Month: February 2013

Keep your ear to the ground and catch the need for crisis management early on

The earlier you detect a building crisis, the more effective your crisis management is able to be, but how can you catch a crisis that’s barely beginning to bubble up?

These days, social media serves as the world-wide watercooler, fostering conversation, debate, rumors and even revolution, so what better place to look for indications that trouble’s on the way?

In the following quote, from a Business2Community blog post, social media expert Jasmine Jaume describes what you should be watching for:

The most obvious method for determining possible crises is to monitor the volume of conversation about your brand online.

If a sudden peak occurs, or conversation appears to be increasing at an unusual rate – especially if it is of negative sentiment – take a look into what that conversation is about.

By looking into the conversation you will have a greater understanding of why volumes have increased and can then act on it appropriately before it escalates.

It’s really not terribly complicated when you get down to it. Set up whatever your chosen social media utility is to track mentions of not only company account names, but also your key terms, your competition’s names, you get the idea. The goal is to catch any bit of talk that could remotely affect your organization, and to catch it long before it’s the trending topic du jour. Will there be a load of results that have little to no significance? Absolutely, but you’ll also catch the social spikes that indicate the early makings of a crisis.

For example…

This is certainly work, and you’ll need someone who knows both your business and at least the basics of crisis management to properly keep a handle on the social buzz, but compare these two situations and see which you’d prefer.

Scenario one: A wheelchair-bound customer visits your flagship retail store, only to find that a great deal of it is inaccessible to those with disabilities. They turn to social media to vent their frustrations, and friends pick up the cause, crying out against your organization and its unfair practices.

Your name starts to pop up left and right with negative hashtags trailing every post, but you never even see them, further increasing the anger level in everyone involved. Civil rights groups pick up on the chatter, and the next thing you know your poor architectural planning has sparked Facebook hate groups and you’re being painted as inhuman and uncaring all over the evening news.

Scenario two: A wheelchair-bound customer visits your flagship retail store, only to find that a great deal of it is inaccessible to those with disabilities. They turn to social media to vent their frustrations, and friends pick up the cause, crying out against your organization and its perceived unfair practices.

Now, here’s where watching for social spikes comes in!

Your social media monitoring catches the uproar and you quickly step in to apologize profusely and announce plans to install ramps and elevators in major locations. In a few short weeks you invite the offended customer to test-drive the new store layout and the local media turns out to capture a feel-good story while you rake in the praise on social media.

Is there even any question of which one’s the better situation for everyone involved? If you take a few moments to look at many major crises, you will see that the tipping point came when early concerns went unaddressed, causing them to flare up into majorly negative sentiment.

Active social media monitoring will help prevent crises, as well as better positioning you to make the ultimate crisis management coup – turning crisis into opportunity. Watch for social spikes, and be ready for action when they appear. That’s not all there is to it, but it’s certainly an strong start.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

Mold crisis management messaging to fit a Tweet and reap the benefits

Today you’re more likely to catch a breaking story on Twitter than the evening news. Both professional and amateur (read: everyone else) reporters are using Twitter to share and discuss current events every minute of every day, and that’s exactly why you need to craft what social media expert Melissa Agnes called “tweet-worthy messages” in a recent blog post:

In a crisis, you want your message to be powerful, to the point, memorable and seen by the right people. Being prepared with a strategic and to-the-point soundbite is a good way to accomplish this crisis communications mission. Now, what if your soundbite was so strategically thought-out that it was short enough to fit into a tweet – and better yet, short enough to be retweeted by others?

This would:

• Up your chances of retweets, and thus providing you with the potential for maximum views
• Make your message easy for others to write about, talk about and share
• Leave your audience with choice-words that are memorable and to the point

By crafting short messages that easily fit in below Twitter’s 140-character limit, you are greatly increasing the potential reach of your crisis management messaging. Instead of simply reading a statement and moving on or, perhaps worse, shortening it themselves and getting key points or facts wrong, interested parties will be able to share your exact statement with the click of a button.

