Social Media: Double-edged sword for communicators during a crisis

Twit1: My brother is a cop in Atlanta. Just busted Home Depot CEO. DUI

Twit2: Just made huge donation to MADD, right?

Twit1: Man of the Year #HomeDepot

Twit3: Sister works there. Big on values and do the right thing

Twit2: Only applies to the little people

Twit1: Even used handcuffs #resisted

Twit4: Handcuffs? Resisted arrest? #HomeDepot

Twit 5: Home depot CEO resisted arrest for DUI? #HomeDepot

Twit1: My bad-busted someone in front of Home Depot CEO’s house #doublecheck

While the exchange above is completely fictitious and created only for the purposes of this blog entry, it demonstrates how a story can begin on social media and become a public relations practitioner’s worst nightmare in less than 90 seconds.

While television is still the top source for people finding out about breaking news stories, social media has become the third top source of breaking news, virtually tied with newspapers and surpassing radio and all other print publications.

The article touches on, and the exchange above demonstrates, that while social media has become a major source of breaking news information, the accuracy is not always as good as it could be. A number of people were wrongly identified after the Boston Marathon bombing, initially identified on social media and then broadcast to an even wider audience via traditional broadcast media.

In his 2011 thesis paper, Daniel A. Landau noted:

“Partly due to social media’s constant news cycle, this study found that nonstories can become big stories very easily and these stories can last longer then (sic) they would without social media. This finding is indicative of how social media has made crisis communication more difficult for organizations. At the same time though, in some instances, organizations can bypass traditional media entirely and manage a crisis completely with social media. Thus social media has also made crisis communication somewhat easier for crisis communicators.” (pg. 60)

Social media networks – depending on the strategic planning and implementation of a comprehensive communication plan – can be a huge help or an amazing thorn in the side of public relations practitioners.

Stories can appear from nowhere and go viral, completely beyond the control of the PR practitioner(s) if there is no system or process of monitoring various social media platforms. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Foursquare, Pheed, Tumblr, are just a few of the many social media networks connected to the internet. Citizen journalist blogs, activists’ blogs, websites – the list goes on and on. How can one practitioner or a even two hope to successfully monitor and build those relationships and connections via social media?

The opportunity lies in leveraging one of the biggest assets any company already has: its own workforce. A strategic communication professional knows one of the biggest and influential audience a company can have is it’s own employees. Their ability to spread information via word-of-mouth and “the grapevine” has only been enhanced by recent communication technology and the internet. Why not use that to the advantage of the company?

One of the goals of any strategic communication program is to improve and enhance the internal communication systems among the primary stakeholders: employees, shareholders and retirees. How is that accomplished? By keeping them informed, part of the planning process and engaged. They can serve as de-facto watchdogs among the various social media networks.

Encourage employees to participate on the company’s Facebook page, for example, is a great way to keep them not only engaged, but they will can also serve as a early warning system for communicators if there is an issue that pops up on the page. They may be able to actually address issues in real-time before a communicator even gets involved. The key is to keep employees aware and informed about new initiatives, how their role figures into the overall vision and mission of the company, etc., which is the goal of any internal communication program.

The same can be done with all the major social media networks, utilizing an existing network of stakeholders to ensure issues are identified early, addressed and resolved quickly, hopefully without damage to the company’s name, reputation or bottom line.

As Mr. Landau noted in his thesis, the internet and social media may have made control of a crisis situation impossible, but it has the potential for making it easier to manage providing the strategic communicator makes use of all the tools available to him or her.

About the Author: David is a dedicated husband and proud father of a strapping fourteen year-old son and twin five year-old daughters. He has twenty years of professional communication experience, working in the public relations field. He has worked for public relations firms in Metro Detroit, hospitals and a state-wide faith-based social service organization helping at-risk children and their families. He grew up on a mid-sized Michigan blueberry farm, spent two years in Texas and now resides with his family outside Tampa, Florida. An avid reader and photographer, David also enjoys building furniture using recycled/upcycled wooden pallets.

What is the message?

The answer to this question can vary: a new version of the Bible by Eugene Peterson; a text message sent via mobile phone, or; a greeting enclosed in Voyager 1 and 2 by NASA and sent to the furthest reaches of space.

For our purposes as strategic communicators, the message is the content of the communication process.

