If Social Media sites are more popular than porn sites, how the heck is a company supposed to protec
In an age of instant connect, viral marketing and social media, does your company have a strategy for gossip and attacks in blogsphere? Five years ago, I would not even have thought of posing this question. Today, corporate reputations are being made or broken in a media environment that is ruled by blogs, facebook, flickr and other popular social mediums.
Take Flow for example, on facebook there are 2,000 haters of the Trinidad and Tobago based cable company all gathered on one site talking their bad experiences of the company every day. That is over 2,000 people and their friends. If you accept that one person talks to about four persons in their social sphere then it is not a far stretch to say that 8,000 people have spoken ill about the cable provider. Some months ago, my friend went to Woodford Cafe, a very popular Creole food joint and was told she had to pay extra for her tatar sauce. She was so mad, she blogged about her experience and there was talk of creating a social media group to stir up awareness for what she saw as a 'crazy' customer service practice. All these stories and situations have legitmacy in blogsphere and in an age where shoddy customer service is still a norm, open discussions give voice to the discontented. And that is the beauty of social media isn't it? It really is about people having unfiltered and free conversations on-line and nothing is sacred, least of all is the corporate reputation.
At a recent IABC meeting, one board member fresh from a communications conference in NY urged another PR professional to get some of his brand managers on facebook. "You've got to," she said, "even if it is to see what others are saying about your reputation." Corporations have a right to feel helpless. Social media sites are more popular than porn sites, declared Time Magazine in an October 2007 article. With over 4,000,000 Wikkipedia articles, 200,000,000 blogs and 100,000,000 videos on You Tube there are plenty opportunities for the many voices of discontent and for public relations wildfires.
Does that mean corporations need to roll over and play dead? No. And many can take lessons from the political campaign of Barack Obama, whose advisors are social media geniuses as they are political strategists. Recently when the presidential candidate’s wife took a beating, Obama went on the offensive. Here is what happened. When Michelle Obama was acused of using the word "whitey" to disparage Obama's critics during the Jeremy Wright controversy, Obama's team launched a Web site called fightthesmears.com.
"We have seen this before. There is dirt and lies that are circulated in e-mails, and they pump them out long enough until finally you, a mainstream reporter, asks me about it. That gives legs to the story," said Obama just before the launch of the campaign.
Fightthesmears.com is beautiful because it is so simple. There are the lies, followed by the facts. That's it. The curious will like the links which take them to "Who's behind the lies." And in a true stroke of genius there is another link that will take you to writers and bloggers who have dispelled the lies and innuendoes. The best thing is that these bloggers are all conservative. The Presidential nominee debunks everything from his alleged Muslim connections to rumours that his book contained racial remarks. I am surprised after browsing today that his team did not take the New Yorker to task for the cover of the July issue where his wife is portrayed as an Afro wearing, gun slinger bumping fists with a Muslim clad Obama.
Still I think that Fightthesmears.com gives legs to the idea that corporations can still retain some measure of control when they join the conversations and create new ones of their own. The caveat is that the 'corporate speak' should be transparent, authentic, inclusive and customer driven. In an era where conversations are no longer monologues, driven from the top down, Obama's site could become the model for crisis PR practitioners looking for an innovative way to take back control.
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Judette Coward Puglisi (MSc, Dip IR, BA), Managing Director. Find out more 
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