CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS AND SOCIAL MEDIA –OR—DON’T PLAY DIGITAL DEFENSE

Here’s a great primer and basic advice article from Chris Syme on using Twitter as a crisis engagement tactical channel.  http://cksyme.org/?p=602 It’s well worth reading and heeding.

Chris makes some excellent points in the article, Three Must-Haves for Using Twitter in a Crisis.  Outlaw Communications specializes in unconventional communications and IW (Information Warfare) and I’ve learned if you intend to achieve your goals in any crisis engagement within the social biosphere you must maintain communications across the maximum number of channels your tactical resources allow. 

Use Twitter and FaceBook and Tumblr and YouTube and Google+, comment on real-time events, post on blogs and wikis, and…. you get the idea, be everywhere you need to be.  Never overextend or attempt to utilize more channels than your resources allow but within those tactical constraints be prepared to engage with every stream your audience engages. 

In most cases you’ll find the majority of the conversations you need to influence and take an active role in guiding occur in one to three of the major social media streams or within isolated industry-specific social environments.

Engagements within the Social Biosphere are quantum in nature; each and every communication carries with it the potential for something to occur.  The majority amount to absolutely nothing however; those few that take shape and become conversations often produce massively disproportionate effects, compared with their origin communication, upon targeted organizations and individuals. Remember every negative Tweet has the potential to topple your organization but very few become conversations of any note.

We call these viral marketing campaigns when they are positive and social media crisis when they are not.  Regardless of the nature and tone of the conversations, something beyond your control causes a single communication based on some trigger event (s) to capture the interest of other social media users and becomes a “big deal.” 

Chris Syme mentions monitoring Twitter streams as part of your daily communications process, an excellent idea to identify those potential conversations before they become crisis.  As with the actual crisis engagement I suggest monitoring as many social streams as your resources allow and your audience utilizes for the same reasons, identifying potential issues before they become crisis engagements. Monitoring also allows you to participate in various conversations within your Social Biosphere before you need operate within those same social streams in crisis mode.

The post-crisis engagement is an excellent time introduce new messaging and begin brand building or rebuilding.  In addition to stakeholders’ attentions focused on the fallout and plans to avoid future crisis, it’s important to remember you have your audiences’ attentions.  Introduce new messaging and beginning the rebuilding process while you have this attention.

As with any crisis engagement, crisis within the Social Biosphere is essentially a messaging exercise.  Something happened that should not have, here’s what we’re doing to fix this event and here’s the steps we’ve taken to ensure nothing like this ever happens again.

Like chess and the Social Biosphere itself, within such a simple operational definition there exist endless possibilities for both strategic and tactical actions.  Make sure your engagement supports a sound business goal and is driven by good process