Issues Management in An Instant Messaging World
Managing issues, risk, and crisis are essential elements in the toolkit of the public relations practitioner. At some point, no matter what sector one is in, a conflict or situation will arise that needs thoughtful, intelligent, but decisive action. Most of us know that from experience.
However, with the increasing mediums and vehicles for people to share information and experiences with each other, how is issues management changing? What, if anything, are public relations professionals doing that’s different?
Audiences can e-mail product reviews, negative experiences, embarrassing photos, and leaked e-mails and start cyber space conversations in mere minutes. Stories can cross the globe in hours.
What does this mean for managing impact of issues that could decide the livelihood of your business or organization?
Those who work closely with legal departments will know that this group tends to be quite risk averse and lean towards the ‘less is more’ school of communicating with publics when managing an issue or crisis.
However, as communications counsellors, is this a viable strategy moving forward? How do we join in these conversations and convince senior management to do the same?
Tracy TangCPRS Member
Years in the PR industry: 7
Vancouver, BC
Tags: crisis, instant messaging, issues management, public relations
April 2nd, 2009 at 7:54 am
Hi Tracy,
If I may say so, we definitely have a thing or two to say about how risk and crisis can be handled using a combination of traditional PR/media outreach, and direct-to-consumer methods like our news ad network. It just drives me bonkers that the PR community is missing opportunities to tell their side of the story, in a fully controlled fashion. After all, you’ll take out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal - which only reaches a subsection of news readers - and fully ignore that millions of people every day prefer to get their news online, and will read your statement even if it’s in an ad placement.
Our CEO wrote a recent blog entry about the topic: http://blog.onlinemarketingconnect.com/2009/02/25/crisis-management-20-peanut-butter-blues/
If anything, the internet is teaching us that you can’t hide, and that people will talk *about* you if you don’t let them talk *with* you - if you’re not part of the conversation, you have no chance of mitigating it.
I’m interested in hearing what your other readers think about new ways to embrace risk/crisis as part of a new approach to transparency and availability. I would think that Twitter is an obvious choice of channels to add to the mix as well.
Sincerely,
Dana Todd, CMO
Newsforce Network