In every action movie there is always some sort of go-to
team. When things get crazy people in the movies always seem to call on a
specific group of people to “get in there and take care of things”. Whether it be the Ghostbusters, the Avengers,
or just Rambo himself, it seems that in the movies people always have someone
to call on when things get bad. It isn’t just in the movies either! When things
get hairy for the military or there is a top secret mission they send in the
Seals or the Rangers. When police come across situations that are especially
dangerous they call the SWAT team.
The point I’m trying to make here is that in these instances
everyone is (at least) somewhat prepared. People have someone to call on when
everything is going wrong. Wouldn’t it make sense for your business to do the
same? In the past year we have seen hundreds of businesses and people take PR
hits for things they have said or done. With the world becoming more connected
every day information slips through the cracks. Everyone has made their
mistakes, and with social media it’s very easy for those mistakes to be blown
way out of proportion. Even your small town greenhouse business can make the
evening news if one of your employees does something inappropriate, or makes a
claim against your business. This one spot then translates to an angry Twitter
mob demanding for you to shut down, and leading others to harass your business.
Like it or not the human race operates off of mob mentality. You certainly
don’t want to fall victim to it. How do you prepare for something unexpected
like this?
That’s when you call in your team of “experts”, your SWAT
team. I’m not talking about a group of henchmen that would resemble the cast
from The Expendables, but rather a team of three or four people that are
extremely knowledgeable about your business, who are the best communicators in
your organization, and that can make sound decisions at a moment’s notice. Type
up a guidelines and procedures that are the limits of what your business will and
will not due during a crisis; this acts as a boundary for your team and they
know where they can act if the time should ever arise that they are needed.
It’s also extremely important to have an outlet for your
team to act in. If something goes wrong and rumors are going around that you
have been selling drugs out of your greenhouse or farm, how do you combat it?
There has to be a channel in which your people can make a statement. Not
addressing the issue is seen almost as an admission of guilt these days. This
is where blogs come in handy. You can publish whatever you want. It gives your
go-to guys a place to write the real story out. Twitter can be useful too, but
only if you can handle your problems in 140 characters.
I know you’re thinking that it won’t happen to you. Your
business is safe from the digital rumor mill. In reality it’s not. In some
cases it’s almost worse. If you sell to a local region and something negative
gets out to the local Facebook or Twitter community you can lose large
quantities of your smaller customer base within a few days! Don’t let that
happen to you simply because you didn’t have a plan in place for this kind of
situation. For larger companies that span over many regions, a small local
incident might hurt the business, but for smaller businesses a local incident
might shut the operation down.
Even though you and I both agree that it seems ridiculous
that it would be necessary for a business to have a digital crisis team to
manage bad PR on social media, it’s the way the world is these days. It isn’t
changing back either. The more connected the internet community becomes, the
faster it can spread information. You as a business owner must ensure that the
information being spread around is both accurate and non-damaging. If not you
might not be around to fix the mistakes “next time”.
As always I’d love to hear your thoughts on this!
Feel free to shoot me an email at mday55@gmail.com
OR find me on Twitter www.twitter.com/mday55
