Posted by: lorihowell | November 25, 2013

The Informational Interview

Have you employed the informational interview—a brief conversation to learn more about a topic or industry—in your job hunt? I have found it very helpful to talk to people with expertise when I’m looking for a job. It can also help you connect with a good work culture when you personalize the job hunt this way.

To supplement the interview tips in chapter 8 of our textbook, Strategic Communication, O’Hair, Friedrich and Dixon (2011), I’ll outline a few informational interview tips that I’ve received along the way.

1. During your initial outreach, call on people in the your field of interest who know and trust your work. It will be easier for you to connect with people who have some history with you, so reach out to them first.

2. Be respectful of a person’s time. If you invited someone to a 30-minute coffee, begin wrapping up the discussion 20 minutes in. Suggest a time-check by saying, “I promised I’d only keep you for 30 minutes and we’re nearing that time.”

3. Wrap up the interview with the question, “Who else should I talk to?” Your interviewee is expecting you to make an “ask”, whether a recommendation or names of additional colleagues. Try not to leave the interview without the names of two additional people you can contact.

Hopefully these tips will lead you to great opportunities and keep you in good graces with the people you interview. What suggestions would you add?

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Posted by: B. Scott Anderson | November 19, 2013

Making the best of a bad situation

On the heels of our conversation last night about how FedEx used the spokesman to try to quell some of the damage done by the employee who threw the computer monitor over the fence before the video of it went viral, I mentioned a woman who quit her job by making a video and posting it on YouTube.

If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s the original video of Marina Shifrin that she posted on Sept. 28. It now has more than 16 million views.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew_tdY0V4Zo

Her former employers got it together pretty quickly and uploaded their own response on Oct. 1. The video is shot the same way that Marina did it, but they obviously put their own spin on it. Here’s the company’s response video, which now has more than 4 million views.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ukGrwL4ky4

By just the number of views alone (especially compared to a huge company like FedEx), does it seem like the company handled such a public situation correctly? What could it have done better?

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Posted by: graceroxasmorrissey | November 18, 2013

Haiyan Facebook (pun intended)

As part of the dissipating FB early majority and with many “friends” living on the other side of the world (the Philippines), I haven’t really paid attention to FB for the last three years, except mostly for private messaging and populating the FB map with all those Yelp check-ins.

That is, until disasters happen, as they inevitably do whenever the Philippine monsoon season comes around. I know enough to start tuning in because a transformation will usually happen (as it is happening now after typhoon Haiyan).

The usual parade of surplus intelligence (e.g. “Candy Crush” saga updates, super albums of unedited vacation photos, assorted rants and over-shares) will become a concentrated stream of public service announcements, requests for assistance, emotional outpourings, media coverage from every possible angle, and yes, also conspiracy theories (“Haiyan is a microwave concoction of US and Japan”), celebrity fixation (“Anderson Cooper, the great white hope”), and more rants (typhoon-related this time).

What I find particularly interesting is a certain moral injunction, mostly tacit, that gets people to desist from posting “selfies” and other self-absorbed posts so that the news feed will be devoted to typhoon-related information. You get a sense of a real community in action. It’s great to be able to build that sense in fair weather but I guess we’ll take a typhoon if we have to.

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Posted by: Mike Plett | November 18, 2013

Traditional vs. social media in crisis communication

In “How publics respond to crisis communication strategies,” the authors found that it’s important to strategically match crisis information form (traditional media, social media, and word-of-mouth) and source (third party and organization) when an organization responds to a crisis (Liu et al, 2011). Their study showed that publics are more likely to accept crisis responses that are delivered through traditional media; however, it also found that the source of the crisis response moderated the public’s acceptance of messages. Traditional media and word-of-mouth communication can significantly affect how publics respond to crisis information, as well as the kinds of emotions they are likely to feel. The study did not detect “significant differential effects social media might have on publics’ reported crisis emotions regardless of crisis information source.”

Yet, the authors don’t write off social media. Past research has suggested that publics are more likely to turn to social media when they desire emotional support and want to emotionally vent. Different media play different roles at different crisis stages; therefore, the authors posit that social media might play a more important role after a crisis is well-known, when the public is searching for emotional support.

Do you think the authors are right, and social media might play a more important role in later crisis stages? Social media is a young medium, so does the class think these findings will hold up in the future? It seems likely that attitudes about social media will change over time.

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Posted by: Emily Priebe | November 18, 2013

Combatting Misinformation in Social Media Crisis Communication

In times of public crisis, such as a shooting or natural disaster, social media can be an incredibly useful tool to communicate information to the public. Official channels like the Red Cross, police departments, and government agencies use social media to disseminate information to the media and the general population. But what happens when the public and bystanders of the crisis, who have just as much access to social media channels, start using the same channels to provide contradictory and sometimes false information?

During the recent LAX shooting, the public and the media were largely left to combat misinformation on their own (such as a parody account that claimed that a prominent government official had been a victim of the shooting), doing their own sleuthing to clear up misunderstandings. Still, those bits of misinformation can perpetuate when left unchecked by official channels, and seriously undermine the credible information that official channels are putting forth.

How can official organizations help combat the misinformation that spreads? Should part of their crisis communication plans include contingencies for misinformation? Should monitoring for misinformation be an important part of any crisis communication plan?

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Posted by: Natalie Henry Bennon | November 18, 2013

The best laid plans

It turns out that the best channels for crisis communications are usually traditional media. However, sometimes you may also want to use social media, depending on the type of response the organization has chosen, and who is doing the communicating (Liu et al, 2011).

And I suspect the results of studies like these might change over the next 30 years as digital natives make up more and more of our population.

