Social Media Training | Gerard Braud Communications

Posts

When “It” Hits the Fan: A Crisis Communication Lesson on Speediness

By Gerard Braud –

It’s an honor to be invited to deliver the morning keynote presentation today to the SynGas 2015 Conference in Tulsa. You can view today’s handout here.

The crisis communications lessons being discussed on stage serve as a reminder to everyone in the C-Suite, in emergency response, and in public relations, that news travels fast. The faster the news travels, the faster a corporation must respond. Smart phone technology and social media are changing the rules for both corporations and the media.

A good case study is last week’s natural gas explosion and fire in Fresno, California. Crews digging with a backhoe struck a natural gas line owned by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E).

YouTube was filled with videos shot on smart phones as motorists passed the scene.

Twitter also lit up, as eyewitnesses shared their videos. Take a look at these screen grabs taken from Twitter user @shroom0021. Notice how many media outlets are asking to use the video he posted on Twitter.

These are just some of many Twitter posts the media have found. I did not find a single example of video used on television news that was captured by an official news photographer. It may have happened, but every one that I saw used on television was from an eyewitness and not an official media source, nor from an official corporate source. This is critical for leaders to understand.

These days, information about any news event is captured on video and shared in moments, hastening the need for official information. The First Critical Statement document that I mentioned in the keynote presentation is available for download. (To get a free download use the coupon code CRISISCOMPLAN when you select the item from my shopping cart.)

PG&E posted a news release to their official website and then shared it via a link on their Facebook page. I’m unable to tell from the web news release exactly how long it took for the company to get their official release out to the world. My goal is for a company to always post their initial release within one hour or less of the onset of the crisis. It doesn’t have to include every detail, only the facts known at that time. A second news release can be posted as soon as more details are known.

In the news release initially posted by the utility company, PG&E points out that the incident was not their fault, but the fault of contract work crews digging in the area. They also emphasized in their message the need for all contractors to dial 811 before digging and noted that the contractor had not called 811 before digging.

My suggestion to all companies is to have a library of pre-written news releases written and ready to go at a moment’s notice. I’ve not found any companion videos or images shot by PG&E employees, but posting your own official photos and videos is always a good idea. Ultimately, you want to control the flow of accurate information in as many ways as you can.

Ultimately, someone is going to tell your story. It can be people like @shroomy0021 or it can be your official version of the story. Ultimately the media will use someone’s version of the facts as well as someone’s images and videos. It can either come from the “shroomys” of the world or it can be your official photos and videos.

The time to plan your crisis communications strategy should always be long before you need it. Take these five steps:

1) Hold a Vulnerability Assessment round table.

2) Write pre-written news releases for as many of your vulnerabilities as possible.

3) Write a crisis communications plan with very specific details and instructions for gathering details from the scene of your crisis. Then write details for specific ways you plan to share your news releases with your core audiences and most important stakeholders.

4) Conduct media training at least once a year with subject matter experts who could do media interviews during a crisis. As a supplement to an actual on-site training program you can visit this blog post for a FREE 29-day media training tutorial. You may also want to supplement that by reading my book, Don’t Talk to the Media Until…

5) Conduct at least one crisis communications drill each year to test the ability of your teams to work together during a crisis.

A good leader should never be in denial about the need to prepare for a crisis. The sign of a good leader is someone who does their duty and takes action on a clear sunny day so that all parties will be responsible when “it” hits the fan.

In Defense of Social Media

March 19, 2015/0 Comments/in Crisis Communications, Media Relations, Rural Electric Cooperatives, Social Media, Social Media for Crisis Communications /by gbraud

By Greg Davis –

[Editors Note from Gerard Braud – Today we have a guest blog from Greg Davis of Arkansas Valley Electric Cooperative. Greg wrote this as a follow up to my March 5, 2015 blog about utility companies avoiding a crisis by communicating with customers who take their complaints about high electric bills to Facebook. Thank you Greg.]

