Category: Organization Development

[Editor’s note: Today we bring you a special guest post by our multi-cultural colleague, Carlos Victor Costa, that takes a hard look at the Spanish royal family’s most recent crisis]

Crisis Management During Hard Times: Lessons from the King and the Elephants

Once upon a time there was a very happy Kingdom with a much beloved king. Everything was fine, people had money, dreams and their king was bold and young and fair. But time went by, and things changed: peopled ceased to have money, jobs grew scarce, people started to worry about their dreams and were not happy anymore. Meanwhile, the king grew old, but kept doing the type of things that Kings usually like to do, such as hunting and hanging out in the company of wealthy, beautiful people.

Unfortunately, while hunting elephants in Africa (exotic land of Simba, The King Lion) something unexpected happened: he missed his shot, and had an accident. He broke his hips, people’s dreams – and his image of bold, young and fair.

While all this seems to be a sad ending for an unusual fairy tale, it is, in fact, true. King Juan Carlos I from Spain suffered an accident while hunting elephants in Botswana that received huge international press coverage recently and left us some lessons about crisis management during the hard times we are living. The main one, I guess, it is something that I heard for the first time from Richard Edelman called “the dialectic between control and credibility.”

Institutions are having a hard time managing this dialectic. How do they keep secrets under wraps, while managing public image in a coherent way, aligning image to stakeholders´ expectations? The crisis era we live in demands more sensibility from companies in order to keep things smooth in the public arena, something that, apparently, was missed in this example.

We can learn from the royal case some interesting lessons that explain the forces behind this dialectic struggle between message control and credibility building:

1. Secrecy doesn’t exist anymore.
   One of the most shocking aspects about this crisis (personal and institutional for Spain and Spain´s royalty) was that, apparently, the king´s trip was not communicated (as law requires) to Spain´s head of Government (Spain is a parliamentary monarchy). However, once the accident happened, the trip got immediate attention in a world avid for news like this. Bad risk management.
2. Empathy should be real, otherwise it is just royal propaganda
   Spain has Europe´s highest unemployment rate, one in four Spaniards doesn´t have a job. The government is working on a radical turnaround plan that includes very unpopular measures such as tax increases and cuttings in health and education, among other public expenditures. As we know, in modern democracies, monarchy is seen as an OK thing that unifies a country on its cultural roots and common past, like in Britain. And, actually, to be fair, King Juan Carlos I has been seen as more than just a symbol, he has an impeccable track record in crucial moments of Spain´s recent history (like when he stood for democracy during a military coup d´etat). However, while nobody expects the royal family to fly economy class, taking a leisurely trip to hunt elephants is not exactly a good message to give in times like these. Bad reputation management.
3. Everything is connected
   Much like the British royal family 15 years ago, Spain´s first family has been suffering its astral hell in the last months. The king´s son-in-law is being investigated for fiscal fraud in a high-profile case, and, a couple of weeks ago, the king´s grandson shot himself in the foot (the kid´s just 13, and at that age he legally cannot carry a gun). I can only remember in the recent years BP´s CEO Tony Hayward having such a talent to do the wrong things at the right time (my post on this here). Couldn´t the king postpone the trip? Bad, bad, timing.
4. Other aspects: To make things worse, this imbroglio brought to light two additional aspects –

• The fact that Juan Carlos I was honorary president of the World Wildlife Fund didn´t help to improve things here. Through an activism online site called Actuable (Change.org Spanish clone) more than 80,000 people required WWF to end the King´s job as the institution´s honorary president. At the end of last week, WWF’s board in Spain voted unanimously to make this happen.
• Finally, guess who had been invited to the hunting? The organizer of the safari was a beautiful German princess and the gossip around this suggests a possible closer than expected relationship between her and the king, spicing things a little bit more. The German newspaper Bild displayed a photo of the two on an official trip.

How did all this end up?

In an unprecedented gesture, Juan Carlos I left the hospital and, with a quick statement, apologized to the people in a typical “Dropped the ball, I am sorry, will never happen again”. As the press said, Spaniards aren´t accustomed to accepting guilt easily, and such attitude might open an incredible precedent, leading people to see themselves from a different perspective; if even a king can make mistakes, ordinary people can, too, and to accept mistakes is the first step to change things for the better. That would be nice if it really happened, and it would be the good part of the lesson learned by the country from this sad fairy tale.

Or not?