But to be effective, that message has to be sent and received with a minimal level of ambiguity, or “noise,” between the sender and receiver. Breaking a message down, as communicators do, we look for the three elements of rhetoric to determine if the message was persuasive: logos, ethos and pathos.

However, as audiences have become more and more sophisticated receptors of the deluge of messages aimed at them every day, the strategic communicator needs to develop a comprehensive plan for not only message development, but also placement of those messages.

Cacioppo and Petty conducted research looking at the Effects of Message Repetition and Position on Cognitive Response, Recall, and Persuasion (1979) and while repetition influences learning, the more exposure to the message over time showed an initial increase in persuasive result of the message, over time, that persuasiveness actually decreased (pg 105).

What does that mean? Get your message out there, but do not over do it? Or does it point to the need for messages to be a little more covert and not quite so obvious. The hero in the latest summer blockbuster movie sports a retro type of Ray-Ban sunglasses and always asks for a Coca-Cola. Is that message linking the hero with those products subtle enough to increase learning and liking and, thereby, drive sales for Coke and Ray-Ban? Was the message successful?

When I was Director of Communications for Boysville of Michigan, I was put in charge of developing a statewide billboard campaign, celebrating the agency’s 50^th anniversary providing successful child care and family reunification services in the State of Michigan.

Despite being a part of the social services industry in the state for five decades, knowledge of what the agency actually did was fairly limited to those who worked in the various state court systems who placed adjudicated children with Boysville. The average citizen may have had a positive associated with the name, but no real knowledge of what the agency actually did.

Determining what the goal of a statewide billboard campaign, at first, seemed elusive as everyone had their own idea of what information needed to be included on the billboards. At the time, the state was poised to open up placements to for-profit companies who had no track record with the various court systems. But the Boysville management team felt it was critical to use the billboard campaign to let everyone know how our agency helped children and families.

With the aid of a PR firm, I convinced the management team that the billboards should merely celebrate the 50 years of service (without specifically noting what service) and raise the level of awareness among Michigan citizens that we helped children and families. The longevity of the agency spoke to its expertise: an organization won’t be around for 50 years if they do not know what they are doing. And building on the positive name recognition that we do good work (help children and families) would help to position Boysville ahead of the newly-come-to-town for-profit companies who had zero track record with the citizens of the state.

We educated subtly. We raised awareness subtly. We appeared everywhere.

The billboard campaign, considered a success, was not the magic bullet that would solve all the organizations issues with new competition, but it allowed us to frame the context in terms of who was already in place, who had a proven track-record and even more subtly, we did it as a faith-based organization, based on our mission, not just in the pursuit of profits like the companies looking to move into the state that were essentially the same companies who ran prisons. In fact, we got all the billboards donated for the campaign, leaving the only expense on the creative design side and printing (yes, this was back in the day of actual paper sheet billboards, not the newer one-piece mylar material used today).

One of my favorite public relations practitioners, Leland K. Bassett, would often tell his team of new communication counselors and managers (including me), that the art of persuasion was often in concealing the art. That adage hold true today. The message does not have to be so ridiculously blunt and obvious to be successful. It needs to be present where people will see/hear/receive it, it needs to be consistent and it needs to be measured (before and after) to determine its success.

About the Author: David is a dedicated husband and proud father of a strapping fourteen year-old son and twin five year-old daughters. He has twenty years of professional communication experience, working in the public relations field. He has worked for public relations firms in Metro Detroit, hospitals and a state-wide faith-based social service organization helping at-risk children and their families. He grew up on a mid-sized Michigan blueberry farm, spent two years in Texas and now resides with his family outside Tampa, Florida. An avid reader and photographer, David also enjoys building furniture using recycled/upcycled wooden pallets.

Vision, leadership and......football?

As I near the end of my Master's degree program at Troy University, I do find myself contemplating the future, both personally and professionally. The email from Dr. Padgett acknowledging my successful navigation of the capstone comprehensive exam actually triggered a number of items for me: relief, confidence, uncertainty, and accomplishment.

But it also brought two nagging questions: Now what? How am I going to move from this new level of accomplishment in my education to a new level of challenge and effort in my professional life? Egads, I'm reliving undergraduate college graduation all over again.