For electric cooperatives, consumer engagement remains critical to continued success. Social media allows you to be involved with members on a personal level. Many people view smartphones and other mobile devices as an extension of themselves. They’re connected—and they expect you to be connected, too.

To toss up a social media presence without proper management or trained communications people to guide content is a recipe for disaster; however choosing to avoid social media can prove to be as catastrophic.

The need for electric utility social media presence is best demonstrated during Crisis communication. Social media allows for fast, fact driven, controlled communication. During a major outage the worst thing a utility company can do is not provide regular up to date information with customers. Getting information from traditional media outlets alone is no longer acceptable.

When customers see that they are one of thousands currently without power or can see pictures of miles of downed poles and lines that information can greatly influence their expectations for restoration. It can also greatly influence traditional media expectations. Social media communication during prolonged outages has also been proven successful in deflecting inquiries to the call center and helping improve call center response time. Social media outage information gets shared by other organizations, the media and individuals, all helping your information reach a greater number of people in a timely fashion.

Not to be forgotten are the marketing opportunities, corporate branding and general community outreach.

The social media conversation will take place with or without you. “Doing nothing” has never been the answer to managing your brand. Being actively involved puts you in the conversation. It lets you tell your story with facts and better control of the message.

No matter what you do you will never create 100% customer satisfaction. Someone will make a negative comment on one of your channels. Some negative comments turn out to be a positive, offering the chance to transform an angry customer into a brand ambassador. More often than not your engaged fans will defend you if someone is bashing without a reason. If you opt not to establish a social media presence, your members can still post unflattering things about you online. What’s the advantage of providing a place for your members to talk about you online? It puts you in the conversation. They will establish a reputation for you even if you aren’t out there to share the facts. Your story will be told even if you “do nothing.”

Social Media When “It” Hits the Fan

March 18, 2015/0 Comments/in Crisis Communications, Public Relations, Social Media, Social Media for Crisis Communications /by gbraud

By Gerard Braud –

Why are so many powerful people oblivious to the potent, negative power of social media? Every day there is a new crisis communication case study and today it is from Aaron Schock, who has resigned as Congressman from Illinois.

Schock created his own crisis with excessive selfies and posts on social media, showing him engaged in a rather lavished lifestyle of travel. This raised questions about whether taxpayers were footing the bill for his fun.

Tip 1: Establish guidelines for what should be posted and what should not be posted as an official representation of the corporation and the leadership of that organization.

Tip 2: Review your current social media policy for all employees to make sure best practices are being followed. If you don’t have a social media policy for employees, make it a priority to write one.

Tip 3: In a corporate environment, require that three people concur about an image or post before it is shared on social media. Get feedback from one another to measure positive and negative reaction before anything goes online.

If you have a great social media policy that you’d like to share with your public relations colleagues please send it to me at gerard (at) braudcommunications.com

If you’d like guidance on setting up a system that works for your corporate culture just give me a call at 985-624-9976.

Brand Judgment Day

March 16, 2015/0 Comments/in Crisis Communications, Social Media, Social Media for Crisis Communications /by gbraud

By Gerard Braud –

Judgment day in the Biblical sense is the Godly determination of your fate at the end of time.

We’ve been taught that we do not know the hour or the day of our death or judgment.

But in the world of your brand, your products, and your services, we do know the day and we do know the hour. In fact, we know the minute.

The time is now. Social media and the throngs of participants on social media could be described as the most judgmental slice of humanity that civilization has ever seen.

Last week I watched two national stories unfold that led to a lot of online judgement. The first was the story about the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity members singing a song filled with racial slurs. The second story was about a photographer who posted a picture of a baby swaddled in an American flag.

[My goal is to interview both the fraternity brothers and the photographer to learn more about their experiences of being judged so harshly and so quickly. If you can introduce me to any of these folks, please call me.]

Swift social media judgment is a rather interesting phenomenon, considering the societal emphasis placed on political correctness. The political correctness movement had its roots in the 1990s.