Some analysts like the respected academic Manual Castells produced a fierce article asking the king to resign and others (like me) say that “sorry” has become a devaluated currency: everybody says sorry. Politicians (like Clinton) say sorry, CEOs (like BP´s) say sorry, high profile athletes (like Tiger Woods) say sorry. Is that genuine or just an easy way out taught by spin doctors? Can credibility be regained just by saying “I´m sorry”?

In general, I guess people welcome an apology as a first step, but things really have to change in order to regain trust, otherwise the reputation will be tarnished. However, their positive inner feelings regarding the person can play an important part on the outcome, and if nothing bad happens again, everything returns to normal, and the issue will be regarded as the bad story that everybody prefers not to talk about at family dinner.

Other people will simply just forget all the fuss, and see the story as another curiosity from rich public people and their extravagant life style. Let´s move on to the next scandal.

The elephants, on the other hand, they don´t forget.

——————————-
For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
——————————-

Carlos Victor Costa is a Brazilian professor and consultant living in Madrid. He writes the blog www.carlosvictorcosta.com

Recently I wrote an article on my blog, Marion Conway – Consultant to Nonprofits entitled “Rethink…Energize…Action! Connect Your Strategic Plan and Fundraising.” I announced the post in the LinkedIn groups Strategic Planning for Nonprofits and Boardsource with the question, “If you lead a strategic planning process do you connect it with an organization’s fundraising process?” The question is still generating some thoughtful responses and this article shares the comments added by experts to my original article.

In the original article I talked about how when you develop a strategic plan, it should energize staff and board members to be more involved in fundraising. The plan and the planning process should enable you to communicate clearly with focus on your mission, your goals and your priorities. The strategic plan helps you find and organize the words that lead to action and results. This is an important output for any strategic plan.

A comment made by Dan Clark startled me at first. He said “Your post helps a nonprofit see the value of connecting their fund raising efforts to their mission.” My spotlight was on how doing a strategic plan could benefit your fundraising effort. But Dan reminds us that even if you aren’t doing a strategic plan make sure you are connecting your fund raising efforts with your mission.

Don’t all nonprofits know that they need to connect their fund raising efforts to their mission? The answer is pretty much yes to that question but more lukewarm if asked how well they do it. Many nonprofits just don’t communicate why they are worthy of a donor’s gift very well. Your strategic plan should help you identify your strengths and opportunities. The planning exercises will help you frame stronger key messages. Having fundraising be an issue to be addressed in your strategic planning will make sure that communications about your mission, goals and specific plans are a key output item from your plan.

Simone Joyaux and Marilyn Donnellan commented –each with their own framing – that the strategic plan should be holistic, encompassing all facets of the organization. I certainly agree but since my article had such a singular focus on fundraising I didn’t make that clear at all.

Finally Robert Hodge offered a fresh idea for a strategic plan. He recommends a two section approach – one for short term and one for long term. The short term plan addresses how limited resources are to be strategically allocated. The long term plan identifies the steps, priorities and additional resources needed to achieve them. The long range plan becomes the basis for fund raising apart from that of the annual fund. I was not familiar with this approach, but I can see how effective it can be in integrating your strategic plan and fundraising. Certainly, this is a good approach for an organization with very limited resources to come to terms with focusing on its priorities and having a plan that requires resource development for the next steps.

When I work with an organization with a strategic plan I am always conscious that we will fail if we produce a nice binder or report that is filed away never to be looked at again. You want to have a report that becomes dog eared with frequent use. Many nonprofits have done belt tightening due to the economy in the last few years. They are ready now, to take stock of where they are, define where they want to be and develop a plan for what they have to do to get to a healthier place. A lot is changing for nonprofits in the way we do business and expectations of us. Going through a strategic planning process, putting it all out on the table, deciding what your priorities are and recommitting to ACT on the priorities is a good first step to recovery. And yes, it is about a great deal more than fundraising.

——————

For more resources, see our Library topic Nonprofit Capacity Building.

[Editors’ Note: We’re pleased to bring you this guest blog post by Bernstein Crisis Management contractor Chris Syme, excerpted from her new book.]

Keep your ear to the ground, and catch crises early

One of the best ways to avert a listening for a crisis is to see one coming and be proactive. Savvy crisis managers monitor online conversations and are ready to respond if needed. When it comes to setting up a listening dashboard online, there are a variety of tools available that fit any budget from free to enterprise level. Your crisis communications plan should include the people, resources, and time necessary to monitor the digital space.

