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Crisis Communication Priorities for a Smoldering Crisis

March 28, 2013/0 Comments/in Social Media for Crisis Communications /by gbraud

(Writer’s note: Every day in March we’ll have a fresh, free, new article on this topic. If you’d like to dig deeper, you may wish to purchase a recording of the teleseminar called Social Media & Crisis Communications. Here is your purchase link.)

By Gerard Braud

As you look at crises, recognize that some crises are sudden, while others are smoldering crises. A smoldering crisis has the potential to get worse with time. You also have the ability to defuse a smoldering crisis and make it go away before it ignites.

From the perspective of the media, you can make the crisis look like a non-story. The way to make your story a non-story is to show competence, communicate in a timely manner and communicate quickly. Let’s look at two case studies.

The first case study was during the 2008 presidential elections. CNN had pegged a county in Colorado as the biggest battleground, barometer county in the country. This county would be the next Dade County, their election process would be the next hanging chad, and the spokesperson would be the next Catherine Harris.

Critics claimed was that the county was ill equipped to handle pre-election day early voting. There could be problems with the voting machines and how the votes are counted.

From a crisis management standpoint, we worked with election officials to make more voting machines available. From a crisis communications standpoint, we were up at the crack of dawn as new voting machines were put in place. Sure, we could have issued a statement… and we did. We made the decision to use YouTube to show the voting machines being set up. Seeing is believing. The voters appreciated it and the media appreciated it. Since the media didn’t want to send camera crews out at their cost at the crack of dawn, we made it easy for them to visually cover the story by using your video on YouTube.

In the process, we showed that the county was competent and going the extra mile. In the end, the media gave up their harsh predictions and took their negative news coverage elsewhere. Social media played a strong role in making a negative story go away.

Add to your to-do list to take the time to be ready to use YouTube by making a YouTube Channel now. Make sure you have an iPhone, iPad or other similar smart device that allows you to quickly shoot and post videos. You may need to learn some basic video editing skills as well.

Along the lines of making a story go away with social media via YouTube, allow me to present my case for the Tiger Woods story. When Tiger Woods had his late night accident at the end of 2009, in his own driveway, it raised a lot of questions. I’ve long said that if you don’t tell your story, the media will think you are hiding something and they will go digging. I also constantly emphasize that you need to be ready to make a statement within one hour of the point at which a crisis goes public. Is it likely Woods, after an accident, would issue a statement quickly? Not likely. An athlete of his stature has “people” and a public relations team. I would expect the team to at least have a statement ready for the first news cycle. Instead, days went by before Woods issued a statement, leading to swirling rumors.

According to the Braud belief system, the power of social media, and especially YouTube, could have done wonders for Woods. When a celebrity goes into hiding, they have something to hide. When they hide, the media go looking for a story. I think a short YouTube video that said, “Hi, this is Tiger Woods. Last night, after a late night playing cards with the guys at my country club, I was involved in an embarrassing car wreck, in of all places, my own neighborhood. I hit a fire hydrant, then pulled forward abruptly and hit a tree. To say the least, this is embarrassing. I appreciate your concern and appreciate your understanding if I let this short video suffice as my statement for now.”

Without seeing and hearing from Tiger, rumors of a marital spat and girlfriend turned into a sex scandal with more than a dozen girlfriends. There is a good chance the bigger story would never have been explored if Woods had come forward and let us see him early.

In the process of presenting my case for a YouTube video for Woods, some have indicated that Woods may have actually been injured, perhaps by his wife hitting him with a golf club. I don’t know the facts about any possible visual cuts to Tiger’s face, but even if I have to shoot the video with a bandage on my face, I would do it and explain the bandage in the video.

The Tiger Woods case study has evolved over the years, but regardless of the facts today, we can consistently observe that saying nothing made the news coverage worse.