When you think about it, an entire generation of young people have been taught that a person should not be judged by the color of their skin, or their ethnic background, or their religion. From there it grew into not criticizing someone because of his or her sexual orientation or gender identity.

Perhaps an unintentional consequence of the political correctness movement is that many people feel compelled to correct everyone else’s speech or behavior. Essentially, people anointed themselves as the police of appropriateness. Individuals became self-ordained. Many attempt to shame the rest of the world into adhering only to thinking as they do and approving only what they approve.

So would this also be true? Would it be true that as the political correctness movement spreads, parents, teachers, and well-intentioned folks enable a new breed of judgment that replaced the kind of judgment they were actually fighting against? Did they endorse and encourage judgment? And was the new judgment harsh?

For a large segment of the population, every day is the day they judge everyone around them. Hence, everyday is judgment day.

About this same time political correctness judgment took hold, talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh began their own breed of judgment. This opened the floodgates of copycat radio shows, which made many older adults also increase their level of harsh judgment and verbal criticism.

As this age of judgment was born, unto everyone was also born the Internet, social media, and technology.

Blogging and anonymous comments on blogs represented phase one of judgment. Phase two of judgment began when media news websites opened their doors to anonymous comments. Then phase three emerged with the birth of Facebook and Twitter.

Specifically to Facebook and Twitter, what could be a platform for sharing joy and goodness has become the trolling grounds for those who judge, hate and comment negatively with gusto. Social media can be a real hellhole for your brand.

The truth is, we all judge and pass judgment with every thought. You have thoughts about the products you buy, services you contract for, people you encounter at work, etc. You also have thoughts about every person you see. Your mind creates a near immediate impression as to whether you initially like someone or not. Your judgment on that may change within moments. You make judgments based on what a person is wearing, their body type, their ethnic background, and what they say.

You are in judgment of others, regardless of whether you have pleasant thoughts about a person or negative thoughts.

But do you verbalize every conceivable thought you have or have you been taught the art of self-control?

Many of us were taught the adage, “If you can’t say something nice about somebody, then don’t say anything at all.”

The political correctness age shifted that to, “If someone says something that is not nice about someone you should correct him or her and put them in their place.”

That is called judging those who judge.

This has all morphed into a self-ordained right to comment on social media about everything in society. I don’t see it stopping anytime soon.

Je Suis Brian Williams

February 9, 2015/0 Comments/in Media Relations /by gbraud

By Gerard Braud

Amid the media stories and lingering crisis surrounding Brian Williams, I will raise these questions.

1. Was the story true to the teller?
2. Would others on that mission recall events differently?
3. When you recall an event and tell that story, is it true to you, while others might recall it differently?

Je suis Brian! When I tell stories, they are true to my recalling, yet others who were there may tell a completely different story. The stories you tell are based on variables, such as the information given to you by others, information heard or overheard by you, and the potential for you to have misunderstood or misinterpreted what you heard. There are distractions. There is background noise. There are many variables.

I don’t know Brian Williams but I wish I did and I wish we could talk on the phone… both because of our shared backgrounds in journalism, and our backgrounds as speakers and storytellers. I also wish I could speak with him because of my background in managing crisis communications, which is needed in this case.

Another variable could be classified as the fishing variable. On the day you catch that two-pound bass, the fish is two pounds. The more the story is told, does a wee bit of embellishing happen as the fish grows to be a six-pound bass?

Embellishment is part of human nature.

And then there is the tribute factor. Williams was GIVING tribute to a soldier in his telling of the story. He was not trying to take credit for anything that, from my perspective, was self-serving.

There are two ironies at play here, which has turned this into a crisis.

Irony #1

Brian Williams sells credibility for a living and now his credibility is being called into question. Not only is his credibility on this story being questioned, but others are raising questions about a variety of past stories. As a former journalist, there is never a day where the world agrees with your telling of any story. A reporter should provide perspective without bias.

