Comments on: Crisis Blogging: Risks, rewards and the rapidly changing world of best practices

By: ErinM

ErinM — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 16:18:53 +0000

To summarize what I learned from this blog, I’m going to steal from the Boy Scouts - Be Prepared. Your blog is a great source of lessons that some PR practitioners might take for granted. As we move into this new era of blogging and citizen journalism, organizations will have to address situations directly; the days of burying our heads in the sand are over.

Individual blogs can sink the reputation of even the largest organizations (or especially the largest organizations). The video of the bike lock being hacked by a ball-point pen is a great example. Would they have thought about a recall without the negative publicity spread from blog to blog?

As more and more people begin reading and contributing to blogs, the capability for us to start our own word-of-mouth type marketing will also grow. This medium can, and is predicted to move the communication world in a new direction. CEOs and department leaders need to be in on this movement now to keep their images clean… They will look slow and outdated if they wait to jump on the blogging bandwagon.

I agree with the lesson about the permanence of the blogosphere. We should think out the effect of our words, and be able to stand by what we say. With this medium, our words are recorded permanently. The tone and phrasing must be exactly right, or it will leave an organization wide open for the blogging critics to take of running.

By: Global PR Blog Week 2.0 » Blog Archive » The Program for Friday, September 23, 2005

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 15:40:30 +0000

[…] Michael Terpin - Crisis blogging: Risks, rewards and the rapidly changing world of best practices […]

By: Alice Marshall

Alice Marshall — Sat, 24 Sep 2005 19:31:41 +0000

I am really glad you reminded readers that blogs can be friends as well as critics.

By: Dana Voss

Dana Voss — Sat, 24 Sep 2005 01:28:53 +0000

Crisis communications seems to have always been a well-known aspect of PR. Tradionally, PR has always been on the spot to quietly and immediately contain a crisis. However, because of the immediate worldwide transmission of news through use of media such as the internet, and the increasing number of citizen journalists such as bloggers, this traditional stance is obsolete. There are no “one-day stories�? anymore and crisis can be permanently recorded and rehashed on many different forms of media, including thousands sometimes millions of different webpages. Because of the uncontainable media, specifically the blogosphere, I think it will be imperative for PR to develop much more of a proactive role in communicating with the public.

Preventing crisis begins with knowledge. The more you know…the more power you have. Blogging knowledge is imperative for a PR practitioner in today’s PR world so they can quickly and efficiently communicate and disperse information in as many different forms of media as possible.

In my opinion, a quote in the fourth point of Mr. Terpin’s blog sums up the overwhelming impact and importance of the blogosphere.

“It’s (the blogosphere) immediacy and permanence also means that it will have lasting importance…�?
Basically… what is published will be there forever. It’s of dyer importance that we as PR practitioners take a proactive stance in crisis containment and that we have as much knowledge and control over the blogosphere as possible.