Crisis Communication

    Crisis Communication is a challenging and dynamic topic. I clearly remembered that for my “Principles of Public Relations” class, when Dr. Hether asked us which part of Public Relations attracts us the most, nobody chose “Crisis Communication”. I think the reason is that no one wants to face crisis, let alone dealing with crisis. However, as a PR practitioner, crisis communication is not only a “compulsory course”, but also ubiquitous in an era of social media.

    According to Brian and Solis, Crisis Communication is a branch of PR that is designed to protect and defend an individual, company, or organization, usually from a reactive response, facing a swelling public challenge to its reputation, brand, and community. In Web 2.0 era, the crisis has a broader definition. Conversations, reviews, comments, interactions related to a brand, company, or products, whatever with control or without knowledge, could both help to promote a brand and trigger a crisis.

    The greatest difference between traditional crisis communication and social media crisis lies in that traditional crisis communications was relegated as a reactive response, while for social media crisis communication is proactive. As Brian and Solis put it, in the Social Web, a majority of potential crises are avoidable through proactive listening, engagement, response, conversation, humbleness, and transparency, so that they introduced a dynamic process of crisis management, that is

- Active


- Listening

- Observation


- Conversation


- Learning


- Planning


- Continued Adaptation and Engagement

Reinventing Crisis Communications for the Social Web

   I found that learning crisis communication for social media is an integrated application for what we have learned from Groundswell this semester. By listening to the Groundswell, a company could keep an eye on how their existing and potential customers talking about them, and targeting their audience on social media platforms, and thus, prevent possible crisis. Even when crisis comes, they could figure out the most appropriate solution according to the demographics of their audience. By talking with the Groundswell, a company could establish their unique brand personality and promote their products or services. By doing this, they could collect feedbacks from their customers efficiently so that they could proactively see possible crisis, and utilized the most appropriate social media tools to deal with the crisis. By energizing and embracing the Groundswell, a company will be able to let their enthusiastic customers help them to deal with crisis, and these customers will be the key factor in crisis communication. They could not only help to discover the premonition of an online crisis, but also be the intercessor of the crisis, because what they said is more credible than what a company itself said. Overall, whatever objective and strategy a company will use for crisis communication, “Protention”is the most important characteristic for crisis communication for social media.

    I am excited to find that crisis communication is a combination of what we have learned, and it is an integrated application of various social media strategies. To this extend, crisis communication is both challenging and significant for a company. We could actually gain funs and sense of satisfactory through crisis communication. 

Unlock Our World with Foursquare

    Foursquare is a location-based check-ins application that launched in 2009. As a location-based application, the platform has evolved since its debut, incorporating restaurant menus, reviews, promoted specials and deals. Foursquare makes it easy for people to post physical location on the Web. But it seems that not everyone is willing to do so.

    I find some people may against such check-in application because of personal privacy. While, I feel comfortable with it, since in Foursquare, we can check-in whenever and wherever we like. If I want to protect my privacy, I won’t check-in in places that I don’t want others know. And I could easily and readily share my experience and locations when I feel I want to let others know. It’s flexible and personal. I newly applied for my Foursquare account, and I checked-in for several times and posted some pictures. This is an interesting experience. Following are some of my posts:

    After having a Foursquare account by myself, I begin to think that what makes people want to use Foursquare for check-in? What's the motivation for users to register where they are in the offline world online? From my own using experience, I would like to say it’s for Serendipity and Connection.

    Firstly, check-in applications such as Foursquare well catered human’s nature of share. When we go to a perfect restaurant or bar; when we have fun with our friends in some interesting place; when we go traveling to some places of historic interest and scenic beauty, we will be eager to share these experiences with others. Foursquare offered people a platform to share their serendipity and their sense of satisfactory. Secondly, as a location-based check-ins application, Foursquare is also integrated with Twitter and Facebook, so if we also publish our check-in to those services. By connecting people with their friends and connecting various forms of social media platforms, Foursquare undoubtedly became many people's favorite social media tool.

    Overall, Foursquare is an online platform and a mobile app that allows us to check in to any location; to share experience and fun with our friends; and to connect with other online platforms. And we ourselves have control over this tool. I will continue to use Foursquare to unlock my world and record my pathway. 

Social Media Metrics: It's Not Impossible

     Social media metrics is a realistic and pragmatic topic for organizations. Although social media has rapidly matured over the last decade-plus, the topic social media metrics remains indifferent for many. It should be realized that just like any marketing medium, measurement is a critical component of success for social media. While the unawareness of social media metrics is due to the difficulties in measurement: social media metrics is immature and hard to achieve. For many companies, to measure social media with regard to its effects seems to be very challenging, and even impossible, At its core, digital measurement is contingent on controlling the customer experience and laying tracking hooks along the way to understand response and subsequent behavior. However, social media's foundation challenges this very tenet: The consumer is not in control after all.

    With the unexpected rapid development of social media, a lots of social media metrics tools came into being, which not only indicated the increasing awareness of the importance of measuring social media effects, but also provided tools and approaches for companies’ utilization. I believe social media metrics will evolve quickly as marketers attempt different approaches to help make sense of all the activity data generated by social media interactions—social media metrics is something that’s very possible. If we regard social media exerting power on people as a whole, then social media metrics works as the evaluation link, helping better establish and revise objectives as well as work out social media strategy and tactic. To this extent, social media metrics is not only possible not also essential.

    According to our class discussion, social media effect can be measured in four ways: Exposure—how many people have reached with your message; Engagement—how many people actually did something with your message; Influence—are engagement metrics positive, negative or neutral and Action—did your conversions lead into another, more valuable entity. To measure these four areas, various kinds of metrics tools are available such as googletrends, Klout.com, tweetreach, etc. Although these social media metrics tools can help to measure social media effects on a larger scale, but as for me, I think what online tools can achieve are superficial. If a company really wants to gain deep understanding of audience’s feedbacks, depending on online metrics tools is insufficient.

    For example, if an organization want to measure the effects of their Twitter account, by using tweetreach, they can get lots of data including number of accounts they reached, number of contributors, number of retweets/replies they gain in a unit interval, even a list of top contributors and a list of most retweeted tweets. The tweetreach.com provide us a comprehensive and detailed analysis for companies to measure the effectiveness of their Twitter account, from which they can get information about the “Exposure” and “Engagement”. But I think, a company shouldn’t stop here. If they want to get access to the feedback of their customers— the information of “Influence” and “Action”, other resource method such as content analysis and survey should be utilized.

    Overall, social media metrics is aiming at changing the relationship between an organization and its customers. Since social media is getting it this far, it is a great time to be a digital marketing measurement practitioner.