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Businesses, individuals, and organizations will, from time to time, make honest
mistakes or in some unfortunate cases, intentionally support unethical decisions
to dissuade or conceal something significant from its public.
Throughout the course of history, we've learned that all that's required to ignite a
negative firestorm is a spark from a single voice or an organized congregation.
If a conversation takes place on the Web and you're not there to hear or see it,
did it really happen?
More often than not, we miss the very things that provide insight into a future
response simply because we're not conditioned or trained to proactively discover
and diffuse threats or negative experiences.
Our weakness, however, is also our opportunity to manage and also respond to
any potentially damaging or menacing public groundswell.
In the era of the Social Web, a story, and the ensuing public recruitment, rallying,
and support, can rapidly spread unlike any crisis wildfire witnessed or
experienced in previous generations.
The tools and platforms available today are sophisticated, evolved, and designed
for social distribution and redistribution. The Social Web forces a new level of
understanding and participation in order for all communications professionals, in
addition to crises response and reputation management teams, to understand its
dynamics and the prevalence of information, positive, neutral, and especially
negative.
In the Social Web, I propose that many, if not a majority of potential crises are
now avoidable through proactive listening, engagement, response, conversation,
humbleness, and transparency (repeat).
I'd like to introduce you to an old, but new again, dynamic process to integrate
into the existing corporate communications and marketing workflow. Today's
social tools and communities that can work against us, can also work with us,
when proactively managed and embraced with an open mind, sincere intent, and
genuine participation.
> Active
> Listening
> Observation
> Conversation
> Learning
> Planning
> Continued Adaptation and Engagement
The art and science of proactive listening, observation, and participation will not
only inspire the creation of in touch, relevant, and poignant PR and marketing
strategies, but will also dramatically reduce the potential for reactive response
and crisis communications programs. Crisis communications teams can also
partner with those responsible for monitoring online brand reputations (ORM -
online reputation management) or vice versa, to jointly listen, respond, and incite
change from within. This creates a more effective "public relations" organization.
The point is that this is about proactively diffusing visible, but not yet large-scale
predicaments before they're full-blown public crises. And, also through direct
listening, engagement, and actively addressing concerns both inside and out of
the organization, we're diverting the momentum from tropical storms before they
have an opportunity to form unforeseen and unanticipated hurricanes. It's the
ability to avoid a storm without knowing a storm was brewing by identifying
weaknesses and opportunities as they emerge.
This is community-driven communications in its purest form which begets a
community-focused and customer-centric organization.
Everything starts with openness and the ability to learn and adapt. It's the
acceptance that it doesn't matter if the customer is always right. After all, a happy
customer will share their good fortune with a group of friends and peers, but an
unhappy customer will tell everybody.
Perception is everything.
For communicators, it's our role to actively listen and translate conversations into
actionable next steps. It's not an automated process. It requires dedication and
empowerment. Much of this responsibility is falling upon community managers
and the new role of research librarians who are quickly acclimating to online
conversations and how and where they apply to the internal decision makers,
traffic coordinators, and metrics analysts. By partnering with these new, socially
adept resources, Public Relations can can more accurately and genuinely
participate with influencers, whether they're media, analysts, bloggers, or
tastemakers. When we step back and assess our markets, we just may find that
they're collectively one in the same.
What if you don't yet have these roles or resources to help you listen and follow
meaningful conversations? It's not impossible for you to proactively monitor
conversations and the cultures and behavior associated within each digital
society in order to identify and prioritize opportunities for engagement, reform,
and evolution.
Start with using free search blog search tools such as:
As we all know, or should know, the social web extends far beyond blogs,
relevant online conversations are pervasive and rampant in social networks and
microforums as well. In that regard, be sure that your initial waves of search
include:
- search.twitter.com
- Ning
- Facebook
- Google and Yahoo Groups
- Uservoice
- Getsatisfaction
For those with a moderate budget to evaluate dedicated SRM (social media
relationship management) or ORM tools, consider:
- Trackur
- BuzzGain
- Radian6
- BuzzLogic
- BrandsEye
Search for keywords related to your business, such as the company and product
name, key executives, as well as scouting discussions for the "suck" or "die"
factor. This includes adding a combination of the following criteria in your search
process:
- "product+sucks"
- "company+sucks"
- "die+company"
- "i+hate+company"
As the Web itself grew in pervasiveness, it also paved the way for customers to
easily launch sites to vent publicly. Examples already number in the thousands,
with some capturing significant public attention including starbucked.com,
ihatestarbucks.com, boycottwalmart.org and againstthewal.com.
Fairwinds recently released a study that documents the power of Internet gripe
sites. The Wall Street Journal explored the topic with an in-depth article, "How to
Handle 'IHateYourCompany.com,'" which explored what some companies are
doing, or not doing, to protect their brands online.
In its study, FairWinds researched the Web to identify gripe sites specifically
containing "sucks.com." The study uncovered over 20,000 domains with only
2,000 ending in the phrase "stinks.com." Of the major consumer-facing
companies surveyed, only 35% own the domain name for their brand followed by
the word "sucks."
But domain names are only one of the many opportunities for customers to share
their discontent, and in the new era of the two-way web, communications,
customer service, and brand and reputation management teams must all work
together together to actively survey the landscape to detect and diagnose
negative experiences.
The ensuing conversations tied to your brand can quickly and easily amass,
across multiple networks simultaneously. Don’t let those conversations fall upon
deaf ears.
For the first time, we have the ability to identify and address potential crises as
they surface. And not only do we have the ability to engage with people to
address their grievances or discontent, we can also learn from each engagement
and feed the corresponding lessons, experiences, and criticisms back into the
sales, service, and product development departments to change everything for
the better.
It's the difference between simply placating customers and improving our
business and products to satisfy many others who would have been potentially
exposed to a potential deficiency.
Customers are among the new influencers and have the tools and platforms
readily available to them in order to share their experiences and potentially incite
the masses.
It's not just about the gripes we've identified, it's about the dialogue and actively
and publicly addressing each issue to minimize the unforeseen eruptions from
those who have yet to publish or rally others against us.
While our control has been crowd-sourced, perception management and crisis
communications are ours to lead. Perception is reality and it's our responsibility
to invest in the relationships and the correlated activities that will help us cultivate
and manage an industry leading, market relevant, and in-tune brand.
Listen, learn, and adapt. In the Social Web, and in the real world of business,
companies will earn the relationships, and the crowd-sourced brand, they
deserve.
Solis has been actively writing about new PR since the mid 90s to discuss how
the Web was redefining the communications industry – he coined PR 2.0 along
the way. Solis is considered an expert in traditional PR, media relations, and
Social Media. He has dedicated his free time to helping PR professionals adapt
to the new fusion of PR, Web marketing, and community relations. PR 2.0 is a
top 10,000 Technorati blog and is ranked in the Ad Age Power 150 index of
leading marketing bloggers.
Working with Geoff Livingston, Solis was co-author of “Now is Gone,” a new book
that helps businesses learn how to engage in Social Media. He has also written
several ebooks on the subjects of Social Media, New PR, and Blogger Relations.
His next book, co-author Deirdre Breakenridge, “Putting the Public back in Public
Relations,” will be released by Pearson by Q1 2009.
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