Listening tools can be simple or elaborate . They can be free or expensive. If you’re a beginner or a small business or organization, I recommend starting with a free “suite” of tools and evaluate what people, time, and resources you can dedicate to listening before buying an application.

Below are recommendations for tools in three price categories. There are tools for listening in the “open space” and crowdsourcing tools that work in the already-established communities that reside on your social channels and website. Consider both. Use open space tools if you only have budget and time for one set.

Open Space No Budget: Hootsuite, Google Alerts, Social Mention, and others

If you’re a beginner, start with free real-time applications for a month or so.

I’ve found that Hootsuite is the most comprehensive (and reliable) free tool for monitoring basic social media applications. Hootsuite also has a good mobile app. The service is “in the cloud” meaning it isn’t housed on your device, so you can basically login to your account anywhere, at any time, and from any device.

With the free version of HootSuite, you have the ability to monitor accounts from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Ping, WordPress, MySpace, and mixi. You are allowed one admin to control those accounts, and you can monitor (and post to) a maximum of five social media accounts.

Also, Hootsuite offers a free “click summary” of links you have tweeted. The report gives you basic information about number of clicks by day and ranks your retweets and clicks during the reporting period. If you’ve never looked at any of your social media data before, this is a good way to get started. You can set up searches to monitor your brand, a hashtag, or any set of words, similar to Google Alerts.

In addition to monitoring, you can also post to each account using Hootsuite. It also includes a scheduling feature so you can write several posts at one time and schedule them throughout the day or week.

Google Alerts are easy to set up and cover online mentions on the web, but the search giant is not as strong for social platforms. Google does not monitor Twitter or Facebook posts, so you will be missing social platforms if this is your only tool. You can set-up keyword searches to monitor, and also control how often you get notifications: as it happens, once per day, or once per week. If you are monitoring for crisis, we suggest you use “as it happens.”

Social Mention offers real-time searches in the social media space around specific search terms, but doesn’t monitor the web like Google Alerts.

Open Space Low Budget: Sprout Social , Hootsuite Pro

When we say small budget, we mean less than $50 month. Hootsuite Pro is only $5.99 per month and offers unlimited profiles (in the platforms Hootsuite supports—see above), an additional admin, integration with Google Analytics, unlimited RSS feeds, Facebook Insights integration, an archive option, and access to more data reports. Additional admins can be added for $15 each per month. The downside is the lack of ability to search the internet in general. You’d need to supplement with an internet search of some kind.

Sprout Social is an inexpensive, but very comprehensive social monitoring and posting dashboard. They have two smaller plans—the Pro at $9.00 per month and the Small Biz at $39.00 per month. There is quite a jump in services between the two plans so you will want to look at their pricing plans to see what works for you. Sprout Social offers an enterprise-level program as well.

For CKSyme.org, I use the “Pro” version of Sprout Social. In addition to the Sprout Social analytics dashboard, I also have several Google Alerts and Twitter searches that are run through the Sprout Social dashboard. This single-administrator system works well for my business.

Resource Alert!

Tripwire also published a comprehensive list of monitoring tools in July 2011. Some are free, some are pay-per. You’ll have to read through the list to find out which is which. As you do, you’ll notice that many of these tools are platform-specific to Facebook or Twitter or the web. Look for one that can give you at least all of the major social platforms, if not all.

If you’re already listening to people who are in your social media space , you might consider a crowdsourcing tool that helps you connect as well as listen. Two good ones are GetSatisfaction (which integrates with Salesforce) and UserVoice. Both have pricing plans that start low and go to enterprise level.

Trouble can start in your own backyard. Smart companies are using social media to listen to their customers as well as monitoring the “open space” on the internet.

Open Space Big Budget: Radian6, Scout Labs (Lithium), Meltwater Buzz, Argyle Social, Wildfire, Expion, and many more)

If you are interested in enterprise-level monitoring systems for businesses or organizations, Jeremiah Owyang released a report in January, 2012 detailing the best SMMS tools out there. This detailed slide presentation includes many helpful insights gleaned from his research on social media monitoring.

Crowdsourcing Tools:

If you have communities built on several social platforms already , you might consider a crowdsourcing tool that helps you connect as well as listen. Two good ones are GetSatisfaction (which integrates with Salesforce) and UserVoice. Both have pricing plans that start low and go to enterprise level.

