can create some business, as well as giving the local shops some business as well.

Photo: Nina Turns 40 blog

Filed Under: Communication, Networking, Social Media, Social Networks Tagged With: , , ,

Five Essential Tools Any Crisis Communication Pro Needs

January 4, 2010 By

Social media is becoming more and more important to an organization’s response to a crisis. While my own crisis communication experience is with public health emergencies, like pan flu epidemics and the threat of anthrax attacks, other crisis comm pros are dealing with reputation management, negative publicity, liability lawsuits, product recalls, etc.

Thanks to social media tools, there is no reason a crisis communication pro shouldn’t have these tools in his or her toolbox, ready to respond to an emergency within minutes, rather than hours, or even days.

Whether you’re a government agency dealing with a massive emergency, or a famous athlete caught with his pants down, you need to be able to respond quickly and truthfully. You need to get ahead of the speculators and talking heads whose grinding of the rumor mill can do more harm than the actual truth.

Many organizations, especially government agencies, are still using old-school media to get their news out. The problem is they’re trying to reach a newspaper audience with timely news, but it’s changed in the last 30 minutes. Or they’re trying to reach the TV news by 3:00 p.m. for a 5:00 broadcast, while most people are still in their cars. And in many cases, broadcast media only spends seconds on your story, and the newspapers are only devoting a few precious inches to your side of the story.

With social media, you can bypass the media filters, reach the greatest number of people, and in many cases, get the news out before the mainstream media. This is especially useful if you have time-sensitive information, like medication dispensing points, product recalls, hours of operation, etc.

I’m not saying you should ignore the mainstream media (MSM), or quit using the old methods. Rather, consider adding social media to your arsenal.

    1. Blog: A blog is a great way to publish an entire news story. In many cases, the MSM will use your blog as a source. If you’ve done most of the legwork for them, they’re more inclined to use the information you provided. I had one newspaper in Indiana that would reprint my press releases verbatim, I thought about changing my name to “Staff Wire Report” just so I could get the credit.
      Strategy: Appoint a blog writer you trust, and give him or her carte blanche in reporting the latest news.

 

    1. Twitter: Twitter lets you reach people quickly and easily. Create lists of important people who will need to hear your news: journalists, fans, customers, vendors, etc. Don’t just use Twitter for barfing out news though. You can use Twitter to talk with people and establish relationships. If people like you, they’re likely to want to hear your news, making you a trusted news source.
      Strategy: Have conversations, provide information, correct misinformation, and answer questions.

 

    1. Facebook fan page: If you’re a B2C company, nonprofit, or government agency, you need a fan page. If you’re B2B, the debate still rages on. People get their news from different sources, and they get their social media from different tools. So you need to match their information-gathering habits. Since Facebook boasts over 350 million world-wide users, a lot of people are getting their news here.
      Strategy: Run your blog and Twitter feeds through your fan page. Follow the conversations people are having on the page, and participate in them.

 

    1. Analytics: You need to measure your results and see what works. If nothing else, put Google Analytics on your blog, and set up some Google News Alerts. They only updates every 24 hours (Google News can email stories as they appear), but it’s free, and ideal if you’re not trying to monitor events in real time. StatCounter.com is free and up-to-the-minute, although it will only record 500 hits in a day (you can upgrade to the paid version if you need it). We use Yahoo Analytics (paid subscription), because it has real-time updates, and we can graph everything out. To see what people are saying in the social media stream, try something like Radian6 or ScoutLabs.
      Strategy: Adopt at least one analytics package, and use it to monitor the success of your social media strategy. Compare it to your traditional methods, and see which tools are bringing you the best results. Plow more time and energy into the successful ones, and see if it’s possible to roll the less-successful ones into your new strategies.

 

    1. A laptop and wifi network card: I know, this one seems so painfully obvious, it’s ridiculous to even include it. But you’d be amazed at the number of organizations still running on desktops, or laptops without wifi. It’s great to be able to visit any location with free wifi, and logging in — I’m sitting at a Subway restaurant as I’m writing this — but what if you’re in an emergency and you’re in an area without wifi. What do you do if you’re responding to a local emergency, and the fastest Internet connection in town is the dial-up credit card machine at the gas station?
      Strategy: Bug your boss until you get a laptop and wifi card (Verizon has the MiFi, a mobile wifi hotspot you carry), and then learn how to use it; these other four tools are useless if you’re ever caught without a laptop and wifi. Use the mobile setup until it’s second nature. If you’re ever caught out during an emergency, you don’t have to pull out the manual just to figure out how to use the wifi card.

 

There are more tools available than you could ever hope to master, most of them supporting one of these five basics, but these are the ones you can build an entire crisis communication plan around. If you can figure these out, you’ll be miles ahead of those organizations and agencies who are still trying to figure out the fastest way to fax a one-page press release to 500 different newspapers in less than six hours.

Photo: Fire Monkey Fish

Filed Under: Blogging, Communication, crisis communication, Public Health, Social Media, Tools, Twitter Tagged With: , , ,
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