Let’s also take a minute to talk about how social media works better for celebrities, than it does for many companies. Celebrities have fanatical fans. Celebrity fans want to follow celebrity tweets, Facebook fan pages and YouTube channels. A manufacturing company or other business may be able to attract some fans, but you don’t have the same advantage as celebrities for reaching out via social media in either good times or bad. Let’s face it, do you think I really want to sign up for the fan page for a chemical plant? For more thoughts on people wanting to follow you, please visit my article about being a social media hypocrite.

In our next article, we’ll look at one big oil company and how they attempted to use social media during their crisis.

What Are the Secrets to a Crisis Communications Plan?

March 27, 2013/0 Comments/in Social Media for Crisis Communications /by gbraud

By Gerard Braud

It is critical to pick the right tools for crisis communication and your crisis communications plan.

The right fit for crisis communications includes your official website, and a mix of crisis communications channels, placed in a priority and used according to that priority. That priority needs to be established during the planning stages of writing your crisis communications plan. That priority needs to be established on a clear sunny day, when emotions are low, anxiety is low and everyone has clarity of thought and purpose. That priority needs to be tested during crisis communications drills, so that everyone in the organization will trust the crisis communications plan and not second guess the plan on the day of your crisis.

Generally my priorities are:

1) Talk to the media on site (If there are media onsite)

2) Post information to your official website

3) Send an e-mail to all employees with a link to the website and a complete text of what is said on the website

4) Send an e-mail to other important stakeholders

5) Post short messages to your official Facebook & Twitter pages with a link to your primary website

6) Post a YouTube video with your official statement

During the planning stages, let me establish the fact that size matters. By size, I mean the size of your communications team. The organizations that use my crisis communications plans vary in size. The Internal Revenue Service has a huge staff of communicators across the U.S. There are global organizations that have employees all over the world, but some have only one or two people on their global communications staff. There are national retailers with a staff of two. There are manufacturing companies that have no communications staff at all. Therefore, when I say size matters, which tools you use and in which priority you use them is directly dependent upon how many people can help you during a crisis.

If a company has only one communicator on staff, it is difficult to do the basics of a news conference, web statement post and e-mail, and still have time to deal with social media. If a company has no trained communicator, they may have difficulty getting a statement on the web and updating social media at all.

Since so many companies have no trained communicators on staff or because they have only one or two communicators, every crisis communications plan I write is created with a failsafe mechanism. This mechanism takes into account that the person executing the plan may have zero training. I have colleagues in the communications world who disagree and believe that plans should be written for communicators only. That is a flaw, first because is failure to recognize some companies have no designated communicators. Secondly, it is a failure to realize that, in some crises, the communicator may be out of pocket and unable to execute the plan.

Your plan must be so thorough that it dictates that you sequentially do everything that a seasoned, senior communicator would do in a crisis. At the same time, it must be so clearly written that anyone who can read and follow directions can execute it. This is a much more difficult plan to write because it must be thorough, yet simple, while at the time not being simplistic.

When I first set out to write such a plan, the first draft took 150 hours and the second draft took another 100 hours. At 250 hours of writing, I tore it down with the goal to make it easier to execute yet impossible to screw up. That plan now has 1,500 hours of development in it and guess what? It is a living plan, which means it continues to evolve and grow.

I consider plans that state only standard operating procedures to be too simplistic and dangerous. This is because there are no mandates to take action in the plan and there are no timelines that must be met in the plan. You can find them online just by searching for crisis communications plans. Many universities use these flawed plans. On the day of the Virginia Tech shooting on April 16, 2007, the university had just such a plan.

The Virginia Tech plan had not been updated in five years, which means it wasn’t a living plan. It contained no names or contact information for anyone. It had no pre-written statements. The directions were so simple that the entire plan looks like it could have been written by a freshman PR student on their first day in class. The plan simply listed standard operating procedures.

Meanwhile, the thorough yet simple approach I advocate embeds the standard operating procedure with a list of chronological steps to take. It has specific instructions to communicate at specific time intervals. It includes a statement within one hour or less of the onset of the crisis, and again at the beginning of the second hour of the crisis, if it is an ongoing crisis.

