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Do your clients or does your company have a crisis communications plan?  Hopefully the answer is yes.  But if we thought crisis communications was a challenge before, think again as we (fear) factor the blogosphere into our plans.  Talk about controlling the message. It was one thing when your worst nightmare (on Elm Street) was a 60 Minutes ambush interview.  Now we along with 60 Minutes must worry about bloggers ambushing from multiple fronts as Dan Rather experienced with President Bush's National Guard record in the 2004 Presidential election.

To get some perspective, I recently spoke with Erin Byrne, managing director of interactive at Burson-Marsteller for the past 8 years.  If anyone should know about crisis communications in the interactive age, it is Erin.  Her PR firm helped write the book on crisis communications as they helped Johnson and Johnson through the Tylenol scare.

Dan Greenfield: Halloween is fast approaching.  In the age of blogging, should clients feel scared, very, very scared when it comes to crisis communications?

Erin Byrne: Clients should only be scared (very, very scared) if they fail to recognize that the way people communicate has completely changed, and there are no longer separate online and offline communications.  Companies can not afford to ignore user-generated media, search, and word-of-mouse, just like they can't afford to ignore traditional media.  The smartest companies will develop crisis preparedness plans that include training, policies and protocols for leveraging online communications as part of a holistic approach to crisis management.

Greenfield: Besides creating opportunities for firms that specialize in crisis communications, how does blogging benefit PR practitioners who must manage communications in a crisis?

Byrne: The rapid-fire pace of the blogosphere provides an opportunity for PR practitioners to tap the pulse of the public by reading blogs, and provides a mechanism for clients to engage in conversations with various stakeholder groups.  Whereas press releases are an excellent tool to distribute a company's position on a matter, they are primarily a one-way communication.  Blogs allow companies to create conversations, answer questions, refute criticism and reach target audience groups when they are engaged in a particular issue or topic.  Provided they follow the rules of the road, blogs can be a powerful new tool for companies who must manage crisis situations.

Greenfield: How does new media change the rules of crisis communications? 

Byrne: New media changes the rules in that everything is immediate.  Content, responses, reactions, the ability to get additional information - it all happens in real time, especially in a crisis, due to the way blogs and other new media have changed the communications cycle.  This has forced companies in many cases to respond more quickly than they are accustomed to, and often over a longer period of time.  Blogs are just another touch point to reach varied audience groups, and one that allows you to reach them in a conversational, informal tone without the wrapping of PR or advertising.  This authenticity can be very helpful in a crisis. 

Greenfield: What role do bloggers play? 

Byrne: Much of this depends on the crisis being managed.  The blogosphere and Internet communications in general have created a thirst for immediate information on a deeper level.  A cursory response will not satisfy online information-seekers, and an unacceptable response can create chatter and questions about a company and their intentions.  However, bloggers create an opportunity as well - for companies who are willing to engage in Internet conversations they have a significant opportunity to deepen loyalty in their company and products.

Greenfield: Does a crisis change your relationship to bloggers? 

Byrne: Depending on the crisis it can make one more wary of or reliant on bloggers.  When there is a crisis that gets covered online, it is very important that companies engage influential bloggers as another channel to reach target audience groups.  Ideally they will have created a buzz map in advance that identifies what blogs/sites are speaking on relevant topics the most, notes the sites that consumers turn to for related information, and then compares the two to identify the sites that yield the most influence for a particular company/issue.  Most companies will have several buzz maps depending on their business and needs, i.e. one for corporate issues, a different one for product-related, another one perhaps on an industry sector, etc.  It is critically important that companies begin engaging influential bloggers before the crisis hits.

Greenfield: How do you decide which bloggers to respond to?  Would you ever go to a blogger first over a mainstream reporter? 

Byrne: This completely depends on the situation.  For example, many consumer packaged goods companies often face and need to address internet rumors. This may be a situation where a response to a blogger will suffice.

We work with clients to develop a decision tree and then determine which bloggers to respond to on a case by case basis.  We consider the range of influence, number of comments, tone of the blog, willingness to consider an alternate point of view, and potential risks.  In order for us to respond there has to be potential to be heard, a willingness to have a conversation, and some level of influence relative to the risk.  Even if a blogger is a "plant," or a competitor posing as a legitimate blogger, the other participants and readers are probably real, so it still pays to proceed with caution, and to follow the rules of the blogosphere.  

Greenfield: Why do you think most crises start in the blogosphere and spread to mainstream media versus the other way around?  

Byrne: I think this depends on the type of crisis and the audiences affected. Technology companies are likely more vulnerable to having crisis start and/or spread online due to the tech savvy nature of their target audience groups.  Rumors and product recalls/challenges also can spread like wildfire online, due to the fact that it is easy for online information-seekers to spread this content using their own personal communications networks.  However, mainstream media still provides air cover to share news of a company crisis, and needs to be addressed as well.  It isn't an either/or situation.  

Greenfield: Finally, what are the essentials in dealing with bloggers in a crisis? 

