Strategically, social media offers immense utility for public relations professionals when it comes to crisis management but, conversely, it also opens up organisations to immense risk.

On the upside, said James Griffin of SR|7 at Frocomm’s Crisis Communication & Social Media Summit 2009, an example of the positive power of social media is the over $3 million US dollars of revenue that has been generated by Dell through its Twitter platform engagement. “This has created a new asset for Dell,” said James, “Allowing the company to build trust, revenue and its brand.”

And organisations need all the help they can get, it seems, if the findings James cited from AON’s  Australasian Risk Management Benchmarking Survey are anything to go by. “Brand and image have been ranked above corporate governance and other risk categories including legal, human resources and information systems as the number one risk concern since 2007.”

But the “wild wild web”, as James calls it, has a set of risks of its own. “It is a world where people are largely anonymous,” he said. “People feel empowered to say anything regardless of the truth. It is a world where blogs, videos and Twitter broadcasts are more powerful and faster than bullets.”

James quoted Deloitte findings that 58% of executives agree that reputational risk and social networking should be a boardroom issue, but only 15% say it actually is. “Staggeringly, Deloitte also found that only 17% of companies had any form of program to mitigate risks associated with social media.”

An opportunity for communicators? It certainly looks like it.

James said that critical to understanding the importance of social media, and an insight into where social media is heading, is that both Bing and Google will be integrating Facebook status updates and Twitter posts into public search results. “This means a standard Google search for a company is as likely to bring up the official webpage as it is the live feeds of customers, suppliers or employees who happen to comment on that brand and organisation.

“In addition, it will make it faster and easier for the media to source negative or sensationalist stories about goods, services and individuals. The flipside is that there will increasingly be more opportunities for organisations to leverage and use social media as a means for positive brand engagement.”

A powerful strategic point is that 60% of Australians trust the recommendations of their peers. And with the prevalence of social media as networking tool for peers, the importance of the mediums to public relations professionals and marketers is clear.

“The key is knowing where the positive content exists and developing strategies around maximising authentic brand advocates, said James. “These are critical in times of crisis.

iSnack. iFail? Or eyeballs = iWin?

The KRAFT iSnack 2.0 campaign is a very good illustration, said James, of how the integration of social media platforms makes it critical for your organisation to have a presence on each one.

SR|7 was commissioned by the Sydney Morning Herald to provide data and analysis of the KRAFT iSnack 2.0 marketing campaign as it unfolded. Central to the drama around the branding of the product was a very funny but subversively critical YouTube video which, James said, “featured heavily in the majority of traditional news articles both online and offline was linked to, and from, a variety of social media platforms.

“The Kraft experience highlights the power of social media in shaping perception about goods and services. It is clear that Kraft did not have the tools in place to counter arguments and discussion online about iSnack 2.0”

Counting and caring: monitoring results

YouTube video:

• Monday 10am 1,110 views
• 1 day later #1 most watched video – Australia
• 3 days later 45,956 views

Views were accelerated by these sources:

• First referral from YouTube – Homepage 9,391
• Other / Viral 17,581
• First embedded on – www.facebook.com 10,414
• First view from a mobile device 5,703
• First referral from – www.facebook.com 4,722
• First embedded on – www.thepunch.com.au 4,324
• First embedded on – www.crikey.com.au 1,780
• First embedded on – www.defamer.com.au 1,590.

James made the following further points:

• Collecting only brand mentions will miss the most relevant conversations. Discussions are key
• Simple measures (counts, brand mentions, sentiment) are not useful for understanding why people do what they do and, without understanding, we don’t gain the insight of what to do next
• Effective social media monitoring is going beyond buzz and ‘sentiment’, to understand the emotional and motivational drivers of your customers or clients. Human analysis of social media data is vital.

Web visuals’ growing impact

The power of visuals – and moving visuals at that – on the internet seems to be replacing the primacy that television has (had?) in our lives. Online visuals can be seen at the viewer’s convenience and may take only a minute or so to view. From there, it takes mere seconds of effort before an online missive is despatched, whether through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blog and others where untold numbers of people may see it.

Strategic alliances

One method of combating this is applying the tried and true methodology of strategic alliances, even more potent in the social media environment than in a non-digital environment. This is a key tool public professionals should always consider applying when designing communication strategies.

The three primary benefits of strategic alliances are that they enlarge the communication footprint an organisation can have, they can enhance the credibility of alliance ‘partners’ and they provide excellent ROI (especially if they are mostly free!).

In this context, the following is relevant:

• Identify customers, suppliers or other organisations that have appropriate communication mechanisms in place and a mutually beneficial interest in, helping communicate your messages/position
• This is particularly useful, in the context of this discussion, if those mechanisms include social media and their audiences are complementary/relevant to your own
• As these messages, even if they are flagged as being your own organisation’s, come from a third party, they come with their brand imprint and, presumably, credibility
• Even, as has been seen ad nauseum at the Frocomm summit and elsewhere, if the alliance’s social media network is not big but it is influential, then it will be a strategic tactic (um, verging on tautological here…) worth implementing.

These alliances won’t be ‘one-offs’ (who the hell is going to, firstly, want to institute an alliance with your organisation when it is in the credibility ‘bad books’ and, secondly, have the time to do the sign off protocol turnaround in about 24 hours flat?).

As Libby Day, From Roche Australia, said at the summit, alliances and partnerships are built up over years, not hours. Whether we are talking social media or ‘simple’, professional relationships, it takes trust to form alliances and for those alliances to be willing to put themselves at some level of risk by associating themselves publicly with another organisation under the gun.

But if those relationships are meaningful from a two-way perspective, if they are mutually beneficial and if they are founded on trust, then they may well help your organisation get over the crisis line.

This post is part of an extended series covering the summit. All the coverage is also available in a free PDF report that you are welcome to share with your colleagues and peers. As a return favour for providing this resource, and only – of course – if you think the content is worthwhile, perhaps you could tweet about it or flag it on one of your social media networking sites, such as LinkedIn.

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