Irony #2
The media are obsessed with reporting things from social media. It is social media that has fanned the flames enough to turn this small story into a bigger story. This social media smoldering crisis has become a raging wild fire.

Akin to this are some lessons in crisis communications that each of us can apply in our professional lives and in the organizations where we work.

1) Brian Williams did the right thing to apologize quickly. It takes a big man to say I made a mistake and especially to do it on national television. He did it with class and the appropriate amount of humility and empathy. I’ve seen many media outlets make far more egregious errors and never offer a retraction, correction, or apology for errors and omissions.

2) Support from others who were there and can support your story is important. Some members of the military have come forward to back-up portions of the story told by Williams, but now some are questioning their recollection of their position.

3) If he has not done so already, Williams should personally call those who called him out to offer an apology and to listen to what they have to say. He must also listen for that which gives a clue as to the motivation of those who called him out. Were they truly offended? Were they angry and dealing with anger issues? Do they hate the media and hate Brian Williams? Is someone trying to gain their 15 minutes of fame? Is someone trying to sell a story or book? It is difficult in a crisis to communicate with your detractors if you don’t truly have insight as to their motives and emotions.

4) If Brian Williams plans to return to the air next Monday, then this Friday he should do an interview on the Today Show. At his side for the interview should be his detractors as well as the veterans who have come forward to support the essence of the story told by Williams.

5) NBC, as the employer, needs to issue a statement. It should neither be a statement that condemns him nor one that places him on a pedestal. The statement should express a degree of neutrality in supporting Williams for his decision to take time off away from the anchor desk so that he doesn’t detract from the news on which he reports.

I am concerned that it appears NBC and Brian Williams may take the same course of action that many corporations do, which is to hope this all blows over. As I tell my corporate clients, “Hope is not a crisis communications strategy.” Action is a strategy and swift action is the best strategy.

It is a common flaw that institutions and people focus on the problem. The focus should be not on the problem, but on the solution to the problem.

Will Williams recover from this?

In the grand scheme of things, the telling of the story reflected no bias. If there are errors and/or omissions, those did not affect the outcome of events nor did they cause physical or financial harm to others.

I don’t know all of the facts and don’t expect that anyone will know them all. I am, however, human and forgiving.

Je suis Brian.

Media Training 25: Social Media Training

December 16, 2014/0 Comments/in 29-Day Media Course - Don't Talk to the Media /by gbraud

By Gerard Braud

www.braudcommunications.com

The internet, the media on the internet, and the proliferation of self-ordained pundits on the internet, has forever changed the world. So has the proliferation of gadgets that let us rapidly post pictures, comments and video to the web. The ability for the global community to post online comments in countless ways and forums makes the world even more frightening for those trying to manage their reputation. For the sake of discussion here, when I use the term social media, I’m talking about all postings to the internet that allow your reputation to be improved or destroyed, as well as the gadgets that make it all possible.

There are three ways you can get hurt in the world of social media. The first is when your public actions are photographed or video taped, then posted to the web. The second is when your reputation is attacked on social sites and blogs, and the third is when you willingly participate in on-line discussions and do a poor job communicating.

One of my all time favorite videos, posted to the web, is of a county commissioner being hounded by a television reporter. When asked after a public meeting to justify the delay in opening a new county juvenile justice center, the commissioner asks the reporter, “Elliot, do you know that Jesus loves you?” The commissioner then dodges every one of the reporter’s subsequent questions by trying to engage in a discussion about why the reporter should accept Jesus as his personal savior. Regardless of your religious beliefs, the answer is inappropriate because it is not germane to the news report, and by repeating a variation of it as the answer to every question, it only makes the official look more like he is guilty of hiding something.

Prior to the advent of social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook.com and YouTube.com, such buffoonery would have been seen once or twice on the local evening news, the commissioner would have become the butt of some brief local mockery and embarrassment, but within a few days it would all pass. But in the age of social media, millions of people around the world are able to watch the video and laugh at its absurdity on a daily basis. Some will post a link to their own website, or forward a link via e-mails to friends. This is what viral and social media is all about. This video lives forever on the world wide web and so does the commissioner’s embarrassment, mockery and humiliation, as people perpetually forward the video to their network of real friends and online acquaintances.

