Classmate's blogs

For my last blog I decided to look into two of my classmate's blogs. The first blog I'm going to discuss is Laura's blog. I think she has an interesting concept because she talks about social media and the entertainment industry. What I like about her blog about Twitter and Facebook is how she compares it to surveys. I like how she uses celebrities twitter accounts as an example. She explains how when people look at celebrities twitter accounts and they have tweeted a question it can be considered a form of a survey. I never thought to look at it like that.

The second blog I am going to discuss is Kevin's blog. He also uses his forum to discuss social media but this week he uses it to talk about social media and crisis communication.  He found an article that explains how social media for crisis communication is up and coming. He also explained about how they need to use the same tactics (honesty and transparency) as they would if they were writing a press release.

Shell's handle on blame

Last week I describe what experts say is the best method on handling a crisis. This week I came across an article about Shell, one of the major gas companies, and how they went about handling a crisis. It was the 15th anniversary of the execution of Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. "Mr Saro Wiwa, who was the leader of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People at the time, was arrested on May 22, 1995 on charges of inciting Ogoni youths to kill four prominent Ogoni figures during a rally on May 21, 1995 (background information)" According to the article Shell was under scrutiny for not standing up for Ken Saro-Wiwa, being in cahoots with the military and government, as well as gas spills and oil fires. 


Since it has been 15 years and Shell gas is still running, the question behind it all was how did they do it? It was because of the PR team. The first thing that they did was stick to a message (like one of the steps I wrote about last week). They also realized who were their allies and who were their enemies of the press. They locked out their enemies and gave their friends the leads. Something that was out of the ordinary that i consider extremely interesting was that they organized a workshop. Technically it was more of a focus group. They gathered people from Amnesty International, church groups, people from the academic world etc. to figure out the boundaries of the corporate world and what is acceptable or were the boundaries are. I thought this was interesting resorting to the consumer for guidelines. It's actually quite brilliant because you're giving the people a chance to take out your anger on you while at the same time helping you out. They feel like they've made a difference - the company walks away knowing how to get their customers back on their good side.

How to handle a crisis

When reading different websites to further my knowledge of handling crisis. I came across a Bloomberg Businessweek article explaining the top 5 steps in handling a crisis. I thought it was really refreshing to see exactly what a professional needs to do to get their job done. One of the key points that were brought up was the need to be transparent. I thought it was interesting because when it comes to a crisis most companies wouldn't want to air their "dirty laundry". I figured that most companies would prefer to have a cover story to make up for their mistake.

Another key point brought up was "owning the message." Gallo talked about how important it is to have a clear cut message because a lot of bloggers just copy and paste. Because of this, most of the companies message is spread over the internet at a rapid speed. I thought it was fascinating to read because I knew messages spread quickly but I didn't realize it was because of the simple copy and paste method. The article overall was interesting because it was nice to see someone put what needs to be done so bluntly.