Take a moment to add to your to-do list time to review your plan and ask yourself if your plan is a simplistic list of standard operating procedures that can only be executed by a trained communicator. If it is, add to your to-do list the need for a major re-write.

If you have questions, I welcome your phone call. I’m at 985-624-9976. My two-day workshop to write and complete your crisis communications plan is the fastest way to get what you need.

Be a Control Freak with Your Crisis Communication

March 23, 2013/0 Comments/in Social Media for Crisis Communications /by gbraud

By Gerard Braud

Your first choice when “it” hits the fan should be to use the crisis communications channels that you have the greatest control over, that reach the broadest audiences, and that offer you the greatest stability.

Many people think you can’t control the media, but I have a long track record of controlling the media with spokespeople that I have put through a thorough media training class.

Good media training means going far beyond developing three key messages. I think the three key message system is bull. Simply giving an executive three bullet points and asking them to talk and ad lib about those issues as much as possible in an interview is often a recipe for disaster. Many are not naturally gifted at filtering their words on the fly. Many might hit the bullet points, but phrase their answers in a negative nature, rather than in a positive sentence structure.

Ask yourself, why would you ask a spokesperson to completely ad lib an interview with bullet points, when you could achieve better results by giving them time to internalize, carefully worded sentences with a positive sentence structure?

I believe that the key to successful media training is being able to tell a deep story. The story should be filled with quotes from the minute your spokesperson opens their mouth. The spokesperson should be trained to end each answer in a place that creates a cliffhanger, and generates a question that they want to be asked. To that extent, you control the message, you control the questions, and therefore you also control the media.

I’ll get to my priority list of tools later, but first let’s look at a case study that shows the dangers of depending upon social media and why it is a bad fit.

Have you ever gotten the smiley whale page on Twitter? It’s the page that says Twitter is over capacity. If you are depending upon Twitter to handle your crisis communications and Twitter is over capacity, you are screwed. In a crisis, chatter increases on both land based and cell phone networks, as well as on social media sites. Making social media a high priority is a bad idea because the probability exists for those tools to fail you when you anticipated that you would need them the most.

The next reason I think social media is a bad fit is because the sites and profiles are so very easy to hack. This happened to Burger King recently. Their entire account was hacked. Read more about it in one of my previous articles.

Beyond the straight Twitter hack, in seconds someone can create a profile with a name that is similar to your profile, causing confusion for the social media audience. Additionally, security is low on social media sites. Virtually everyone I know who uses Facebook has received a direct message from a friend who is allegedly in London, has been allegedly mugged, and who is allegedly asking you to wire money to them because their credit cards and cash have been stolen. This is a hack. The hacker uses deductive reasoning to determine a password.

How many of us have received a Tweet from a friend tells us they made an extra $500 last week and that I can too if I link a website? Or a friend sends a link that says someone has posted a compromising picture of you online. Those messages all came from Twitter accounts that had been hacked. My point is some social media is a bad fit because it is vulnerable to failure and the fix is beyond your control.

Take out your to-do list and schedule time to evaluate which forms of communications are a bad fit and which forms of communications are the right fit.

How to Write a Crisis Communications Plan with Pre-Written Statements

March 7, 2013/0 Comments/in Social Media for Crisis Communications /by gbraud

By Gerard Braud

In crisis communications, you should have two types of pre-written communication
documents. The first is for fast release, called a “First Critical Statement.” Some companies call these “holding statements.”

The First Critical Statement is a way to tell the world that a) a crisis has happened, b) you know about it, c) your organization is dealing with it, and d) you will provide more information as soon as you have it. To get a free download use the coupon code CRISISCOMPLAN when you select the item from my shopping cart.

The second type of statement is much more thorough, which brings us back to your assignment to conduct a vulnerability assessment.

The reason you are asked to conduct a vulnerability assessment is because as a communicator, you may be called upon to issue one or more statements or news releases about any or all of these events.

Referring back to my previous confession of my propensity to always be prepared and to go above and beyond when writing a crisis communications plan, my goal for you is to create a large addendum in your crisis communications plan, where you will have written one document for each crisis you identify in your vulnerability assessment.