Byrne: As with any online communication, honesty and transparency are mandatory.  Disclosing your true motives in reaching out to a blogger are important, and it is always advisable to have examples of third party credibility available.  Speaking in an appropriate and credible tone is also necessary - bloggers do not want to be a channel for your marketing efforts.  But, if you speak with an authentic voice on relevant topics they will welcome your participation.

Greenfield: Erin, thanks for your time

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Blogging changes the dynamics of a crisis; for better and for worse, they require us to respond on more fronts and in more voices.  Ultimately blogs or no blogs, certain rules of engagement remain constant.   Planning and conducting internal simulations are critical to understanding the chain of command and the threshold to activate a crisis communications team.  Whether we are dealing with new or old media, we must act quickly, recognize the crisis, communicate the steps being taken to resolve the crisis, and announce measures being instituted to avoid a similar crisis in the future.  In the end, it is imperative to not let the crisis define you, but for you to define the crisis.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Erin Byrne; Burson Marsteller; Crisis Communications; Blogging; Tylenol; Johnson & Johnson; 60 Minutes; Dan Rather;

I recently spoke with Nancy Flynn, executive director of the ePolicy Institute, after reading some curious statistics about blogging in her book "Blog Rules".   According to her research, only four percent of major American corporations operate public facing blogs compared to ten percent of small businesses who have incorporated blogs into their marketing.  

Four percent seemed awfully low when you think that companies like IBM, Microsoft, Boeing and General Motors are blogging.  But Nancy should know.  Her organization addresses online communications and helps companies establish rules and policies for blogging and online communications.  

So the question remains, when it comes to blogging, does size matter?  Why do so few large companies have external blogs when Business Week declared in a cover story last year that “blogs are a phenomenon that you cannot ignore, postpone, or delegate.”

Perhaps big companies have more to lose by blogging.  As Nancy suggested, they are generally public companies and more closely watch litigation and regulation.  Perhaps their in-house lawyers are better informed about the risks and liabilities or their IT departments haven’t made the investment in the enterprise systems needed to operate blogs on a larger scale.

On the other hand, perhaps many smaller companies are more willing to take risks, are less informed about the litigation issues or are more likely to take advantage of low cost non-enterprise software.  

Honestly, companies large or small may not have a choice but to participate. It is estimated that the blogosphere adds a blog each second.  We all know about the very public black eyes that some companies have experienced by ignoring the blogosphere or failing to respect its rules of engagement.

Talking to Nancy was sobering.  She takes a much more cautious view about blogging because she is focused on the liability and litigation that comes with decentralized corporate communications.  Recognizing its potential, she thinks that left unchecked, blogs are a ticking “time bomb waiting to go off.” 

Nancy asserts that blogs, like emails and IMs, are electronic business records that can be used in a court of law against a company.  She advocates that employers review every blog posting that goes out.  She points out that 17 percent of companies actually have software that blocks employees from reading and responding to blogs.

I feel Nancy’s assessment seems a bit strong.  Despite years of conditioning, I am prepared to take a leap of faith with employees and assume the community will corral wayward bloggers.  My faith rests on my belief that blogging helps strengthen ties between the public at large and the company. 

So in the end, will the current policies of big companies carry the day or will smaller companies set the tone for the future of corporate communications?

While it is an interesting proposition, I don’t think size matters when it comes to blogging.  It’s how you use it.  While I take a  more tolerant approach to employee blogging, I agree wholeheartedly with Nancy that it is critically important for companies to implement employee training and widely circulate blogging policies.  How else will employees clearly know what is acceptable and what are grounds for dismissal?  As I have said before, I believe blogging is about the freedom for employees to express themselves in a personal way;  it is not about the freedom to say anything they want.

It is nice to think that we can all engage in naked conversations, but the reality lies somewhere between absolute freedom and total control.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: ePolicy Institute; Nancy Flynn; Naked Conversations; Blogging;

Technorati Tags: Steve Rubel; Micropersuasion; John Bell; Business Development Institute; NHL; Jay Dinwoodie; Dewey, Ballantine LLP; Rob Key; Converseon; Bernadette Mansur; Andy Plesser; Beet.TV; Ronn Torossian; 5W Public Relations; Constantin Basturea; Kryptonite; Blogging;

Up until now, one of the biggest concerns facing YouTube has been copyright violations.

But, as reported by Edward Wyatt in the New York Times last Friday, their latest challenge has to do with videos of the violence in Iraq that are finding their way onto the wildly popular site.  Some of the footage of American casualties are thought to be from enemy combatants; other videos of the war are from American soldiers.

The Internet and new communications technologies are extending the reality of the Iraq war beyond the printed page and news broadcasts.  Even with the Bush Administration’s ban on pictures of coffins of American military personnel and certain Pentagon restrictions on videotapes of actual combat taken by the news media, the American public is getting unprecedented access to the grim reality of war.

The Times reported that YouTube has generated some controversy and backlash from the pulling of dozens of videos at the request of visitors to the site. 

From my perspective, I oppose censorship, but I am personally non-the-worse by not seeing the horrors of sniper attacks and roadside bombings.  Of course the company does have the right to monitor submissions.

In graphic detail, these videotapes are just another reminder of how user generated content is shifting the balance of power and altering the flow of information.  

