New Media, New Minefields?
Crisis management in the age of new media
By Clancey Houston, Managing Director, Insights & Ideas Group, Burson-Marsteller Asia Pacific

The blogosphere, chatrooms, the ubiquitous text message, all symbols of the age of “new media” and a phenomenon that is connecting people like never before. A company’s ability to connect and engage with its stakeholders is at the heart of building a brand or nurturing a corporate reputation. And in the age of new media, tremendous new tools are available for doing just that. But, what about when a crisis hits? How do these tools come into play, both in terms of how that crisis unfolds and how it is contained?

First, a look at a few new realities.

• News is no longer cyclical. It is updated by the minute, and appears in blog space or online copy, as well as in column inches.
• Today’s flow of information takes local issues global and helps global issues find local relevance, often within hours of that first blog posting or text message chain.
• Communities that span continents, age groups and backgrounds can be created at the speed of light, with a few clicks of the mouse, and are often galvanized around specific issues.
• Citizen journalists, bloggers and net groups regularly “break” a story – think “Processorgate” – by amplifying under-the-radar noise or by posting an online opinion that starts a community dialogue, often replete with speculation and rumor.
• This unprecedented power, to take minor issues or mainstream media stories and amplify them tremendously in unexpected ways in a very short period of time, can take an issue to its boiling point before a company even knows a problem exists.

What does this mean for those who must contend with the fallout when a crisis hits? The basic principles of crisis management – Anticipate, Act, Reassure and Recover – remain true. But now they must incorporate the intangible space of new media and employ a mindset that recognizes these new realities.

Upgrade Your Radar

• Know your communities. Understand what they think day to day, not just once a year. Converse with them directly, monitoring and analyzing their influence and then engaging with them in an appropriate way, whether online or off.
• Think through the eyes of all external stakeholders, down to the individual. You won’t think of every issue, but will identify broad areas of vulnerability that will help you anticipate future issues.
• Scan locally as well as globally. New technology has made issues and crises more global, but they are still influenced by local sensitivities, cultures, history and context, often creating unexpected twists and turns.
  

Start in Overdrive

• Establish more expansive systems and structures with greater depth and breadth that can move with speed when an issue appears, whether on a blog, in a chat room, or in print.
• Think worst case at the start and ponder how the dynamics of the Internet and mobile messaging can bring it about.
• Communicate within 2-3 hours of a first alert. One no longer has until the paper goes to print to respond – a situation can change online a hundred times in an hour.
• Do what you say, and do it today. Especially today, words are not enough – running critiques of how a crisis is being handled are becoming commonplace, updated online by the minute. It is essential to act quickly on commitments, not just put out press releases announcing them, and to recognize that addressing an issue may involve changing business behavior, not just communicating.
  

Work Like a Surgeon

• All audiences are important, but in a crisis amplifiers are key. Identify those individuals within an online community who can move an issue from small-scale to tipping point. These “e-fluentials” can magnify the importance or severity of a story within their world, so know who they are and connect with them specifically.
• Focus on the obvious hotspots: the major portals, online communities or blogs with the most noise, most vicious rumors, or broadest reach, and address those first with tailored engagement.
  

Adapt Your Methods

• Use new media tools to manage a new media onslaught: blog monitoring services, which monitor Internet buzz; blogsearch options offered at major search engines can help identify hot spots; and key phrase analysis technology can flag particularly touchy subjects and specific issues when the first posting appears.
• Other tools will help the response: the corporate website, executive blogs, micro sites posted at a leading local portal, or issue-specific corporate podcasts.
• Remember the person behind the posting. An individual’s behavior can be very different online than offline. So look at ways to engage vocal e-fluentials offline, fostering conversations that allow you to listen as well as get your message across.

When the incredible power of the Internet gets fingers tapping on keyboards across the globe, one never knows what product, brand or corporate name will be the focus of the discussion. By being prepared and maintaining a continuous focus on watching, listening and acting, you just might keep the blog postings positive, the chatrooms rumor-free and the word-of-mouth mentions supportive when the discussion hits your brand.