Because I’ve written crisis communications plans since 1996, for organizations in every conceivable business, government sector and non-profit sector, I maintain a huge library of pre-written documents. When writing a crisis communications plan with clients, we convene a writing retreat with a team of writers. The outcome is that we customize templates using a proprietary writing technique. The end result is that at the end of the day, your crisis communications plan addendum is quickly filled with 75 to 100 pre-written documents.

The documents contain a series of multiple choices and fill in the blank options, mixed with factual statements that are true today and will be true on the day of the crisis. The document provides great context, the appropriate degree of remorse or contrition, plus great quotes designed to drive public and media perception.

Because these are written on a clear sunny day when emotions are low and anxiety is absent, we are able to produce a better document than the one you might right when you are under a crisis deadline with high emotions.

Additionally, because these crisis communication documents are written on a clear sunny day, you have ample time for your executive team to read and pre-approve the documents for fast release.

Previously I set for you a goal to communicate effectively within one hour of less of the onset of the crisis. Often, critical life-saving time is lost because executives and lawyers anguish and languish over words in your news release. You then lose valuable time in rewrites. This pre-written and pre-approved approach works wonders and speeds up the entire crisis communication process.

The rule here: One pre-written document for each item in the vulnerability assessment.

Your options are to write them yourself, call on me to hold a writing retreat for you, or hire and agency to write them for you. Pick the one that works best for your, your time budget and your financial budget.

In our next article, we’ll cover the steps you need to take to get from the flashpoint of the crisis to the release of information about your crisis.

How to Write a Crisis Communication Plan? Step One: Identify What Could Go Wrong?

March 6, 2013/0 Comments/in Social Media for Crisis Communications /by gbraud

By Gerard Braud

The decision to use social media for crisis communications is not a decision you should make independent of considering your holistic approach to crisis communication.

Social media is only one set of tools that may be in your communications tool box. All tools must be considered, including very traditional approaches, including news conferences, news releases, e-mail and your website. In the workshops I teach and at the conferences where I am asked to speak, I often tell the audience that “tried and true beats shiny and new.” And helping you understand the pros and cons of social media in a crisis and what is the best approach for your organization, is the purpose of this series of articles.

My goal is for you to decide what the “right fit” is for you, rather than perhaps the “force fit” that I see many people using.

But before we go further with our discussion of social media, we must lay a solid foundation for crisis communication with a solid Crisis Communications Plan.

If you want to write a successful Crisis Communication Plan, you need to start with the end in mind. This is a two-fold process. Part of the process is to know every crisis your company, school, hospital, chemical plant, refinery, electric company non-profit, or government agency may face. Another part of the process is to imagine how each of these crises will unfold and what you will be called upon to communicate during the crisis. What will the media want to hear from you and when? What will your employees want to hear from you and when? What will your other stakeholders want to hear from you and when? Should social media be part of your crisis communications strategy?

Step one in writing a Crisis Communications Plan is to conduct a vulnerability assessment. I have two different approaches I use with my clients, and you can use either of these approaches where you work. You can either do this on your own or call me for assistance.

Approach one is to schedule visits with many individuals throughout your organization to ask them what they fear may go wrong and cause a crisis. It is important to visit with people from all layers of your organization. What your top executives experience every day will shape their perception of what might go wrong. But there are many people in middle management and entry level jobs who see risks every day that you need to be aware off.

As you gather their thoughts, compile them in a spreadsheet so we can evaluate them further. Cluster them by types of crises, such as natural disasters, criminal, business operations, financial, technical, computer/IT related, or executive misbehavior.

A second approach I use is to facilitate a group meeting with people from each department within the organization. I segregate them by departments at round tables through the room. Each group is lead through a facilitated discussion about what defines a crisis. Next, the groups are asked to discuss and list all of the potential crises within their realm of responsibility. Each group then presents their list of potential crises for the group, so we can engage in discussions about how to deal with these crises. In some cases, we come up with great ways to eliminate problems and change policies or procedures in order to lesson the chance that a specific crisis might happen.