Trouble can start in your own backyard. Smart companies are using social media to listen to their customers as well as monitoring the “open space” on the internet.

——————————-
For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
——————————-

Excerpted from the coming e-book, Listen, Engage, Respond: Crisis Communications in Real-Time. Watch http://www.cksyme.org for the release in May. Use by permission. Author Chris Syme has over 25 years experience in the communications industry and is currently principal at CK Syme.org. The agency specializes in real-time communications, including reputation and crisis, social media, and media training.

Newly surfaced photos bring reputation damage

More damaging photographs of U.S. soliders surfaced last week, hot on the heels of the controversial Marine “SS” flag picture crisis. This time, the photos depicted soldiers in what they apparently thought were comedic poses with dead Afgan insurgents.

How did the public come to see these pictures at all, you ask? A quote, from a USA Today article by Tom Vanden Brook:

The photos, published in the Los Angeles Times, purportedly were taken in 2010 and show a soldier with the hand of a dead insurgent on his shoulder and another with soldiers holding the legs of a corpse.

The Times obtained them from an unnamed soldier who served with the 82nd Airborne Division in a province south of Kabul. Military officials had requested that the newspaper not publish the images, saying they would put troops at risk.

 

The soldier, the Times reported, gave the photos to the media because of concerns about “a breakdown in leadership and discipline that he believed compromised the safety of the troops.”

We have long spoken about how the Internet has resulted in widespread public knowledge of situations that, before Internet-centered communications became so easy, would have remained unpublicized. What these soldiers did was horrific, but also completely typical for any location where there has been warfare for an extended period of time. The psychological impact of constant combat and the perpetual threat of instant death break some people, mentally. At the same time, I seriously doubt those soldiers received much training (and refresher training) to the effect that “whatever you do out there could end up posted on YouTube.” Maybe that would have made them think twice – and maybe not.

One thing the Army may want to consider is taking some tips from its brethren in the Navy, who are are making great use of social media to build good will with the public that can be banked for future crisis management.

——————————-
For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
——————————-

[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc. , an international crisis management consultancy, and 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]

Wasteful spending wrecks Philly Councilman’s rep

Philidelphia Councilman Jim Kenney doesn’t know how to Tweet. Not only that, but his PR guy, Martin O’Rourke, who collects $30,000 of taxpayer money every year to handle communications for Kenney, doesn’t either. Logic should direct these two towards taking a few of those bucks and hustling to the nearest social media seminar, right? Think again. Instead, Kenney dropped another $28,800 in tax money on hiring ChatterBlast, a social media management firm.

Check out a few of the choice quotes in this case, from a Philly.com article by Holly Otterbein and William Bender:

No other Council member pays a contractor to help with Twitter. Just Kenney, who has the third-priciest staff on Council. He has 10 staff members with a payroll of $654,034, including his salary – plus another outside communications consultant.

Why does he need ChatterBlast on top of that?

“I, at 53 years old, do not have that facility,” he said. “So I need consultant advice to communicate with a group of folks who are not necessarily in my age group.”

Martin O’Rourke, the politically connected PR man whom Kenney’s office already is paying $30,000 this fiscal year for a communications contract, doesn’t have that facility, either.

 

 

 

 

“I have no clue how to tweet; I still don’t understand the mechanics of it. It’s a thing of the future,” said O’Rourke, who has earned big bucks through contracts with City Controller Alan Butkovitz’s office and the Philadelphia Parking Authority.

If you’re anything like us, your jaw smacked the floor after reading that last comment. A major PR professional not only admitting that he doesn’t understand the physical mechanics of posting to Twitter (uhm…type, click, done?), but calling it “a thing of the future” is nearly beyond belief at this point.

Recent attention already has Philly taxpayers riled up about the situation. We wonder if Chatterbox can help Kenney keep up with all the negativity?

——————————-
For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
——————————-

[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc. , an international crisis management consultancy, and 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]

Marc Lane, arguably the most prolific writer in the social enterprise sector, last year wrote another one of his useful books, entitled: Social Enterprise: Empowering Mission-Drive Entrepreneurs. It’s a good book to glance through, and even more important, to have nearby on your bookshelf for when you have a legal question about social enterprise. For a lawyer, he writes pretty well — which is high praise!

Continue reading “SE: Empowering Mission-Driven Entrepreneurs (Marc Lane)”

Editorial by Jonathan Bernstein

Does being the chief resident of the White House erode your public speaking ability?