A side benefit of the extreme short form is that it really forces you to hone your messages down to a fine point. There won’t be any rambling explanations or overcomplicated techno-babble here, just short, precise statements that convey the desired points.

If you’re in a crisis, you can all but guarantee Twitter will somehow be involved. Make the most of it by creating tweetable soundbites and let your audience help you get your story out there.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

Crisis management means staying vigilant against potential threats

A man in the United Kingdom is the 11th reported patient to be suffering from a new “SARS-like” virus and health officials are trying to determine if the virus is being passed from person to person.

The virus was first reported in September when a Qatari man and woman from Saudi Arabia were found to be suffering from a new type of coronoavirus.

Coronaviruses, which include the common cold and SARS, can, at their worst, cause acute pneumonia and kidney failure, the result of inflammation.

Since the virus was first reported, five of the 11 known patients have died, with the majority needing intensive care.

This quote, from an ABC News article by Gillian Mohney, explains the facts behind a new type of coronavirus that is causing severe respiratory illness in infected adults. While certainly no cause for panic, the continued spread of what is being called a “SARS-like” virus could be evidence of a smoldering crisis. Just the comparison with SARS, alone, is likely to elicit fear.

What is a smoldering crisis, you may ask? A smoldering crisis is a situation that starts out small, but contains the potential to grow into a much larger, more devastating issue should it continue on its current course.

With crises like this one, where no direct action is likely to have an impact one way or another, the smart move is simply to keep it on your radar. Be aware that there is a virus, similar to others, like SARS, that have triggered dangerous outbreaks, and stay up to date on the latest news regarding the situation.

As with just about every health risk that presents itself these days, the CDC has set up an excellent website filled with information on the virus, and should there be any travel alerts or a spike in risk associated with the virus that page will likely be the first place to have verified information.

Many crises smolder briefly and simply run out of fuel without ever requiring a response, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe to ignore potential risks. Vigilance is an essential cornerstone of crisis management, stay alert, aware, and informed of anything that could impact you and your business.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

Did Carnival learn anything from a similar 2010 incident?

As passengers stranded on Carnival Cruise’s Triumph share stories of disgusting conditions, including cabin carpets soaked with water and urine, overflowing toilets, sewage leaking down walls and four-hour lines for hot food, one has to wonder just how seriously Carnival takes its crisis management planning.

The ship was left floating after a fire took out its propulsion system, but that was the least of Carnival’s concerns. Apparently it also caused a ship-wide power failure that took out the climate control systems, virtually all onboard lighting and, for some reason, threw a wrench in the ship’s sewage system as well.

It’s not as if Carnival is a stranger to fire-related problems on its ships either. In 2010, the Carnival Splendor was left without power following a fire, and the brand took a major reputation hit as horror stories from travelers aboard that ship made news across the country.

Tugs are still pulling the Triumph as of this writing, and it is expected to finally make landfall in Mobile, Alabama sometime tomorrow. At that point, you can bet that passengers are going to be lining up to share their distress with anyone who will listen, including morning shows, local news and, of course, the Internet.

For Carnival, we would recommend making everyone’s return home as comfortable as possible. First-class air accommodations and travel to and from the airports would be a good start, as well as assigning plenty of staff to be physically on-hand when the ship arrives in port to at least partially absorb the litany of complaints that are certain to be on the tip of every disembarking customer’s tongue.

At the same time, the cruise line needs to take a serious look at how its on-ship systems can be better protected from fire, and prepare contingency plans that better cope with system failure.

There are plenty of options available for people looking to take a cruise, and in a competitive business world it doesn’t take too many major problems like this one to swing the advantage to another organization. At this point Carnival is risking its name becoming synonymous with a disastrous trip, and that’s not a reputation it wishes to become ingrained in the public consciousness.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]