In 2012, corporate communicators will continue to grapple with the impact of social media – especially in the realm of crisis communications. How can they tailor and adapt plans to take into account a rapidly changing world that expects them to provide information almost instantly? Neil Chapman tells us how.

The profound role of social media in our lives was brought home to me dramatically a year ago. As the parent of a student caught up in the Japanese earthquakes and tsunami last March, I was reminded  just how vital good information is for those impacted by such terrible events, not only those caught up directly, but also for those with a direct (or perceived) interest – the ‘stakeholders’ in PR-speak.

Having myself responded to attention-grabbing events over a 25-year communications career, after Friday March 11, 2011 I found myself on the outside desperately seeking information. My reactions reinforced some thoughts I was still reflecting on. I was thrust back in time to the day I responded on-site in New Orleans to deal with the highly complex BP oil spill.

Fast-forward now to last year… During 2011 I shared crisis communications lessons learned about the spill with many corporate communicators trying to understand how to address the changing demands from both new and old media as well as other stakeholders, who appear to have insatiable information appetites in light of new technologies. However, corporate communicators are all too aware of the limited resources they have to hand in a crisis.

Here are some of the questions they asked me. I thought I’d share them with you here:

Should corporate communicators rethink their role in a crisis?

Yes. Time was, protecting reputation meant dampening or trying to soften headlines as much as possible. That might keep the CEO happy in the past. But with the capability to communicate directly to people in a way they want to receive information, communicators have to coach their organisations to adopt a more appropriate reputation philosophy – more on the lines of ensuring accurate information reaches people who need it most as quickly as possible. Media may be an important audience, but probably not THE most important in this scenario. Keeping faith with key audiences during a dramatic event can enhance an organisation’s reputation in the long-term, even when something bad happens. Cost-effective technologies exist to do just that – Ushahidi, PIER Systems, YouTube, Twitter, email etc. – yet too many are choosing not to use them. Crisis communicators today should be familiar with and know the value of different information channels and plan for the two-way flow of information rather than just one-way broadcasting.

How ‘demanding’ are different audiences in a crisis?

Very – and they won’t wait for you to get your act together. Dealing with hundreds if not thousands of emails, tweets, on-line comments/day with phones ringing off the hook is not the time to plan what to do. Meanwhile web traffic will test an organisation’s IT infrastructure, sometimes to collapse. Just one (of a number) of the websites launched to provide information on the BP oil spill received 150 million hits alone. Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) now offers good web information about its Fukushima nuclear power station. For weeks after the tsunami it didn’t. I turned to Ushahidi  – an open source software that collects and displays information on inter-active maps – and other sources for the information I sought to help my son decide whether it was safe to continue his studies in light of the Fukushima nuclear fall out. Any organisation needs to plan and prepare for the digital information demand onslaught; otherwise audiences will drift away, along with their trust.

Is your staff prepared to handle a fast-moving social media crisis? Join us on Feb. 29th for SMI’s instructional Social Media Crisis Communications and Reputation Management workshop in London. We’ll again be teaming with Neil Chapman, former comms chief at BP. His stories and lessons from the Deepwater Horizon tragedy will fascinate you!

How do we monitor what people are saying about us and what should we do?

Not easy. It takes a lot of monitoring because no single system – whether Google alerts or Hootsuite – can do it all. Besides, monitoring should be part of an overall reputational tracking strategy. It’s better to ask: ‘How should we respond when we find our name being used or abused?’ The Social Media Monitoring tool by SMI is a simple tool to help communicators think through actions when an organisation finds itself in the digital firing line (see graphic below).

Editor’s Note: SMI again this year will be teaming with Neil Chapman, former comms chief of BP and a veteran of the Deepwater Horizon tragedy, on a series of instructional Social Media Crisis Communications workshops. The first is scheduled for Feb. 29th in London.