Is it time to find some new speech writers?

Are you making so many speaking mistakes that they become trends noticeable not just back home, but even by a DANISH TV station?

Yes, yes and YES, Mr. Obama. English, apparently, doesn’t have to be your native language for a journalist to recognize some ridiculous redundancy in what you’ve told world leaders on international television broadcasts.

Disclosure: I voted for you Mr. President, and as a Speech Communications major and public relations professional, have long admired your eloquence – not just when using the teleprompter that has resulted in much teasing, but also off the cuff. Empirically, I have observed a steady deterioration in the originality and fire in your public speaking, but none so embarrassingly obvious as those showcased by host Thomas Buch-Anderson on this clip from the Danish TV show Detektor.

Seen it for yourself? Stopped laughing yet? Alright, let’s check the score card! We have five different countries told that they “punch above their weight,” a boxing analogy that would, of course, be completely meaningless to a high percentage of your audience. Then you told three that the U.S. “has no stronger ally” than them – akin to someone telling the same number of friends that each was your BEST friend. And at least seven more were told they were “one of our strongest allies,” another horse-race with no clear winner.

How about you and your speechwriters starting to cross-reference new material with old – something rather easy to do with the same gadget on which I’m writing this editorial – and, as necessary, learn to use a thesaurus. Or more imagination. This sort of amateurism is an entirely unavoidable embarrassment that helps to create a crisis of confidence in your competence and sincerity.

——————————-
For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
——————————-

[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, and author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training.]

Interviews are a way to collect useful data for program evaluation. They provide qualitative data, which is more text-based–for example: quotes, stories, descriptions– versus the quantitative or numbers-based data that written surveys (also known as questionnaires) provide. I recently interviewed people for a program evaluation and gained a new and fresh appreciation for the following tips:

Tip #1: Decide beforehand whether interviews are the most effective and efficient way of collecting the data you need.

Weigh the pros and cons of interviews:

Pros of interviews:

Interviews may:

• Provide opportunities to probe for information that you may not otherwise think to ask for in a written questionnaire.
• Give you information and stories that people may not otherwise share in a written survey.
• Help you build rapport with interviewees and help identify stakeholders who really care about the program and may want to get further involved in the evaluation. Involving stakeholders is key to a successful evaluation. (see my previous post on the CDC program evaluation model.)
• Help explain trends in quantitative data, explaining questions such as “why” and “how.” They can give you a good idea of how programs work and can help you generate a program description that is critical for every evaluation. Interviews can provide rich data that paint a picturesque portrait of your program.
• Have potential to facilitate the expression of opinions and feelings in the interviewees’ unique “voices.” They are a rich source of quotes for future grant proposals.
• Phone interviews are less expensive than in-person interviews.

Cons of interviews

• More resource-intensive: it is time consuming to conduct and participate in interviews, to transcribe them and to analyze data.
• Requires interviewers to be trained (again more resource-intensive—think training time, planning and designing training materials and presentations)
• Interviewers need to be articulate and to be able to think quickly “on their feet” and simultaneously think ahead to decide on the next question they need to ask, listen and take notes at the same time¹.
• Usually smaller samples are used: so the representativeness of your data is much more limited. For example, your data only represents those 14 people interviewed versus representing 140 surveyed or possibly being able to infer results to a larger population when using a questionnaire.

In the end, if you decide that you really need the type of data that interviews provide, interviews can be really worth the extra time and effort!

Tip #2: Carefully design and follow an interview script even if you are the only interviewer, and train interviewers. Make sure the script and the training facilitate the following practices among interviewers:

1. upholding ethical standards of behavior,
2. building rapport and
3. safeguarding the quality of data. Selected examples:

Adhere to ethical procedures such as informed consent

It can be so tempting to improvise, thinking that this will make the questions sound less rehearsed. But this makes it really easy to forget important steps like informing participants of the purpose of the interviews and asking them whether they are interested in participating in the interview (informed consent). Inform participants of potential risks and benefits of participating in the evaluation. This is especially important when collecting highly confidential health-related data.

Some participants may give you reasons for why they cannot participate in the interviews. This is where the interviewer has to first carefully discern whether the interviewee is actually interested in participating. Do not assume that everyone has the time or interest in participating. The interviewer has to then strike the careful balance between addressing any barriers that would prevent an interested interviewee from participating versus maintaining a high standard of professional ethics by being respectful of the individual’s decision not to participate and being careful about statements that may be misperceived as pressuring or coercing participant.