Situations like this are one of the reasons you should consider Social Media Training.

Social Media Training is a program I pioneered to teach communicators and executives the realities and how their reputations can be damaged by public actions that are either voluntarily, or involuntarily captured, and posted to the web.

More than a few reputations and careers have been destroyed because of what someone says in a presentation to what is perceived as a friendly group. Inevitably, an audience member records the speech or presentation, then either posts a portion of it to the web or gives it directly to the media. Cloaked with an audience of perceived friends, speakers often “cross the line” by their comments, only to face humiliation, embarrassment, and in many cases a long list of apologies and even the loss of their jobs because they thought their comments were made in private and off the record. If you are hosting a social media training class, you may wish to combine it with a presentation skills class.

Social Media Training is also needed before communicators and executives voluntarily attempt to participate in online communities. This is true whether one is responding to a posting made by someone else, or whether you are the one posting to a personal or corporate blog for your organization.

A case in point is a random blog entry I found one day as I prepared to teach a social media seminar. The blog entry was from a top executive from General Motors. The blog entry, posted on an official GM site, featured a photo of the executive. The guy in the photo looked like he was delivering an angry rant on stage at a corporate meeting. His blog entry, likewise, took an angry, rant style with a tone that personified, “I know better than you.”

His comment was a reply to a blog posting critical of GM’s poor gasoline mileage in its Sports Utility Vehicles. Because of how the executive worded his rather pompous response, many more participants in the blog criticized his parsed words and reply, which reflected the official corporate line.

In short, the executive’s poor choice of words was like throwing gasoline on a small fire, turning it into a bigger fire. It didn’t need to be that way.

Executives need to think carefully before they participate in social media and corporate communicators need to think carefully before asking or allowing executives to actively participate in social media.

There are a few basic things communicators and executives should consider in the world of social media:

1. Are you good with traditional media? If you are not good with traditional media, what makes you think you can handle social media?

2. How do you behave in public? Do you realize that every public moment of your life is potentially being photographed or recorded? Your public behavior, what you do and say, who you associate with, and where you are seen in public, can all be posted to the web for the entire world to see.

My basic rules for social media are this:

1) Every rule of media training applies to social media. Every word and how those words are phrased will be carefully scrutinized.

2) Edit what you say constantly to avoid having your comments taken out of context.

3) The rule of ethics is to ask whether you behavior in private is the same as the way you would behave if people were watching you. Congruency of behavior is important.

4) Before jumping into an online blog type discussion, you need to be prepared to use key messages and making sure those key messages have been run through the cynic filter. Bloggers are cynical and brutal.

5) Sometimes the best response to a blog posting is to ask a question. Rather than attacking a blogger for their point of view, simply ask them to further explain their point of view. Sometimes a blogger will back down as they are unable to defend their position. Sometimes other bloggers will come to your rescue with responses that match your point of view.

6) Orwell predicted that by 1984 Big Brother would be watching everything you do. Orwell was off by 20 years, because by 2004 the ability for everything you do to be watched had become a reality. Big Brother is now everyone else in the global society.

In our next lesson, we’ll return to more to the traditional setting of a news conference and look at your appearance in a news conference.

Social Media Force Fit at KFC

November 4, 2014/0 Comments/in Public Relations, Social Media /by gbraud

By Gerard Braud

A soft drink cup at KFC screamed, “SOCIAL MEDIA FORCE FIT,” as I munched on my original recipe drum stick. The cup had the hashtag “#HowDoYouKFC?”

Nothing says uncool like adults trying to get young people to be cool by doing something uncool in an attempt to be cool. (Did you follow that?) In other words, the executives and advertising team at KFC are trying to capitalize on social media hashtags with the expectations that their youthful customers will post pictures and KFC comments.