Based on Liu et al’s, findings, these are the basic steps I would take to draft a crisis communications plan:

1) Brainstorm with other staff about all the possible crises we can foresee.
2) Choose the ones that are most likely to happen and/or would be most damaging.
3) Categorize them into best ways to respond (i.e., if X happened, we would take a defensive position, or supportive, or evasive, etc).
4) Vet those responses with other staff and stakeholders.
5) Choose the most important one to three message(s) for each crisis.
6) Choose who (person and/or organization) should deliver those messages.
7) Choose the channels for each potential crisis based mostly on the type of response and who would be delivering it, but also considering audience.

How about you? Would you do anything differently? Is there something important you think I omitted?

Liu, B.; Austin, L.; Jin, Y (2011). How publics response to crisis communication strategies: The interplay of information form and source. Public Relations Review, 37, 345-353.

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Posted by: B. Scott Anderson | November 18, 2013

Crisis communication and influencers

Crisis communication is something that the vast majority of organizations will have to contend with at one point or another. How to manage that — particularly through social media circles — can make the difference in the present and in the future for that organization.

If it’s done poorly and not thought out well, it can be disastrous. In the case of Jeff Soto (Wood, 2013), you can lose your job and the company will have to issue a formal apology.  

If it’s done well, thanks to being prepared with a strategy to interact with the audience, you have achieved a significant step in staying actively engaged and serving as a trusted voice for stakeholders.

As a former member of the media, I routinely saw misinformation during a crisis that was spread online via social media. As an organization, how should that be combatted, especially if those who are spreading that misinformation aren’t finding or following your organization? Is there a cutoff time following the crisis when organizations stop trying to battle that misinformation? How much validity do you take into account if someone is spreading misinformation even though they might not have a significant number of followers or fans?

I also thought about the role the media plays in a crisis when it comes to social media. I looked at the verified @FBIPortland Twitter page and it has a little more than 3,100 followers. Do they aim to target more media organizations or actual people during a crisis? 

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Posted by: kgaboury | November 17, 2013

What makes a crisis a crisis?

This weeks readings were about communicating effectively in the face of a crisis, but they got me thinking about what constitutes a crisis. Is it a situation where loss of life, injury or major financial loss/property damage occurs or may occur? Or is it something that, if not handled immediately and properly, would tarnish the image or reputation of a brand?

Wikipedia defines a crisis as “any event that is, or is expected to lead to, an unstable and dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, community, or whole society.”

In addition, Wikipedia’s article on crisis management states that three elements are common to a crisis: “(a) a threat to the organization, (b) the element of surprise, and (c) a short decision time.” Crisis management also involves dealing with threats before, during and after they occur.

According to “How Publics Respond to Crisis Communication Strategies, “a crisis is ‘the perception of an unpredictable event that threatens important expectancies of stakeholders and can seriously impact an organization’s performance and generate negative outcomes (Coombs, 2007).’”

I feel like occasionally, the word “crisis” gets thrown around too easily by organizations, when maybe a less intense term could be used in some cases. Does anyone else feel this way? What do you think constitutes a crisis?

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Posted by: kpokrass | November 17, 2013

Social Media: a Friend or Foe During a Crisis

Tomorrow, Melissa and I will be discussing the theories behind Corporate Crisis Communication. Specifically, I will be focusing on the social-mediated crisis communication model (Liu et al., 2011). When it comes to crisis communication, social media can be a company’s friend or foe. Corporations need to integrate social media into their crisis communication plans because in today’s world there is not just one source of media that people retrieve their news from. Because of how information travels on social media, be it organization or third-party driven, corporations should incorporate this tool as a way to directly supply up-to-date critical information to the public. Otherwise, information about the crisis could go viral from third party who might not have all the facts straight.

Social media channels can be powerful tools that companies have at their disposal to assist with communicating vital information to their publics. However, Liu et al. (2011) found in 2009 only 29% of U.S. companies had a formal social media policy. Hopefully, four years later the percentage of companies who have a social media crisis plan has increased.

What happens when corporations do not include social media into their crisis communication plans?  What do they lose by not including social media in their plans?

Liu, B.; Austin, L.; Jin, Y (2011). How publics response to crisis communication strategies: The interplay of information form and source. Public Relations Review, 37, 345-353.

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Posted by: Melissa De Lyser | November 16, 2013

De Lyser, Week 7: Communicating emergencies via social media or 911?

In 2009, two Australian girls became trapped in a storm drain.  With limited cell phone life, they posted their emergency on Facebook rather than call the Australian equivalent of 911.  It took four hours before someone reported the situation to authorities, who rescued the girls.

The story attracted widespread media attention. Law enforcement weighed in, advising people that social media was not for emergency use.  Officers pointed out, correctly, that the girls would have been rescued sooner if they had called emergency services.

Fast forward four years and the message has changed.  Not completely – I suspect most law enforcement would prefer to receive emergency calls via 911 over Twitter, depending on the situation.  But both the public and law enforcement have embraced social media as a means of communicating emergencies.  This cultural shift presents new communication challenges.

Suicide hotline operators, hostage negotiators, police dispatchers – until now, their training has focused on telephone and in-person communication. Creating trust, conveying empathy and averting panic are skills that emergency personnel have developed in part by relying on tone of voice, facial expression or body language.  Can hostage negotiators talk someone out of pulling the trigger via text or Twitter?

Both law enforcement and the American Red Cross have made good use of social media platforms, as this week’s readings demonstrate.  It will be interesting to see how far, and fast, social media can move that acceptable-use point, as technology evolves.  One day, could 911 be an app-only platform, residing in the Cloud?

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