Global PR Blog Week 2.0

By Michael Terpin, Terpin Communications Group | Uncorporate Communications
EDITORS’ CHOICE

Crisis communications is one of the most important and highly visible areas in the entire PR profession. While a solid media visibility campaign can help put a new company on the map (or put a company that’s been declining or stalling out back on the right track), the lack of crisis communications skills can literally kill a company of any size.

Perhaps the most notable example of that would be the death of Arthur Andersen, a multi-billion-dollar iconic firm which voluntarily shut down after it was convicted of obstruction of justice in the Enron case and pilloried by the broadcast media. Ironically, the Supreme Court overturned those convictions less than three years later, but the damage was done and it was lethal. Other textbook examples of bungled crisis communications include the Tylenol scare, Union Carbide’s response to Bhopal and now FEMA’s handling of Hurricane Katrina, but all of these (other than Katrina) have been in the age that preceded blogging. This paper will examine the ways in which crisis communications has been changed by the existence of the blogosphere, as well as the ways that it has stayed the same.

To paraphrase HBO commentator/comedian/talk show host Bill Maher, let’s look at the “New Rules� of crisis work in the age of blogs and search engines:

1) The blogosphere enlarges the terrain of crisis communications by adding speed, complexity and size. Every expansion of mass media shrinks the distance between us, simultaneously expanding reach and effectively “shrinking the world� by compressing the time between interactions. During the Pony Express era, it was pretty easy to hide a crisis, but almost impossible to squelch a false rumor, which could persist for decades.

When Reuters began the first news service in 1851 (using pigeons to transmit stock quotes, shortly thereafter replaced by the radically new technology of telegraph), it led to an authoritative source that could reliably deliver news from a trusted third party. Ten years later, Reuters was able to report the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and make it readily known within hours, not days or weeks. Radio and television turned hours and days into minutes, and for the first time delivered news in real time. By the 1980s, CNN took news into a 24-hour cycle and the fax machine toppled the Berlin Wall by removing the ability of governments to effectively jam all incoming transmissions (without literally removing every telephone in the country.)

Lesson: Don’t underestimate the ability of the least traditionally influential reporter, blogger or even “citizen journalist� to turn your world upside down. Expect it, plan for it, plan your response.

2) The blogosphere’s record is permanent, its half-life is far longer, and big mistakes are punished more quickly and ruthlessly. The existence of some 17 million blogs today (up from less than 100 in 1999), has made the blogosphere the world’s largest and most influential form of interactive media. Small, unknown blogs can link or syndicate to larger, more influential blogs, which in turn can rapidly supply researched story leads to the 24-hour, traditional media. Those stories, once “legitimized� by the mainstream press, are then spun back out into the blogosphere, where tens of thousands of bloggers with their Google News Alerts tuned into any number of topics, will rebroadcast mainstream news with their own comments, which then begets more comments and perhaps more revelations, and the cycle begins again. This is in large part what happened throughout the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and Rathergate scandals of last year.

Finally, on the corporate side, there is no more chilling example of the power of the small blogger amplified by the media than the Case of the Kryptonite Lock and the Ballpoint Pen, where a series of blog posts and videotapes demonstrating that certain models of the formerly well-regarded Kryptonite bicycle lock could be hacked and opened using an ordinary ball-point pen led to a massive recall that cost the company nearly half its revenues for the year and has left a legacy of some 50,000 Google listings recounting the controversy.

Also note that the interaction between 24-hour cable news, late-night talk show monologues and RSS syndication extend the timeframe of the story. Posts, comments, reposts, pass-alongs, permalinks and RSS updates and summaries by the hour, day and week mean the end of the “one day story� that pretty much all crises experts advise you to strive for. There will never be one-day stories again. You will need to monitor the blogosphere (via Google Alerts, Technorati and/or more sophisticated services like BlogPulse) forever.

Lesson: The Internet has made a permanent record of all media since the mid-90s. The Blogosphere now makes a permanent and highly searchable vehicle for all commentary since roughly 2003. Research it, respond to it, and take proactive charge of your reputation. Don’t let others write the history books without sizeable input from those who lived it.

3) Knowledge of the tools is as important as knowledge of the players. Owning a fax machine made a big difference in your ability to communicate in the 1980s, as did having an email account in the early 1990s and a Web presence by the end of the decade. It is imperative that PR practitioners, as well as any company spokesperson empowered to communicate in a crisis, is knowledgeable about the blog technology. He or she must have an active account on Typepad, Blogger or some other reliable and easy to use blog authoring service, should know how to parcel out guest accounts, how to approve and manage posts and other hands-on blogging techniques.

In the permanent record department, one must keep track of an ever-changing toolset of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) methods, blog syndication resources and other tools designed to bring the best and most timely information in front of the most well-informed reader.

Lesson: Knowledge of the tools of blogging is utterly necessary to understand and inform your strategy for what the blogosphere represents. Create your own personal blog for practice, then learn all you can about what tools are most relevant to your company, your position, your field.

4) Pick your battles – and don’t bring a knife to a gunfight. Know the difference between a crisis and a nuisance. Know if you are in the right and defensibly so. Know the capabilities of your opponents, including their ability to organize opposition and to distribute. Once you’ve decided that you are justified and that you have the facts and supporters to advance your cause, rally the troops and leave a permanent record of the conversation, then let ‘er rip. Consider separate crisis blogs for investors, buyers and other constituents, which link to each other – you are trying to parse the messages, but not hide any aspect of them.

Finally, use common sense. The blogosphere dramatically expands the reach of your audience, which means the potential for more supporters, as well as more detractors. Its immediacy and permanence also means that it will have lasting importance (which, of course diminishes somewhat over time as more recent keywords replace old ones). There are crises I helped manage in 1993 that still have references online, just not as many that I worked on in 2003.

Lesson: Know when you’re in a crisis and respond accordingly. Don’t abuse the tools of the blogosphere or you can find yourself in a crisis defending your crisis management.

Michael Terpin is the CEO of Terpin Communications Group, a leading high-tech PR firm specializing in emerging technologies and digital convergence. He also started the first Internet-based press release newswire, Internet Wire, which since its strategic alliance with NASDAQ in 2003 has been operating as Market Wire. Terpin also authors a blog on corporate blogging called Uncorporate Communications (www.uncorporatecommunications.com). He is a newspaper journalism graduate of Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications, where he currently serves as the school’s advisory board, and additionally holds an MFA in Creative Writing from SUNY at Buffalo. He lives in the Hermosa Beach section of Los Angeles.

About the author

Michael Terpin is the CEO of Terpin Communications Group, a leading high-tech PR firm specializing in emerging technologies and digital convergence. He also started the first Internet-based press release newswire, Internet Wire, which since its strategic alliance with NASDAQ in 2003 has been operating as Market Wire. Terpin also authors a blog on corporate blogging called Uncorporate Communications. He is a newspaper journalism graduate of Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications, where he currently serves as the school’s advisory board, and additionally holds an MFA in Creative Writing from SUNY at Buffalo. He lives in the Hermosa Beach section of Los Angeles.

{tags: prblogweek, pr, public+relations, blogging, crisis+communication, crisis+blogging}