Would you post a photo and comment about your KFC?

In my training programs I always challenge the communicators and public relations attendees to determine if social media is the right fit, the wrong fit, or a force fit for the company or brand they represent.

I also challenge them to determine if they are a social media hypocrite. A social media hypocrite would be defined as someone who promotes their brand, while never really using social media to follow other brands. For example, if you manage social media for a hospital, do you promote the hospital expecting everyone to like your Facebook page, yet you never really follow your own doctor on Facebook? Do you follow your bank’s Facebook page, or your grocery store’s Facebook page?

In the case of KFC, you only need to visit Twitter to see that @KFC or #HowDoYouKFC has only marginal activity. You can also visit their Facebook page to see there is marginal activity around the hashtag campaign.

Some brands are consumer eye candy and a perfect fit for social media. Some brands don’t have enough appeal to get the pop social media can sometimes bring.

How do you use social media where you work? Are you posting on a page that no one really likes or follows? If yes, you may be exemplifying a social media force fit.

Crisis Communications: 3 Steps to Take to Manage Social Media Trolls

August 26, 2014/0 Comments/in Media Relations /by gbraud

By Gerard Braud

Would you let social media trolls take over your social media sites? In your crisis communications plan what pre-determines how you will deal with social media trolls?

Social media trolls are usually mean-spirited people who hide behind an anonymous persona and live for the joy of making other people miserable by posting mean comments on corporate social media sites. Trolls are the bullies of the social media playground.

A troll may target your social media site randomly and verbally attack your company for something they don’t like on the spur of the moment. Trolls usually seek out corporate sites during a crisis to add their mean two-cents. Trolls may rise to the level of organized activists who attack your site as a group.

Trolls are the social media equivalent of either a single activist throwing eggs on your CEO at a high profile public event or the equivalent of protesters with signs picketing outside your corporate headquarters.

Today is a good day to put time on your calendar to debate internally what your strategy should be. As expected, the debate I ignited when I posed the question of whether a social media site should ever be pulled down is an indication of the conflicting opinions and passion we see among PR people over this topic. It also means there is probably conflicting opinions internally where you work.

Do you want to wrestle with those opinions in the midst of a crisis? I hope you say NOOOoooooooo!

So what should you do? Here are 3 steps to take:

1) You should schedule time on a clear sunny day to discuss and debate this issue with your corporate leadership.

2) Next, set policy, then modify your crisis communications plan to reflect the policy.

3) Next, create a pre-written news release template that would be used to explain the rationale of your policy, should you be forced to use it in a crisis. For example, if you took your site dark, you would need to explain why to your audience. Likewise, if you allowed your site to remain up and be overrun by trolls, you might need to explain that to your audience via a statement. Remember, these statements could be posted to your website, e-mailed to employees and stakeholders, and shared with the media if necessary.

This decision is not an easy one. When I proposed that a POSSIBLE option MAY be to take a social media site dark, many PR people sited examples of companies that could never do that. Well great, I say. Yes, there are clearly premier brands that would face harsh criticism if they took their sites dark. Yet, I clearly sited brands in my discussion that I think could go dark without anyone but the trolls noticing, because the social media reach for some companies is so tiny that no one really knows they exist, nor do they care. Where does your brand fit into this equation?

Some might even say it is naive of some PR people or crisis communications consultants to say a social media site could or should never go dark, when in fact the final pulling of the plug could come at the order of the CEO. You can offer all of the wise counsel you want, but sometimes the boss ultimately has it his or her way, with complete disregard for what you think. All the more reason to have this discussion with your leadership team on a clear sunny day.

The decision making isn’t easy. Please schedule time to do it today. If you’d like me to sit in on the discussion, please give me a call at 985-624-9976.