What it means for me professionally is an easier topic to tackle. I graduated in the mid 80s with my bachelor's degree and couldn't wait to get into the field of public relations. I was hired shortly after graduation and just nine months later, I was let go after the firm I worked for lost 2-3 large clients at the same time. It was my introduction into the fickle business world and how the field of communication is viewed differently in theory and in practice. All the books we read for our classes stress how critical communication is at every level of any organization.

Last week, we learned Chester Barnard noted in 1938 that the first executive function is to develop and maintain some type of communication system, yet it is routinely one of the first places within an organization where cuts are made or eliminated when faced with economic adversity. A lesson I have learned personally four times during my professional 20-year career in communications.

I provide this background as a means of context for where my vision is derived from, moving forward into the next chapter of my professional life. The information and knowledge I have gained from the Master’s program at Troy University is only a starting point. It will be up to me to not only continue my education, but to use my training and experiences to develop the ability to develop a vision for my future; short-, intermediate-, and long-term.

What I failed to realize earlier in my career is that education is not finite. Just because I finished my bachelor's degree, I was not finished learning. As I put my skills and abilities into practice, I was not paying heed to the changing nature of critical parts of my daily job.

For instance, traditional media was changing in front of my eyes with the rise of the internet and I failed to see it, plan for it and champion ways in which the organization I was working for could leverage those changes to better meet the overall goals of the agency.

It wasn't until my third year away from the field, working in retail, that I fully realized my true miscalculation was neglecting to keep an eye on the horizon. It was one of the reasons I was drawn to the program at Troy University.

Troy's leaders did not fall asleep at the wheel. They did study and research the current fields of Journalism and Communications and planned for the future. By working in the field, I know the value communication can bring to a company. However, if I can not translate that impact into clearly defined results -- results that will at some point be assessed by bean-counters who will eventually put me into a "cost" or "asset" column – I may find myself holding yet another pink slip. My vision is to not experience that again.

I would offer the distinction between “management” and “leadership” as one of the reasons companies thrive or falter. In an article by John Kotter (2013) in the Harvard Business Review, the author makes a simple declaration: management and leadership are not the same. He notes that management is the nuts and bolts operation of common processes most people are familiar with – planning, staffing, budgeting, production goals, etc.

But leadership, he contends, is more about leading an organization into the future, capitalizing on opportunities as they present themselves, helping others within the company not only see the vision but to buy in and become advocates for the vision put forward by the leadership of the company. And this leadership isn’t always found in the c-level offices. It needs to be at all levels of the organization.

I am not a fan of sports analogies, generally, but this seems like a pretty straightforward representation of the difference between leadership and management. There are 32 teams in the National Football League and every season there are coaches who get fired. Many of the coaches become head coaches after putting in time as a coach of the defense, the offense, or the special teams. They are experts in a specific aspect of the game – scoring points, preventing points, etc. They are “managing” a particular process of the team. The head coach role, however, is not restricted to a particular process. It is weaving them all together to achieve a longer-term vision of getting the team not only to win the next game, but enable them to have the tools in place to win a majority of the games to ensure a playoff spot and, ultimately, the Super Bowl. It’s about “leading” and motivating all members of the team, all members of management, to buy into a singular vision that the team can successfully win against any other team they face.

And every winning football team has “leaders” on the field. A quarterback, a linebacker, a safety, etc. They are not a coach. They are just “line staff” members who understand the vision of the head coach, and help to get the other members of the team to buy into that vision. The leaders are not always on the coaching staff.

Interestingly, many of the coaches who get fired from head coach positions do not leave the game. Instead, they return to the “management” positions they held before, where they excelled. They may not have the vision or leadership skills to be a head coach, but they are still experts in the particular processes that make up a successful team.

As noted by Kotter, leadership is not only at the top. It needs to be throughout all levels of the organization (team). A strategic communicator needs to be a leader, supporting the vision of the organization leadership as well as positioning communication as a critical tool for accomplishing the goals of the organization.

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About the Author: David is a dedicated husband and proud father of a strapping fourteen year-old son and twin five year-old daughters. He has twenty years of professional communication experience, working in the public relations field. He has worked for public relations firms in Metro Detroit, hospitals and a state-wide faith-based social service organization helping at-risk children and their families. He grew up on a mid-sized Michigan blueberry farm, spent two years in Texas and now resides with his family outside Tampa, Florida. An avid reader and photographer, David also enjoys building furniture using recycled/upcycled wooden pallets.

