Handling a Crisis via Social Media

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By: Doug Bedell

It's time to get down to cases on incorporating social media into PR. A good place to start is on the crisis side of the ledger. We've discovered Melissa Agnes, a web-based social media crisis manager. For those of you who don't know her, here's a good meeting place: Melissa's post on "Is Your Social Media Crisis Communication Plan Twitter-Friendly?"

We know people who can't imagine why businesses would want to be promoting, or protecting, themselves on Twitter, really. They think they'd get lost in the tweetstream, and they might if they weren't using Twitter properly. But Melissa offers tips on getting noticed and retweeted on Twitter during a crisis. It may not be a social media crisis, but for lots of businesses, social media is one of the places to be with a timely explanation of what's occurring. Even, indeed, a retweetable one.

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Now it develops that, while many communications planners recognize social media's value to an enterprise, they don't actually include it in their crisis communication plans. This from Continuity Central, reporting on an Everbridge survey of over 400 organizations.

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From Yahoo! Small Business Advisor, here's another take on Twitter in crisis communication.

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About the Author

Doug Bedell has a background in journalism and PR and is the owner of Resource Relations LLC in Central PA, focusing on organizational and crisis communication. He’s the community manager of SimplyFair.net, a social network on fairness. On the Web, Doug’s at www.ResourceRelations.com. On Twitter, he’s @DougBeetle.

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