YouTube, Media Relations & Crisis Communications for Cleveland Kidnapping Victims

By Gerard Braudyoutube

YouTube is great for crisis communications. It is even more powerful when this social media tool is combined with traditional crisis communications and media relations.

Hats off to my colleague Barbara Paynter at Hennes Paynter Communications for the way her team used YouTube with regard to the three Cleveland women who underwent years as kidnapping victims. They include Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight.

As a self-admitted control freak, I love that Barbara and her team used YouTube this way.

This technique gives the PR team and the spokespeople complete control over the content of what they say. This, thereby, controls what the media can use.

YouTube keeps reporters from asking uncomfortable questions of these three women, who are likely still in a fragile emotional state.

YouTube allows the women to take their message unfiltered and unedited to the world, via social media.

Given the choice, the only additional thing I may have done is to also upload this same video to CNN as an iReport.

You can read more in the USA Today report.

Good job to the people who got the domain name I wanted before I could get it: http://www.crisiscommunications.com/

I ended up with www.crisiscommunicationsplans.com which still serves my purpose.

To learn more about how to create great videos for the web, follow this link to a 23 video tutorial.

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