Do not use leading questions

Do not use leading questions, that is, questions or statements that can unconsciously influence the interviewees to give certain answers. Example of a leading question: “What are the some of the challenges program participants face in getting to classes?” Versus “Do participants face challenges in getting to classes?”

Avoid double-barreled questions

Be extra vigilant to avoid double-barreled questions, these can easily creep in especially while spontaneously asking probing questions. Example of a double barreled question: “Do you either send cards or call your program participants?” Answer: “Yes.” The problem is that these questions don’t help you figure out which of the two options is used.

Consider hiring a professional

Since there may be other considerations that go into upholding ethical conduct, building rapport, and safeguarding data quality, when doing a do-it-yourself evaluation, one option may be to collaborate with a professional evaluator to design the interview script and to train your interviewers.

¹Earl Babbie. (2001). The Practice of Social Research, 9^th edition. Wadsworth/Thomson Learning

——————

For more resources, see our Library topic Nonprofit Capacity Building.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Priya Small has extensive experience in collaborative evaluation planning, instrument design, data collection, grant writing and facilitation. Contact her at priyasusansmall@gmail.com. Visit her website at http://www.priyasmall.wordpress.com. See her profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/priyasmall/

Convince the audience that you’re right

Wimpy words modify or water down your conviction and in the end your position. When you pepper a conversation with “hopefully,” “perhaps,” “I feel,” “kind of” and “sort of,” the message you convey is a lack of confidence. Use power words such as “I’m confident that,” “my track record shows,” “I take the position that,” “I recommend” or “my goal is.” The language you use gives the listener an impression about your level of confidence and conviction.

We’ve all made this mistake at some point. Whether through nerves or a slip of the tongue, we end up taking our formerly solid point and watering it down to the point of irrelevance. This quote, from a Monster.com article by Diane Diresta, is directed at job seekers, but actually serves extremely well for any avenue of public speaking (or writing, for that matter). Whether your goal is to convince a room full of school kids or an auditorium packed with reporters, projecting confidence and a deep belief in what you are saying is critical to making a convincing and believable point.

This concept – and the others Diresta lists in her article — are essential to the type of communication often associated with effective crisis management.

——————————-
For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
——————————-

[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc. , an international crisis management consultancy, and 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]

Taking damage from searches for your own key terms

Politicians are no strangers to controversy, but as we become more and more immersed in the digital world, regular citizens are gaining the power to cause serious reputation management issues for these seemingly lofty figures. The following quote, from a MediaPost article by Derek Gordon, highlights some rising online troubles for Presidential hopefuls Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney:

…each has a certain search engine problem. Santorum’s is very well known and is the result of a years-long effort by gay rights activists to define the word “santorum” as a byproduct of certain sexual activities. (Rick Santorum has long been a vocal opponent of marriage equality for gay people, and even went so far as to compare homosexual marriage to bestiality.) The website responsible for the redefinition of “santorum,” spreadingsantorum.com, currently ranks in the number three slot on Google.

 

Romney now has a similar problem, thanks to the debut of SpreadingRomney.com in mid-January. It has jumped to page 1 of Google search results in just a few week’s time, which even industry veterans like Danny Sullivan find remarkable. The “romney” definition relates to the story of how Governor Romney once strapped the family dog to the roof of the car for a road trip to Canada, which made the dog sick and caused it to develop a nasty case of diarrhea while still on top of the car. (To be fair, the dog was in a dog crate; Romney didn’t literally strap his dog to the top of the car. The New York Times columnist Gail Collins has, in particular, not let the story die.)

In a political race that is still dominated by the largely conservative voting population, these pages place huge, unavoidable spotlights on issues that the candidates would love nothing more than to be buried at this stage in the race.

Keep in mind, SpreadingRomney.com is owned, operated, and promoted by ONE person. The two crisis management lessons to be taken from this are:

1. Dominate search results for your terms. There is no excuse for Santorum and Romney to have not pushed these results off the front page, they have the money, they can get the manpower.
2. In today’s world of e-reporting and Internet-dominated news, ticking off the wrong person can have grave consequences.

Your reputation is your most valuable asset, protect it online and off!

——————————-
For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
——————————-

[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc. , an international crisis management consultancy, and 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]