As YouTube’s actions indicate, you don’t have to live in Beijing to appreciate the ethical, freedom of speech, public disclosure questions that new media is raising on the battle field and in corporate offices.  How do you assert control and support free expression?  What is the boundary between appropriate and inappropriate?  Who has the "right" to post on an online forum?  Does the source of the information make the subject matter more acceptable?

While I would never, never equate the challenges of war with the communications challenges facing today’s businesses, new media is forcing everyone to ask what the public needs to know, when it needs to know it and who has the right to say it.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Social Media; Iraq; YouTube;

This is a continuation of an interview with Christopher Barger, who heads up IBM's blogging efforts.  The first part of the interview was posted this past Monday. 

Greenfield:  How would you rate IBM’s blogging efforts?  

Barger:  We've done well, but there is always room for improvement.  The first phase was the grand unveiling -- go forth and blog.  Next step – tie it more closely to business strategy.  For small and medium and businesses, for example, which is a very important part of our strategy – who do we have in SMB who would be an effective blogger? 

It’s important that we keep focused on the audience’s interests, not just our own. Let’s not just discuss new software or new product.  Let’s talk about the issues the audiences are facing and pay attention to what they want to hear.  Stonyfield Farms yogurt has blogs that don’t even mention yogurt.  They provide information that’s relevant and related to their core audience’s interests, and that’s why their blogs are successful.  

Greenfield:  Won’t IBM’s blogging efforts lose their authenticity if it is about strategy?

Barger:  Blogging is both a science and art, and this is the “art” part. The key is finding the right individuals. It’s not about the title of the blogger, it’s about having passion, about being unafraid of feedback and engagement. They need to want to learn from their audiences too, and be there for the dialogue and not just to “message.” And if we have those bloggers, the ones who enjoy the interaction and who “get” the blogosphere instead of just feeling like they need to have a blog because everybody else has one or because they want to raise their own profile, I think we’ll be okay.

Greenfield: What lessons have you learned? 

Barger:  Community policing works. You really can trust most people to be fair-minded and to want to be responsible – both your employees and outside bloggers. For the most part, the fist-shakers get ignored, or corrected by more fair-minded members of the community. 

It is the dynamic of the community that influences the conversation.  Fellow IBMers are watching the blogosphere.  When they see something bad, they bring it to my attention faster than any internal monitoring group.  It is all volunteer.  It is not part of their responsibility to do it.  I am connecting with people at IBM and that would never have happened without blogging.  

Greenfield: What advice would you give your counterparts at other companies?

Barger:  If executives are going to blog, but don’t have time, DON'T use ghost writers. It’s such a personal communication, and no one else can be you.  It’s all about authenticity.   Also, don’t see blogging as just another channel to get your message out. Blogs are about dialogue, about conversation, and about interaction. Look on them as an opportunity to learn from your audiences as well as to influence them.

Greenfield: What’s on the horizon with blogging and social media at IBM?

Barger: We’re going to continue to expand our blogging program – even internally, where we have more than 24,000 registered users of the blog platform, that’s not even 10 percent of our employee population. So we have room to grow. We’ve also embarked on a similar kind of initiative with podcasting and videocasting; we’ve got a tool inside the firewall that allows any IBMer to record, edit and upload their own podcasts internally, and we expect to expand this program to external publishing (IBMers publishing their own podcasts externally) very soon.  And we’ve now started experimenting with video in the same kind of way. 

The bottom line is that it’s becoming so much easier for any employee to produce content – written, audio, or video -- and distribute it; and we want to find the best way to enable that and tap into the collective expertise of our employees while acting in the company’s best interest. It’s really an exciting time to be in communications. I honestly can’t wait to see where all this goes – and I’m lucky enough to be in a position to try and steer it a little.

Greenfield:  Thank you Christopher.

Barger:  Thank you, Dan – I appreciate the chance to talk with you.

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IBM's blogging efforts are that much more impressive given that I just read in Nancy Flynn's book Blog Rules that only four percent of major American corporations operate publicly available blogs.  It is to IBM's credit that they embrace blogging in such a big way.   I was also impressed with their ability to tolerate the dissenting views of individual employees, fully confident that the larger community of IBM bloggers will help present a balanced view of the company. 

If you are interested in sharing your company's path to blogging, please drop me a line.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: PR; Big Blue; Corporate Communications; Christopher Barger; IBM; Blogging;

[This is the first of what I hope to be an ongoing effort to profile the social media efforts of corporate America and abroad.  These profiles are intended to show how companies are making the transition from old media to new, including the requisite who, what, when, why as well as lessons learned along the way.]

Imagine you have a pretty good job in corporation communications at a multi-billion dollar, well-established technology company and yes, you blog on the side.  Then one day you are called in by your boss and another senior level manager to discuss your blog that as far you were aware was unbeknownst to anyone else in the company.  First thought:  You’re fired.  Then, how would you feel when they say they were so impressed by your blog that they wanted you to build a blogging initiative? You would feel like falling out of your chair, right?

That is exactly the way Christopher Barger felt when his boss called him into his office.  And from this single meeting, Chris, 38, now heads up IBM’s blogging initiatives.