Social Media Complicates Ebola Crisis Communications

August 6, 2014/0 Comments/in Crisis Communications, Media Relations, Social Media, Social Media for Crisis Communications /by gbraud

Ebola Facebook Crisis video Gerard Braud

Click image to watch video

By Gerard Braud

[ If you’ve come to read this crisis communications post via a link by Agnes, please read my full response and rebuttal to her via this blog update. ]

A glance at the Emory Healthcare Facebook page magnifies the complexities of crisis communications in the age of social media. I’m not a huge fan of social media in a crisis. What I see playing out on Emory’s Facebook page reconfirms my dislike of social media as a crisis communications channel. As Emory University Hospital tries to save the lives of two health professionals affected with the Ebola Virus, some people hail them as heroes. Others accuse them of jeopardizing the health of everyone in the United States and accusing Emory of doing this as a publicity stunt. Yesterday I wrote about Donald Trump’s Twitter attack on Emory.

If your business or company is in a high profile crisis, the traffic to and the comments on your Facebook page increase. The way Facebook is structured, each time a person adds a comment, good or bad, that Facebook page goes to the top of the newsfeed for everyone who follows the page.

This creates a constant battle of opinions, good and bad, right and wrong, sane and insane.

When Chobani had their yogurt recall in 2013, I warned their social media team to stop trying to fight the crisis on social media. For every positive post from a customer or the company, there were dozens of negative posts.

My best crisis communications advice is to post your primary message on your website and share that with the mainstream media. Next, e-mail the link to all of your employees. After that, e-mail the link to other stakeholders. These are the core people who need to know your message.

If you post the link to social media, avoid comments such as, “We appreciate your support and understanding.” Such remarks encourage negative comments from the cynics who don’t understand your actions and who don’t support you.

In a crisis, people can talk about you on your social media site and they can talk about you via hashtags on other sites. Given a choice, I’d rather not have a history of negative comments on my own social media site. You may find you are better off letting people vent with hashtags on other sites rather than being angry on your social media site. No option, such as this, is set in stone, but it must be considered as an option as a crisis unfolds and bleeds into social media.

Sometimes tried and true beats shiny and new. Sometimes in a crisis, you may find that it is in your best interest to rely on conventional crisis communications tools. It may be better to take your social media sites down completely until the crisis is over. Failing to consider this as a possibility is a fatal flaw. Furthermore, you may get orders from the CEO to take the site down. What then?

I trust that if your core audience needs information, they are smart enough to find it on your primary website. Don’t be distracted from your core audience and crisis response because your are fighting social media trolls. This is especially true for those of you who are a public relations team of one.

It is difficult to Tweet your way out of a crisis. It is difficult to Facebook post your way out of a crisis. It is difficult to get in an online shouting match with idiots.

Crisis Communications Management: The Ebola Expert vs. The Social Media Celebrity Alarmist

August 5, 2014/0 Comments/in Media Relations, Presentation Training, Social Media, Social Media for Crisis Communications /by gbraud

By Gerard Braud

Social media complicates crisis communications, especially when an expert is pitted against alarmists and detractors on social media. Crisis communications and crisis management get more difficult when the social media alarmist is a celebrity.

Donald Trump has taken to his Twitter account to say that people with Ebola should not be brought to the United States. His assertion detracts from what I think has been a brilliant job by the medical community to provide media training for doctors and physicians, while having a plan to manage crisis communications about the outbreak.

Doctors and physicians trained as spokespeople to be interviewed by the media have gone to great lengths to discuss the layers of protection put in place to keep the Ebola infection from spreading as two ill health workers were flown to the United States for treatment. The messages in the media have served to calm fears in a country where conventional wisdom or logic might lead one to believe Ebola could spread quickly in the U.S. if infected patients are intentionally brought here.

In a crisis, you must:

1) Plan and write your messaging on a clear sunny day

2) Be ready to turn on a dime if those who disagree with your message start to get traction.

The safety message is one that clearly needs to be written and approved long before it is never needed. Good crisis communications should be judged by how well you prepare on a clear sunny day and not how well you wing it in the heat of the crisis.

