By Jason Snyder
It’s impossible to find any good in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. As someone with a deep appreciation of the natural world, I find it very sad and disgusting. Nonetheless, I did find a good collection of social media efforts worth noting.
Seth Liss, a reporter with the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, wrote a piece highlighting several web-based efforts under way to coordinate volunteer efforts, compile texts, tweets and e-mails about the spill and report spill-related damage. Whatever else you might say about the situation, in my professional opinion, British Petroleum’s efforts to communicate with the public via social media have been good.
Liss describes BP’s integrated social media efforts, including the web site deepwaterhorizonresponse.com, which provides numbers for people to call to report spill-related damage. At the top of the site, there are also links to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube pages. Liss writes that the social media campaign in part has helped defuse some of the public outrage about the oil spill. He may be right, especially considering that 55 percent of Americans still favor offshore drilling even after the spill. I’d love to know what others think about that. I’m with Liss. I believe that without a social media effort, the backlash against BP would be much worse.
As has been proved time and again, and is demonstrated with BP, a social media component is essential to any crisis communications or issues management plan. Traditional public and media relations are critical but are not enough in our digital age.
Within the public relations realm, there’s little, if any, debate on the importance of social media and being part of a conversation with stakeholders. Liss validates what has been said all along about social media – with the way information spreads virally, “no comment” and deflecting blame are not options. And remember, this comes from a reporter, the other half of the social + traditional media relations equation.
Although Liss believes there is no controlling the message, there is a way to mange it. Taking appropriate proactive steps that include social and traditional media can enable an organization to get in front of an issue, rather than get knocked back on its heels into a reactive mode. BP’s at least gotten in front of the issue with its social media activities.
I’ve been looking for good case studies that illustrate the effective use of social media during a crisis. Send them along if you have any, and let’s have a conversation about them.
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Jason Snyder is vice president of WordWrite Communications.
