Morgan McLintic on PR and Performance

Webinar - Crisis management in a social media landscape

I'd like to personally invite you to our free crisis management webinar on Friday February 12, 2010 at 9.00am PT. Click here for details and sign up. Hope you can make it.

Seven ways social media changes crisis management [video]

Social media is changing crisis management. Here we look at seven ways that's happening, for good and bad, right now.

The top 5 social media monitoring services [Poll results]

We recently ran a poll to find the most popular social media monitoring services in use today. Over 1,450 votes were cast (thanks!). The results are fascinating, not least because one of the most popular wasn't even on our radar, and the most high profile firms didn't attract the most votes. So here we go.

Total votes - 1468

1. Viral Heat - 511 votes (35%)

2. ListenLogic - 265 votes (18%)

3. Biz360 - 204 votes (14%)

4= Radian6 - 121 votes (8%)

4= Filtrbox - 121 votes (8%)

Viral Heat emerged as the clear winner with over a third of the votes cast. ListenLogic came an impressive second despite the disadvantage of not being on the list. I'll stick my hand up and say this is a new service to me (sorry guys) but obviously one which companies should evaluate when selecting their paid monitoring platform. It was interesting to me that high profile Radian6 was not more popular and that Scout Labs was unplaced. In fact, Sysomos is worthy of mention securing 101 votes, again despite the fact it was unlisted. Congratulations too to Filtrbox for making the top 5, alongside Radian6.

So what can we conclude from this? First, judging by the scale and range of response, there is a lot of interest in the monitoring space and the field is hotly contended. Second, the traditional services you might have used a few years ago to search for news like Factiva, Vocus or Lexis-Nexis are not being deployed here. Third, we should check out winner Viral Heat, but there is a long list of services which others comfortably use - in fact 25 were named in the Other category.

I think this is a good thing for brands - the competition will encourage innovation and lower prices. For instance, no single service can be used yet on a global basis, so there is huge opportunity for each of these companies. Thanks once again to all who voted and shared their opinion, and well done to all those in the top 5.

Navigating a crisis in a social media landscape [Slides/Flowchart]

At the Social Media World Forum earlier this week, Lucy Allen and I ran a workshop about crisis communications. It's called 'Red Alert - Navigating a crisis in a social media landscape'. As the title suggests it looks at how social media has changed very nature of the crises which impact a company, and what this means from an issues management perspective.

Red Alert - Navigating a Crisis in a Social Media landscape

View more documents from Morgan McLintic .

Essentially we believe:

• There are two types of crisis - event-based crises (like a chemical factory explosion) and information-based crises (like a negative blog post, inaccurate statistic, or damaging opinion). Most companies are likely to face the second, informational type of crisis, whereas traditional issues management is aimed at countering the classic something-bad-has-happened crisis. So there's a gap which this approach aims to fill.

• Preparation is important - which means mapping out the likely crises across the axes of likelihood and impact, getting your messaging straight etc. But it also means opening up the channels of communication (blog, Twitter) which you'll rely on when a crisis breaks now (not during).

• Whether to respond or not is key - but how do you decide? We offer a workflow (see below) to help you. It's based on the excellent framework from the USAF Public Affairs Agency Blog Response Guidelines but moves it forward to cope with other channels and situations based on our experience.

• How you should respond - OK so we're going to respond, but how and what should you actually say? We offer some factors to consider, as well as some Dos and Donts.

I hope you find this a useful and practical framework for your crisis communications. We'd love to hear your feedback, or any lessons you've learned in the trenches so we can continue to build on this. Please feel free to share the response workflow or this slide deck. We have poster-sized copies of the workflow if that's useful, just let us know and we'll pass one along.

LEWIS - Blog Response Workflow Nov 2009

How does social media affect crisis management?

Social media is making crisis management more important in public relations. It's changing the number of crises, their speed, rate of proliferation and the response mechanism. Let's look at the impact social media is having on crisis comms, and what that means to us as communicators:

Frequency - there are more crises overall. Not the physical type (accident, mishap) but the informational type (misinformation spreading). Given the increase in the amount of information flowing, there are more errors, misunderstandings and simply countervailing opinions in circulation which need to be corrected, countered or somehow contained.

Speed - crises break much faster in line with the speed of the news cycle. This places more emphasis on monitoring.

Reach - the proliferation of a crisis is broader, reaching a bigger audience. This means issues are no longer local, but global. Crisis comms needs to be a global portfolio.

Permanence - Google never forgets, so once the crisis has blown over, it stays in the collective memory for a long time. Even though it happened in 2004, a search on 'Kryptonite Bike Lock' on Google still has the second entry as the biro story. That was five years ago - ouch.

Measurability - we've always known that a crisis hurts the brand, but not by how much. Now we can get a glimpse since we can track the traffic from online sources to the main site, we can track the proliferation of the story, easily see the number of recurrences of a damaging phrase/statistic.

Addressability - if appropriate, we can fight back. There is a right to reply on almost all social media outlets, so there is a chance to comment directly and indirectly. No longer just a letter to the editor or a belated correction, but a comment directly tied to the relevant article.

Length - they may be permanent, but they are normally short. Phew. The speed and frequency dynamics mean that crises normally burn quickly then blow over as the next one breaks and attention moves on. This doesn't mean that the issues don't need to be addressed but you won't be under the spotlight for long.

Given these dynamics, in a follow up post we'll look at how social media impacts our response to crises.

Newspaper circulations down, now what?

This week the Audit Bureau of Circulations published the circulations of the top 25 US newspapers for the six months to September 2009. 24 out of 25 of them show a decline. The WSJ officially overtook USA Today as the largest circulation daily newspaper at 2,024,269. It was the only one to grow.