In both approaches, I define a crisis as any event that may affect the reputation and profits of the institution, which may also affect the institution’s ability to serve their customers.

A few words of warning: Risk managers often offer to let you use their vulnerability assessment. The problem with the vulnerability assessment from a risk manager is that they base their responses on high, medium and low probabilities of a crisis happening. In communications, the risk probability is irrelevant. Your job is to communicate any time a crisis happens.

Another warning is that risk managers and emergency operations directors often focus only on production related crises, such as the products made, the services offered, the equipment used, or the direct threats to human health or the environment. Absent from their lists will be things like sexual harassment, discrimination based on race or gender, or embezzlement.

Please don’t let their approach overshadow the approach you must take to plan for and exercise your communication functions.

Please recognize that if there is a fire and explosion, the Risk Management Plan, the Emergency Operations Plan, and the Crisis Communications Plan, will all be executed simultaneously. We call this type of crisis a “sudden” crisis. But if an executive is accused of sexual harassment and the case is getting public attention, neither the Risk Management Plan, nor the Emergency Operations Plan will be triggered. But the Crisis Communications Plan is triggered and must be used. We call this type of crisis a “smoldering” crisis.

A final word of caution: Don’t let the people who use the Risk Management Plan or the Emergency Operations Plan convince your executives that they have everything covered, because they may call their plan a “Crisis Plan,” and confuse it with your “Crisis Plan.” Truth be told, everyone should stop using the term “Crisis Plan” and use 3 specific names for their plans: Risk Management Plan, Emergency Operations Plan (sometimes called an Incident Command Plan), and Crisis Communications Plan.

With that said, we’ll stop for the day and your assignment is to begin your vulnerability assessment.

“I Cannot Tell A Lie” — If George Washington’s Quote Applied to Social Media and Public Relations

February 17, 2013/0 Comments/in Social Media, Social Media for Crisis Communications /by gbraud

By Gerard Braud

Yet one more group of public relations and marketing professionals has asked me to speak at their PR & Marketing conference about the wonderful ways social media will allow them to connect and sell to their customers. I love to speak at conferences, but I cannot tell a lie, especially about social media and the return on investment (ROI) for companies.

I cannot tell you to use social media for positive ROI without talking about the negative ROI.

Too many PR and marketing professionals still mistakenly think social media is their magic bullet. The truth is, one size does NOT fit all. One company may get great ROI through social media while other companies will generate zero buzz or attraction.

The reality is, one should never talk about the positive side of social media for sales and marketing without talking about the negative effects of social media. It can destroy an organization’s reputation, which then negatively affects the revenues. Social media is a dangerous double-edged sword that cuts both ways. I’ve spoken at many conferences which focus too heavily on social media marketing, without full consideration of the “the big picture.”

Some organizations and brands are a perfect fit for social media. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Chobani Yogurt, which benefited from a huge love fest on social media from people who first discovered the product when it first appeared on store shelves a few years ago. Their following developed organically and company benefited from the loyalty of their customers.

This might not be as true for a bank, hospital, electric company, oil company, etc.

One needs to consider the demographics of the social media audience. Chobani is a darling for the social media active 18 – 32 age group, especially among females.

Meanwhile, many of my clients in the rural electric cooperative sector are in communities consisting of primarily older residents who are less active on social media and who are not constantly using their iPhones for calls, texting, and social media. Many are farmers and ranchers who are working the fields all day and not sitting in front of a computer, laptop, tablet or phone. Also, the rural residents who are young and active on social media don’t want to talk about, or follow, or “Like” their rural electric company, their bank, their hospital, or any of the other industries that don’t understand the true nature of social media.

Despite the success of Chobani on social media, when Chobani had a product recall recently, their brand got beat up by their detractors. Meanwhile, my rural electric co-ops, which get little traffic in good times, get a significant increase in traffic during their crisis events, especially when there is bad weather and a power outage.

