Just like buses you can wait ages for something interesting to happen online in the social media space and then three turn at once. After a fairly quiet summer, one week in October saw possibly three of the most interesting online kerfuffle since Motrin Moms took over Twitter around this time last year. Of course I talk of the Guardian Trafigura super-injunction, the TFL worker insulting customer video and the Daily Mail Jan Moir article on the untimely death of Stephen Gately. All of which infuriated Twitter users and became the topic of conversation on the days they broke.
Each presented a different communication crisis for the companies involved but shared the unifying link of becoming grist for the endless Twitter mill which spewed over into countless blog posts and in the Jan Moir case, a not insubstantial Facebook Group, which meant that their reactions had to be fast and meaningful. There is enough in each individual case to form the content of a series of blog posts each, but Vikki Chowney over at Reputation Online has pulled together an excellent overview and asks ‘Can you fix a social media crisis?’. It examines each of the crisis named above and includes comment from various crisis communication bods, including our very own Neil Bayley, who stresses the importance of monitoring online chatter, that being seen to do something is almost as important as doing it and finally, that once the crisis blows over it is imperative to assess what could have been done differently.
Daily Mail, Jan Moir, Neil Bayley