Blogging not always a ‘go’ during a crisis
I’m still reading “Naked Conversations” and I’m on the part about how staying out of the “blogosphere” or conversations on blogs about your company when there is a crisis is a huge mistake. This is true in theory, but this chapter makes a blanket approach that you must engage or else.
The problem with this is in reality, shit happens and half the time the company isn’t ready (if they saw it coming, they probably wouldn’t have made the mistake in the first place). The real test is what you do when the company doesn’t have a good response or reason for the problem. You can apologize, but there’s so much more that has to happen in order to help the customer. And sometimes, engaging in it will only open up pandora’s box when the company isn’t yet prepared or capable of handling it. Sometimes really bad stuff happens with companies and blogging and engaging with blogs is the least of your problems - clients and companies are going to have to be prepared to take the lumps. And the blogging approach isn’t black and white - you have to really think about what the right engagement approach is.
PR people deal with this dilemma CONSTANTLY and for me is probably one of the most stressful parts of the job. You know what you need to do, but you are also aware of what’s actually possible based on the circumstances. I have one situtation I can think of now (I can’t disclose for confidentiality reasons), but it weighs on me constantly because the client needs to be engaging on the topic and unfortunately they aren’t ready to. Decisions haven’t been made and therefore progress can’t be made with the partners or customers.
What are some recent “crises” that you’ve seen that were handled good or bad in the blogs? Thoughts?