In the world of social media, too much focus is on Facebook and Twitter, with not enough emphasis on YouTube and videos, which then requires photographic skills and trained spokespeople. In the world of social media, younger folks are leaving Facebook for Instagram and Pinterest. These forms of social media are even more difficult to use for ROI and sales for service industries, while it might be the best marketing for chic consumer brands. In the world of Twitter, only 16% of the population uses it, which makes it hard to use to reach customers, yet it is widely used by the media during a crisis.

In talking about social media one must be careful that young sales, PR & Marketing professionals who use social media daily, think the entire world is ready to embrace social media. The hypocrisy is that they want to market and sell their companies using social media, while the reality is that they have no personal desire to follow a bank, hospital or electric company on social media. A sales, marketing or PR person is doing a disservice to their organization to think they can significantly generate new customers and spread the world about new lines of business without recognizing that:

a) the demographics may not support their belief

b) the “sexiness” of the product may not support their beliefs

c) social media may have a greater negative impact on ROI than it has a positive impact on ROI.

The reality may be that they cannot justify the investment of their time in social media.

So… yes, I can customize a program for your conference if it is focused on all aspects of social media – the good, the bad and the ugly — but I cannot do a program that tells the audience social media is a rosy, wonderful world.

Media Training Coach Tip: The Top 4 Reasons Media are Considered Biased

October 11, 2011/0 Comments/in Media Relations /by gbraud

There is much debate about whether the media are biased; especially whether there is a liberal bias. If you truly want to explore that subject, I suggest you read the book Bias by Bernard Goldberg. (http://www.amazon.com/Bias-Insider-Exposes-Media-Distort/dp/0895261901)

It has been my experience over the years that much of what is perceived as bias is really the result of the following:

• Editors send reporters out of the door armed with only partial facts or rumors

• The reporters and editors have misconceptions or misperceptions about you or your issues

• A competitor or opponent of yours has approached the media and only told them half of the story

• Ignorance by the reporter

All four of the above result in the reporter calling you, asking for an interview, asking you negative questions, and putting you in a defensive posture.

Let’s break it down.

Partial facts are usually the result of rumors and innuendos. We all share rumors every day. “Hey, you know what I heard today…?” In the newsroom, a reporter or editor turns that rumor into a research project and must confirm or refute it. “Hey Gerard, I heard a rumor today that… Why don’t you go check it out?”

That rumor would become my assignment for the day. If there is a rumor that the mayor is on cocaine, then I try to prove that the mayor is using cocaine. If he is, it is a story. If he isn’t, then there is no story. If the rumor is that the married congressman has a girlfriend, then I try to prove the congressman has a girlfriend. If it is true, I have a story. If I can’t prove it, then there is no story.

You may not like it, but it is the nature of the business.

The next issue is very similar; it’s the impact of a misconception or misperceptions. Often this is purely subjective. Perhaps you are proposing a new development, but something just seems shady. Then the news report may likely reflect a tone of skepticism. The reporter may even seek out a 3^rd party who is willing to cast further doubt on your project or credibility.

On the issue of opponents – I’ve watched many opponents make compelling cases and provide an enormous amount of supporting material and a hefty helping of innuendo. In the U.S. they’re often called “opposition groups” while around the world they are called “NGOs,” which stands for non-government organizations.

Usually the members of these groups are very passionate about a specific issue and those issues may be considered liberal issues. If a member of one of these groups makes a compelling case to a reporter, they could trigger a news report about you or your company. The reporter may come armed with reams of documentation supplied by the opponent, placing you in a defensive position. The resulting story could portray you in a very negative light.

And the final issue is ignorance by the reporter. Sometimes reporters just get the wrong idea about something and pursue it as a negative story. For example, most reporters look at steam belching from an industrial facility and think they are seeing pollution. Hence, they may do a story about industry polluting and fill the report with images of the stack belching what looks like smoke.

When you are faced with a situation like this, you need to explain everything to them in simple terms the way you would explain it to a 6^th grade class at career day.

Chances are the media are not “out to get you.” But somebody else may be out to get you and they are letting the media do their dirty work.

