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.

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By Alice Marshall, Presto Vivace, Inc. | Presto Vivace Blog

This topic was inspired by an article in a trade journal. The writer talked about how the combination of site statistics and blogs has changed ideas about newsworthiness. Unfortunately, I have been unable to track down that article; but the short version is that the writer had been surprised by which stories had interested bloggers and which had been ignored. There are now thousands of technology blogs. Vendors are publishing blogs. Programmers are publishing blogs. Entrepreneurs are publishing blogs. Project managers are publishing blogs. Industry analysts are publishing blogs. Trade journals have started blogs, and everyone is reading each others’ blogs. A new conversation is taking place.

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Weblogs - between social convention and technology

Several approaches have been done to assess and define the weblog phenomenon. Weblogs can be described by their social convention, its technology and its structure and content (Fischer, 2004).

This article will assume that weblogs are “a technology, or a social process culminating in an online phenomenon or even an online kind of a diary, if not to say a new form of journalism. The term is as broadly defined as peer-to-peer, to say the least. In fact, a weblog can be all of the above and none of it.” (Dafermos, 2003, p. 27) and that can be anything from a journal to a stream of consciousness commentary or even a full-blown news site. The important features are a steady stream of fresh content and a willingness to link to other existing sites as a raison d’être. Think of the Captain’s log on Star Trek and how it usually served to introduce and frame the upcoming story, and add in a very quick feedback loop. For the most part, weblogs are simple and straightforward. People can publish their thoughts, even for the first time, with almost no training.” (Chromatic, 2002, p. 28). Thus weblogs are more a social convention than a pure technology.

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Blogs offer a cost-effective solution for non-profits to promote, cover, discuss and wrap-up events

Events often pose smaller non-profits a problem with their limited web site budgets. Some non-profits might have basic content management tools that allow them to add a news item or calendar event, while many others have standard flat HTML pages. Often a new event was not in the ‘master web plan’ when the site we designed a year or two ago. In these situations an event will receive very limited exposure, if any, on the web site and is often shoe horned into an existing site structure. If a non-profit has additional web funds they will sometimes create a micro-site for the event, but it is often a flat/static page with few updates and no life beyond the event. Blog software can help change this.

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UPDATE: Camp ASCCA has a new site with a variety of social media platforms like: blogs (here’s another one), photo galleries, a wiki (behind a firewall), and photo/video sharing communities at Flickr, Google Video and YouTube. There is also an Alumni Forum. The whole site has only just launched (early Feb. 2006) and is now growing. Feedback is appreciated.

During the 2005 Summer semester, my students created a campaign for Camp ASCCA / Easter Seals incorporating blogging and RSS feeds / media tracking into their marketing and media relations plans. This article explores the experiences of the students gained from creating the online resources and the questions the camp faces as they try to launch the ideas online.

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OK, seriously. No offense to the PR bloggers out there – of which I’m one. But let’s stop for a second. I mean, seriously. We’re not defining Pi here, guys.

I’ve read where some PR bloggers start their day at 4:30 am or something to get the feeds from Europe.

The feeds from Europe? Um, this is PR. There’s no PR stock market that we need to catch the morning UK news. This is Public Relations. Yes, it’s important. Yes, we need to stay focused on the latest information and most up-to-date tactics. But what could someone possibly get and post at 4:30 am that he couldn’t post at 8:00 am, after a good cardio workout and a cup of coffee?

“You ok, honey?� “Oh, yes dear. Don’t mind me. I have to go check the wires from Europe for the few hundred people that will read my blog when they get up at a normal hour.�

Now I’m not totally dissing these bloggers. I just think we need to put things in the proper perspective here.

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First the name: In deciding on “The Flack,â€? I looked at other weblogs, including those under Nick Denton’s Gawker brand, and concluded that I needed something edgy and irreverent. The Flack certainly met these criteria. More importantly, this is what many journalists call PR pros, even those at the top of our profession. If the blogosphere is a sphere of transparency, why deny the reality? Do I like the label? No. Can it be used to make a point? Hopefully.

There are days when I just can’t seem to find the time (nor motivation) to scour my RSS reader for stories that meet the self-imposed criteria for posting on The Flack. Yet, amidst client work, business development, and my daily media consumption, let alone my family, I manage to squeeze out one or two and occasionally three items a day. This summer, I even spent an hour posting from a McDonalds on the Cape, which had the only wireless hotspot in town.

To what end?

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If transparency, speed and forthright dialogue are the hallmarks of the Cluetrain economy, some may argue that government communicators have neither a clue nor a train schedule.

In broad strokes, most government efforts to communicate with the public can be characterized as slow, unresponsive and even leaden.

We’re not talking about social marketing here – with a thick wallet and sufficient scientific evidence, governments can launch multi-channel consumer marketing campaigns that compare with the best of the CPG companies.

It’s issues management that’s spinning the wheels of steel on this riff, baby. Arguing the finer points of a longstanding policy on fisheries management, debating taxation policy, planning new major regional infrastructure projects. Historically, this sort of discussion has bounced around a very small group of government policy analysts, community and industry associations, lobbyists, non-governmental organizations, and think tanks.

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Over the past year-and-a-half, the blogosphere has gone through quite a bit of transition. What was once the ‘Wild West’ has turned into a slightly more lawful online society. At this time last year, anything and everything being posted on blogs was considered by many to be OK. Then there came the well-publicized employee firings for posts made on personal blogs-which forced people to think more about what should and should not be made available for all to see. One thing that has become clear from all this is that corporations need to weave blogging into existing employee communications policies.

I know a lot of the early adopters view policies and corporate adoption as the beginning of the end for blogging. To me, it’s simply the natural evolution of a really cool, powerful technology. There are countless stories about companies that have launched corporate blogs and have been much better off for doing so. For one, blogs provide the ability to show the outside world the true ‘personality’ of a corporation. They also provide customers with another avenue through which to provide feedback, both good and bad.

Having gone through the setup and rollout of a corporate blog or two as part of my day-job, here are a few things to consider.

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Podcast with Andrew Corcoran, Lincoln University (UK) and Thomas Pleil, Darmstadt University (Germany). Time: 30:11. This is the second part of my post from yesterday.

Topics: Using blogs in the PR classroom; application for students in professional life.

Podcast: These podcasts flow from an email Q&A conducted with the following public relations educators. Download the text file of their written responses to questions on these and other topics here.

Participants:

• Richard Bailey, Leeds, UK - Leeds Metropolitan University
• Andrew Corcoran - Lincoln, UK - University of Lincoln
• Tom Kelleher, Chapel Hill, NC - University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
• Thomas Pleil, Germany, Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences
• Phillip Young, Sunderland, UK - Sunderland University
• Robert French, Auburn, AL USA, - Auburn University - Moderator

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