The decline of print newspapers isn't new, but the pace is not slowing. The question for communicators, is how are you planning to respond? Are you opening new channels? Which are working best? Does this change which newspapers you pitch (these don't include syndication)?

Many papers are now focusing on their smaller circulations, charging them a higher price and trying to stabilize the income they get from that readership. The argument being for advertisers that this audience is more engaged as shown by their willingness to pay a higher cover price. If you buy into that argument, the same is true on the PR side in terms of the impact of that coverage within thos publications. And let's not forget the online aspects - from SEO to bloggers who link to key stories.

Still the circulations figures make for painful reading. Details are below.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL -- 2,024,269 -- 0.61%
USA TODAY -- 1,900,116 -- (-17.15%)
THE NEW YORK TIMES -- 927,851 -- (-7.28%)
LOS ANGELES TIMES -- 657,467 -- (-11.05%)
THE WASHINGTON POST -- 582,844 -- (-6.40%)

DAILY NEWS (NEW YORK) -- 544,167 -- (-13.98%)
NEW YORK POST -- 508,042 -- (-18.77%)
CHICAGO TRIBUNE -- 465,892 -- (-9.72%)
HOUSTON CHRONICLE -- 384,419 -- (-14.24%)
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER -- 361,480 -- N/A

NEWSDAY -- 357,124 -- (-5.40%)
THE DENVER POST -- 340,949 -- N/A
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC -- 316,874 -- (-12.30%)
STAR TRIBUNE, MINNEAPOLIS -- 304,543 -- (-5.53%)
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES -- 275,641 -- (-11.98%)

The PLAIN DEALER, CLEVELAND -- 271,180 -- (-11.24%)
DETROIT FREE PRESS (e) -- 269,729 -- (-9.56%)
THE BOSTON GLOBE -- 264,105 -- (-18.48%)
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS -- 263,810 -- (-22.16%)
THE SEATTLE TIMES -- 263,588 -- N/A

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE -- 251,782 -- (-25.82%)
THE OREGONIAN -- 249,163 -- (-12.06%)
THE STAR-LEDGER, NEWARK -- 246,006 -- (-22.22%)
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE -- 242,705 -- (-10.05%)
ST. PETERSBURG (FLA.) TIMES -- 240,147 -- (-10.70%)

Social media measurement - basic metrics

Social media is easy to measure. That’s one of the most compelling factorsof online behavior – it’s trackable and comparable. And for marketers that means we can combine the creative right-brained activities with the logical left. We can fly by instruments, not just gut reaction. And we can demonstrate progress. That’s not the same as Return on Investment, but for many companies, it's more feedback than they have on other areas of the business. Measurement helps us learn what’s working, do more of it and do it better.

So what should you be tracking as a minimum? Here are five dials you should have on your social media flightdeck:

• Blog – traffic over time, comment numbers over time, posts, comments per post, inbound links, RSS subscribers
  The goal here is to track your reach and basic level of engagement. You can get the traffic and comment numbers from your blog platform. Feedburner will enable you to get the number of RSS subscribers. Technorati's Authority index tracks the number of inbound links (although they've removed Watchlists as a service it seems).

• Commenting – number of comments you make, number of different blogs commented on
  The goal here is to track your level of interaction with the community and its reach. You can do this easily manually, although commenting systems like Disqus and Typepad Profile do keep track of them. It's just that different blogs use different systems.
  

• Twitter – Followers, tweets, RTs, @replies, link clicks
  The goal here is to track your level of interaction, how your audience is expanding and the reaction of that audience. Twitter gives you all this info, so it's simple to measure. The URL shorteners will show you the number of clicks on the links you share.
  

• Facebook Fan Page – views, number of Fans, posts, total interactions
  The goal here is to see how your Page is being received. Facebook gives you a good dashboard which will show you this info. The Insights section will tell you about your Fan base and traction. There is a lot of good stuff in there.
  

• Podcast – subscribers over time, episodes, comments, comments per episode
  The goal here is to assess the take up and enagement of your podcast. If you set up a dedicated feed, then Feedburner can tell you the number of subscribers. Comments (written/audio) tend to be lower for podcasts than text-based blogs.
  

• Video – views over time, number of videos, comments, subscribers, embeds
  The goal here is to see which videos work best, and what the viewership/reaction is. YouTube has a good Insights tool which will show the views per video, comments and the embeds. Again there are some good demographics in here too.
  

Obviously, you can track a lot more data than this, but this should give you a good overview. Most blogging, podcasting and video services have their own free analytics behind them. The aim is to set some benchmarks and to move forward from there. Which channels does your audience use the most? What types of content do they respond to and share the most? What’s the best time to post the content? By looking at the data, these trends will start to emerge.

There are many methodologies for social media measurement. No two companies evaluate in the same way since they all have different channels, audiences, resources and levels of engagement. The trick is to get a system which fits with the communications culture of the business and gives the right instrument data to make decisions and to prove progress. Once you have that, you can link it to commercial impact and then compare it to investment.

In the first instance, the metrics above should be quick to set up and quick to manage.

Poll: Which social media monitoring service do you use?

Beyond the free alert systems, if you want context you'll need to sign up for a subscription-based monitoring service. They all have different strengths - it's a competitive and innovative space. But which do you prefer?

Creating a monitoring system with free tools [video]

You can set up an alert system to monitor blogs, comments, Twitter, the Web, video and tags for free. Here's how in two minutes. More details here.

Choosing the best approach to media embargoes [video]

So what's the best approach to take towards media embargoes? Here are a few thoughts (in 90 seconds).