Lesson 25: Social Media Training

May 29, 2009/0 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 MySpace.com, 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.

I’m Trying to Give Away $100 and No One Will Take It

April 12, 2009/in BraudCasting, IABC 2009 Conference /by gbraud

By Gerard Braud

www.braudcommunications.com

I feel like such the Social Media middle man. Check this out… I was giving a keynote speech to 100 executives who belong to an association. The topic was similar to my upcoming topic at the IABC 2009 Conference, which is New Frontiers in Media Training, which will include Social Media Training — blending Media Training skills with Social Media realities.

I asked if anyone in the room could tell me what I am doing?

I started getting answers such as, “you are giving a speech.”

It was just one more indicator of the generational and cultural gap between the techno savvy Web 2.0 crowd and leaders who don’t have a clue about what is going on in the Social Media world.

I’m guessing every one of you reading this blog knows how to find out what I am doing? Some of you are going there right now to find out.

I told the executives to think beyond what they see in front of them to understand what I am doing. I told them that people around the world could tell me what I was doing without even being here. They were befuddled.

So I asked if any of them had ever heard of Twitter? A few responded yes. I asked if any of them had a Twitter account? None did. I asked if any of them had a Facebook account? A few hands went up. I asked how many had ever watched a video on YouTube? A few more hands went up this time. I asked how many had ever posted a video to YouTube? Only one person had.

I asked how many in the audience thought I was speaking a foreign language when I used terms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Finally, most raised their hands amid loud laughter.

The lesson here is we have much to teach our executives when it comes to Social Media. Social Media is the new ambush, capable of catching an executive doing something stupid. Social Media is more dangerous than the old style 60 Minutes TV interviews on CBS News in the United States.

I hope you’ll join me in San Francisco at the IABC Conference so we can explore this topic together.

Please post your comments below…

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And if you have a team of executives in your company or in an association, who need to hear from me, I’m always happy to make a presentation to them. Just send an e-mail to me at gerard@braudcommunications.com

Gerard’s Top 5 Tips for 2009 – Day 5 – Social Media Training

January 16, 2009/0 Comments/in 2009 Top 5 Tips /by gbraud

In 2009 I think you need to introduce Social Media Training where you work. I started teaching Social Media Training for 2 reasons and the classes generally take 2 forms. One form is to teach executives and blog leaders the proper way to communicate in online forums. The second form is to help executives realize that their bad behavior on and off the job can easily be recorded on a video cell phone and posted to YouTube for all to see, doing more damage than an old style ambush interview by traditional media.

For those of you with executives who participate or lead online forums, I’d ask you to ask and answer these questions to determine if you need Social Media Training:

• Does the executive know how to use key messages when communicating online?

• Does the executive know how to handle negative comments online?

• How well do the executive’s comments hold up when they are run through cynic filter?

• Does the executive’s comments ever sound angry, defensive or hostile online?

• Does the executive know the power of a question?

Let me respond to each of these:

Social media, especially participation in a blog, requires a certain degree of rawness. It would be a mistake to fill a blog with lots of PRBS. But at the same time, there is a case to be made for staying on message and guiding the discussion, just as one learns in traditional media training. Blog leaders need to realize that what they say is not a naked conversation, but a conversation that is on the record for all the world to see. Through good Social Media Training you can have the best of both worlds.

Negative comments arise quickly in social spaces. They can be harsh and mean. In conventional Media Training you are taught how to handle a negative question from a reporter. Some of those same techniques can be effective online.

The blogosphere is a very cynical place. Training will help a blog leader, podcaster or video caster look at their own comments from the cynic’s point of view.

Anger is the worst way to respond in conventional media and also the worst way to respond in social media. He who keeps his cool wins, in my opinion. The person who takes the humble position will ultimately gain public favor. Even if you are confronted with anger, the right move is to respond with kindness and respect, to use your training techniques for addressing negatives and to fall back to your key messages where appropriate.

