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WHEN THE SHIT HITS THE FAN
Despite your best efforts, your business will at some time be criticized on the Internet. Better to learn how to deal with it before it happens rather than after.
A lot of organizations are very wary of social media because they are afraid of communication with their staff or customers “getting out of control”. They fear the rogue member of staff ranting on their internal forums or worse still being indiscreet on the web. They dread customers criticizing them and damaging their brand. Highly publicized examples of both of these apparent risks don’t help. The thing to understand is that they never really had control in the first place. The world of channels and managed communications gave the impression of control, but people could always have conversations around the water cooler or in the pub – it was just that you weren’t aware of it. What these new tools give you on the other hand is much more important – they give you a vastly improved ability to influence.
Talking to someone in the financial sector recently, he was expressing frustration at the negative gossip on blogs about his organization, and the willingness of the press to pick up on or even encourage this. Setting aside the changing role of the press for the moment, I suggested that the best defence was to get his version of the truth out there on blogs and build a network of people who believed what he said and trusted his credibility. If enough people trust and believe him then they will ...
