As promised, here are links to the slideshows from my two presentations at the recent CASE District VI conference.
Category: crisis communications
Friday Five (a day late): a cure for the listless
i’ve been stumbling across a lot of lists lately in blogworld. maybe that’s because it’s so easy to post lists. it’s even easier to post a list of other bloggers’ lists. in keeping with my new minimalism, why should i come up with a list of my own when so many others have already done the heavy listing? so here’s my metalist of some good lists i’ve read about lately. and since i’m late for the friday five, i’m tossing in a couple extra. you’re welcome.
- Seth Godin’s 7 tips to build for meaning. No. 1 on his list: Use numbers and bullets. Check.
- Speaking of twitter, here are 60 twitter tools. (mashable again.)
- 1 reason your boss is so twitchy. It’s because of the the “crapflood of incoming data” he or she is dealing with all the time. That’s the 43 Folders paraphrase of what biz-book writer Stanley Bing, pitching his latest work, Crazy Bosses, to American Public Radio’s Marketplace, has to say about it. In Bing’s words: “Well, what that does is that feeds control freaks with a constant, steady stream of stuff that needs to be controlled. That’s what’s making people more crazy.”
Download Shel Holtz’s ‘Blogs Gone Wild’
The PDF version of slides from Shel Holtz‘s “Blogs Gone Wild” presentation from today’s Social Media Revolution conference is now available. The session provided a good overview of how quickly a damaging story can spread via social media, and how easily someone with a beef can cause havoc for a corporate (or university) PR staff.
Two students injured in Delaware State University shooting
Post updated at 7 a.m. CDT.
Breaking news this morning from AP: Two students were shot early this morning at Delaware State University and police are still searching for a gunman. Classes are canceled for the day. Meanwhile, the campus’ website makes no little mention of the incident as this screen capture shows. (Screen cap taken at 7:30 a.m. EDT, and the incident occurred around 1 a.m. EDT).
I hope Delaware State can switch that website soon.
On second viewing, I see that the website does mention the incident in the lower right-hand corner.
I was expecting a more prominent placement on the site.
I, crisis communications expert
[shameless self-promotion]
Just thought I’d let readers know that I, a guy who usually tries to get reporters to interview other people, was interviewed myself as a *ahem* media expert by InsideHigherEd.com for a follow-up story to the whole Dalhousie/Facebook/puppy murder flare-up (Proving you’re not a puppy murderer, by Andy Guess).
[/shameless self-promotion]
Guess’ story views the Dalhousie situation — a resurgent Facebook group of 22,000-plus members that accuses Dalhousie of conducting inhumane research on puppies — in terms of crisis management in the age of social networks:
One of a public relations officer’s worst nightmares is a lie that won’t go away, and Dalhousie University recently confronted a doozy: that it was experimenting on cuddly, doe-eyed puppies and kittens.
Normally in such situations, a university might take steps to release information that rebuts the charges, or it might make contact with the source of the allegations. But in this case the statements in question were online, contained within a group on the social-networking Web site Facebook, and accessible to anyone with an account. The group … was founded by someone who apparently was never even a student there.
Now, after an inital attempt to have the group removed from Facebook failed, the university is considering its legal options. “It’s a clear case of defamation,†said Charles Crosby, media relations manager at Dalhousie, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The case illustrates not only how a university confronts allegations, but the evolving ways in which damaging information is spreading from multiple, uncontrollable sources online.
This case raises some interesting issues about communicating in the social media sphere. Dalhousie, the InsideHigherEd story points out, “is highlighting highlighting efforts by other students to counter the original group. One, a Facebook group called “Stop People From Spreading Lies About Animal Cruelty At Dalhousieâ€, was started by a student who works in a laboratory at the university. Still, they’ve got an uphill battle: Only a little over 400 members have joined that group, which can’t match the visceral hook of a vulnerable beagle puppy displayed on the original’s page.”
When I received Guess’s email query to chat about crisis communications in the web 2.0 world, I wasn’t mcuh up to speed on the latest developments at Dalhousie, so we spoke in broader terms of how colleges and universities might handle such crises. My lone quote is rightly buried in the story (paragraph nine, if you’re looking). Guess quotes some better experts, such as Rae Goldsmith of CASE and Teresa Valerio Parrot of SimpsonScarborough, whose quote at the end of the story wraps it all up nicely.