I’ve been successfully teaching that one of the most powerful tools in online response is to ask a question, rather than respond defensively. For example, if someone makes a negative comment, rather than trying to shoot down the comment, ask the other person a question, such as, “could you elaborate more on your thoughts so I can better understand your point of view?” I have found that when they further explain their position, it begins to fall apart and exposes lies, rumors and innuendos. This creates a platform for you to toss out the lies, rumors and innuendos, then explain your position as it pertains to the remaining issues. Sometimes you won’t even have to respond because others will shoot down the lies, rumors and innuendos for you.

These are the primary points to cover for executives who proactively participate in social media.

On the other end of the spectrum are those who don’t have a clue about viral videos and then get recorded on camera behaving badly in either an official or social capacity. I’ve seen countless examples of reputations being destroyed, jobs being lost and irreparable harm being done in such situations.

To give you a few examples, a few years ago at a gathering of U.S. Marines, a Marine leader was giving a hoorah type speech. He thought he was among an audience that was in 100 percent agreement with him and loyal to the esprit de corps. The father of a Marine was video taping the speech when the leader made negative comments about gays. The father was offended and handed the tape over to the media. The media showed the video and the leader career was swiftly terminated.

This scenario points out that leaders need to be admonished that they are potentially being recorded 24/7/365. And while the example I gave resulted in the mainstream media becoming involved, in the world of YouTube those same videos can be quickly posted to the web for the entire connected world to see. Then the blogosphere lights up with comments about the video.

The viral video world also means that some of your official corporate videos are being seen by audiences that you never expected to have access. As you produce corporate videos, you need to run them through the cynic filter and ask yourself how would the outside world respond if they saw this video. A case in point is a video by Ernst & Young. It appears the video was shot at a corporate leadership meeting and then shown at a larger annual meeting. Based on my video experience, it was a very expensive video to produce, complete with a band and “hot girl” lead singer. For the video, the company took the liberty of changing the lyrics of a traditional Gospel song, called, “Oh Happy Days.” Whereas the original lyrics included the phrase, “Oh happy days, when Jesus was born,” the new lyrics said, “Oh happy days at Ernst & Young.” Yes, they took Jesus out. This created an uproar once the video became viral. Wow, good thing they didn’t parody a song of Islam and remove the name of Mohammad. As I first viewed the video, my cynic filter notice that there was only one black person in the entire video and the only Latino or Hispanic individuals were seen working in the kitchen. Additionally, with respect to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who tells us that whites clap on beats 1 and 3 while blacks clap on beats 2 and 4, I noticed that in many respects he is right and that in many respects, many of the people in the video cannot find beats 1 and 3 or 2 and 4. This is especially true for the bearded guy down front who is seen more times than anyone else. I’m guessing he is the CEO. Watch the video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaIq9o1H1yo

In other cases, individuals make fools of themselves in media interviews, only to have the media or a viewer upload the video to the web. In one such example, a county commissioner is confronted by a reporter following a public hearing. When the commissioner is questioned by the reporter, every one of the commissioner’s responses centers around asking the reporter if he knows that Jesus loves him. Such a response was not germane to the question and positioned the commissioner as a buffoon. In years past, such a video would have only been seen 2 or 3 times on the news, resulting in a few days of teasing for the commissioner. These days, the video lives forever on the web for all to laugh at. See it at: http://www.myragantv.com/video/?d=299 or at: http://blurbomat.com/archives/2007/10/10/gotta-love-jesus/

There are also a bevy of blogs that comment about this video.

Recently I was training a client who happened to be a public official. While we were out in public, the official got in a shouting match with 3 people in their 20s. I quickly intervened, because I feared one of them would whip out a cell phone and record video.

The fact is, old style ambush media interviews have been replaced by viral media and most people over 35 years old don’t have a clue about viral media. I see this as one of the biggest threats to reputations and profits in 2009.

Well there you have it, five days worth of information I think you need to know to make 2009 a good year.

If you have questions about any of the things I discussed, just pick up the phone and call me at 985-624-9976 or send an e-mail to me. The address is gerard@braudcommunications.com

Best of luck to you in your communications endeavors for the coming year.

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