Internal & External: It's all communication

One of the main focuses of our readings this week in my Troy University class was internal communication.  In many organizations, there is a clear distinction between internal and external communications. Internal is usually seen as employee newsletters, and packaging information for the executive suite to aid in the roll out of new initiatives or programs. External is the “sexier” side, dealing with community relations, media relations and a variety of publications designed for external stakeholder groups.

Making an assumption the two “sides” operate independently of each other or can be directed in a vacuum is a mindset the strategic communicator must strive to change.

In 1996, I was hired to direct the internal communication efforts of a faith-based child care and family reunification agency in Michigan. Within three weeks of joining the company, I was thrust into the forefront of a media relations maelstrom, pitting the agency and its clients against concerned neighbors surrounding two different residential facilities where juveniles in the care of our agency “escaped” and stole cars from residents.

While I was focused on learning the internal culture of the agency, I was hardly prepared to serve as the spokesperson for the entire agency about events I had little or no knowledge about the sites around the state of Michigan. “Trial by fire” was the term used repeatedly by members of the management staff and regional directors of the agency in the weeks that followed.

That experience is when I learned how little the field of communication is understood by management in general and how my role – regardless of whether it was called “internal” or “external” needed to be comprehensive. In 1938, Chester Barnard wrote in his book The Functions of the Executive “The first executive function is to develop and maintain a system of communication.” (page 226)

By 1996, that sage advice seemed to have been forgotten or misunderstood. The strategic communicator of today needs to be keenly aware of how all the components of an organization’s communication plan – marketing, sales, community outreach, political action, etc. – fit into a strategic, comprehensive program. Without that vision or knowledge, there is almost a guarantee for wasted resources, counter-productive efforts and frustration at all levels of an organization.

Internal communication is a key component for any company or client because it is where management has the opportunity – no, the responsibility – to keep one of their largest key publics (employees) informed about the goals, direction, and status of the company for which they work. As noted by Parsons and Urbanski (2012), the structure and internal culture of a company will be a key factor in the effectiveness of internal communication efforts.

I served as Director of Communications – responsible for both internal and external communication efforts – for the next 11 years, until the overall economy began its decline in 2007, proving the findings by Garnett (1997) and Sweetland (2008) that management tend to devalue communication’s importance, resulting in early elimination of communication positions during budget cuts or financial hardships.

Prior to joining the child care agency, I was the public relations manager at a hospital in Metro Detroit, responsible for their internal communications. One of the largest parts of my job at the hospital was the production of a weekly newsletter, Friday, designed to keep not only the employees at the hospital informed about the programs, Mission and happenings at the main campus, but to also make the 23 ancillary facilities around the metropolitan area see themselves as part of the team, not off-site step children. With the help of a very talented graphics designer, I redesigned the publication and won Newsletter of the Year designation from the Michigan Hospital Communicators Association (1995).

Specifically as it relates to public relations, there continues to be a gap between public relations theories and public relations practices (Cheng and de Gregario, 2008; Okay & Okay, 2008) that will not be corrected until strategic communicators take direct, demonstrable efforts to show the value of a comprehensive, strategic communications plan that not only supports the goals of the company, but can stand on its own, with demonstrable outcomes justifying the resources required to successfully operate such a critical function of every executive.

Follow Up Note: The media relations fiasco noted above was not only successfully managed, but helped to create two independent community action groups made up of citizens, elected officials and agency management persons to identify opportunities for improved safety as well as strengthen community relations, an effort hailed by all involved as productive and successful for the entire tenure of this communicator’s position with the agency.

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About the Author: David is a dedicated husband and proud father of a strapping fourteen year-old son and twin five year-old daughters. He has twenty years of professional communication experience, working in the public relations field. He has worked for public relations firms in Metro Detroit, hospitals and a state-wide faith-based social service organization helping at-risk children and their families. He grew up on a mid-sized Michigan blueberry farm, spent two years in Texas and now resides with his family outside Tampa, Florida. An avid reader and photographer, David also enjoys building furniture using recycled/upcycled wooden pallets.