Twitter sadly gives visibility to detractors. In this case, Donald Trump, with 2.65 million followers, has tweeted these 3 tweets:

“A doctor on NBC Nightly News agreed with me-we should not bring Ebola into our country through 2 patients, but should bring docs to them.”

“Doctors have already died treating Ebola. We should not be importing the disease to our homeland.”

“The bigger problem with Ebola is all of the people coming into the U.S. from West Africa who may be infected with the disease. STOP FLIGHTS!”

What would you do if this happened to you? What expert advice would you give to your employer or client?

Donald Trump is notorious for picking fights and escalating a situation, so the medical community has to proceed with caution before fighting back on Twitter. Sometimes, the proper way to address crisis communications on social media is to respond in kind through the same social media channel. Yet that isn’t necessarily true on Twitter, nor is it true with a Donald Trump type celebrity who has a huge, loyal following who agrees with his political philosophy or agenda d’jour.

In a crisis, your communications to a detractor can easily get ugly. You have to harness the proper amount of cutting pith, while not letting it cross the line into overt anger. You must carefully zero in on your key detractor, yet carefully avoid turning it into a personality battle.

In social media, when the detractor has a huge ego, a huge budget, and a huge following, you have to consider how your response might positively or negatively escalate the war of words. You must consider whether escalating the war of words will get your message out to the world more effectively or whether it gives greater visibility to the negative comments of your detractor.

The message the medical community needs to convey is this:

“As experts in medicine, we are able to gather the top experts in disease prevention to both quarantine ill patients, as well as to take steps that may save their lives. At a time like this, we call on everyone to let the experts do what they do best, while ignoring the non-expert publicity seekers who deal in fear and not facts.”

This crisis statement could be written many ways. Often it is the editing fight and parsing of the words that makes a statement stronger, yet sometimes the editing delays the speed at which the message reaches the intended audience while making the statement weaker.

The crisis statement does not name Trump specifically, but has a bit of a bite with the phrase, “…the non-expert publicity seekers.” My guess is 50% of you would want to leave it in and 50% would want to take it out. I’d leave it in.

Media also love a good compare and contrast quote. This crisis statement clearly separates medical experts from fear mongers.

I would never advise taking this fight to Trump on Twitter. I would, however, get this message to all media outlets and specifically to all medical correspondents and all media facilities. Keep in mind, local media are interviewing local doctors at local hospitals from New York to New Orleans. In a crisis like this, you want an army of experts on your side.

The hazard of posting a 140 character version of this message to Twitter and Facebook is that these social media platforms tend to attract more non-expert publicity seeking fear mongers. My expert advice would be to post the message to your secure website, then send direct tweets to the media with a link to your official statement. Your direct message would say, “Ebola infection update (add your link)”

Trust me, you’ll get your message to the media. If you have the overwhelming urge to use your Facebook and Twitter, you might post the identical link. There is some safety in not posting the “fighting words,” but to post a calming link.

This may also be a good time to create a YouTube message. YouTube allows the emotions of the speaker to be displayed through both the visual elements and the tone of their voice. However, YouTube comments and shares may get ugly as well. But, if someone shares your video with a negative comment, the person who sees the video may be persuaded to your side.

In a crisis, there are many challenging decisions to make in a short period of time. My hope is that you are a bit stressed out right now. That’s good. Imagine if you had to fight this fight in real time? Imagine if you had to come up with all of this logic on the fly? Imagine if you had to fight with a room full of executives who disagreed with your approach?

A great way to manage your crisis communications and crisis management team in a crisis is to hold frequent crisis drills that play out a scenario with this level of complication. You should have at least one crisis communication drill each year and every drill must have complicated twists and turns of social media embedded in them. I pride myself on making drills so realistic that spokespeople cry. Occasionally we have to call a time-out because an executive is clutching his chest because the scenario is so realistic and the stress is so real.

Are you ready to deal with a crisis this stressful?

Get in touch

Follow

Braud Communications