Welcome to the October edition of 47,
Pesel & Carr’s quarterly communications newsletter.
In this issue of 47:
How to #fail on social media
Sorry – the hardest word
4 things to remember when using social media as part of your crisis communications response
The value of communication foundations
P&C News
Pick of the bunch – communications and PR news from around the globe
Please feel free to forward this to any of your contacts who might find the information useful.
If there’s a communications issue, you’d like to discuss, get in touch with me for a free one-hour consultation – barbara.pesel@peselandcarr.com.au.
Kind regards,
Barbara Pesel
How to #fail on social media
If you want to #fail at social media, you need to embark on it without the benefit of any planning or strategy whatsoever – let alone an integrated strategy that ties in with your other communications.
Don’t waste your money on programs that make it easy to schedule posts. Far better for your team to Tweet in real time from the pub at 11pm, when it’s easier to accidentally mix up a personal and professional account.
Speaking of personal social media, you do realise that it’s none of your business what nasty things your employees say about your organisation, or about their colleagues, in their private capacity. If you want to fail at social media, it’s best not to have any policies or, if it’s too late for that, not to enforce them. (Anyone who objects to being bullied on social media needs to toughen up!)
Remember to cultivate tone deafness. Social media is no place to be thoughtful or helpful if you can leap in on trending hashtags without finding out what they relate to, and pepper serious debate with your marketing material instead.
If you must have KPIs – and we recommend you don’t – be careful to measure the wrong things. Number of followers are key, here, and who cares if half of them have been purchased or are spam-bots. Frequency of communication should be your other go-to metric. Disregard entirely the extent to which people do, or do not, engage with your posts.
And, if a customer should happen to complain or attempt to communicate with you via social media, you’re best off ignoring it at the least or, better, never being aware of it in the first place. Memo: you don’t want to monitor your social media channels if you’re going to make a fist of #failing.
Sorry – the hardest word
In that Tweet, he’d called a different female journalist a “c*** from hell” for one of her columns.
“My first thoughts,” he wrote, “were deeply uncharitable. ‘Well, I frankly still stand by that assessment!’ (I really couldn’t.) ‘But Australia is a country where the c-word is an expression of affection!’ (Yeah, not in this case, Ben.) And finally, ‘Well, she can handle it.’ (Why should she have to?) I was a dreadful hypocrite…
“Then I felt shame. ‘Appreciate you bringing this to my attention,’ I wrote back. ‘Though it was five years ago, no excuses, unreserved apologies.’ And I meant it. I’d been a hypocrite and a jerk and needed to acknowledge that. Surprised, the columnist accepted my apology, her followers were kind, and some of us even talked like humans – rare for the net.”
As Ben related, it can be difficult to own your mistakes and apologise – and, from a communications and public relations point of view, there are some common errors.
- Caveats: If you’re apologising, you need to say you’re sorry, not you’re sorry “if” anyone is offended or you’re sorry “but”…
- Minimising your culpability: Now is not the time to go on about how “out of character” your “temporary lapse in judgment” was, to try to share the blame or to downplay the number of people affected.
- Failing to prevent a recurrence: If you or your organisation have failed to take steps to prevent a recurrence, then your apology will be missing a key element.
- Jargon: Be human, be simple, be sorry – don’t get tied up in long words or professional jargon.
- Being vague: You need to be specific about what you’re apologising for, who you’re apologising to, what you’re doing to prevent the same thing occurring in future and, ideally, how you plan to make amends to those you have hurt or inconvenienced.
- Lack of follow-through: If you have promised to take certain actions, you need to actually take them – not just hope the issue will slide away.
4 things to remember when using social media as part of your crisis communications response
1. Be human, empathetic and respectful
During a crisis, it is important that your audience knows you care, before they care what you know. They will be more receptive to your messages, and more forgiving of your organisation, if you show its human side.
2. Know that poor social media use can make existing crises worse
Usually, the reputational damage you get during a crisis is less about what happened, and more about how you respond. In the example above, we saw how a human angle alleviated a potential crisis and even provided the organisation an increase in exposure.
However, the wrong social media, can do more harm than good. The recent Census debacle is a perfect example. Frustrated Aussies turned to Twitter, only to receive inaccurate and frankly insulting automated responses ‘the online form and website are operating smoothly as expected. Please try again’. This only added to the communications chaos that has been the 2016 Census, and fuelled perceptions that the Australian Bureau of Statistics was incompetent and arrogant.
In the event of a crisis, make sure to stop all other social media marketing IMMEDIATELY! There is nothing worse than a poorly timed Facebook post or tweet, to position your organisation as insensitive.
For example, when Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 disappeared, tweeting “Want to go somewhere but don’t know where?” was a decidedly terrible move. They then backed it up on Facebook with a promotion asking customers what places were on their “Bucket List”! At a time when the entire world was watching and waiting for information, this did them absolutely no favours, with both posts exacerbating online backlash.
4. Treat exercises in crowd-sourcing with caution and respect, and maintain control
It’s important to tread with caution whenever you ask the public for comment. They may not respond in the way you expect, in fact they almost always don’t, and in turn cause some damage to the reputation you’ve worked so hard to build.
In a competition to name a polar research vessel, RRS Boaty McBoatface took out the title above RRS It’s bloody cold here and RRS Usain Boat, is a perfect example. In a similar case, GreenPeace was forced to name a whale Mister Splashy Pants. Whilst unexpected, at least these names weren’t offensive.
Mountain Dew were forced to withdraw a campaign to crowd-source a name for a new product after ‘Hitler did nothing wrong’ opened up a lead. It’s much safer to call for direct entries, and have the public then vote on the best you’ve carefully selected.
Remember, just because you love your organisation and will stick by them through thick and thin, doesn’t mean your customers will. Social media is the fastest way to get in contact with and reassure them, but don’t do so without a plan.
The value of communication foundations
What sets your organisation apart from competitors? What makes you special? How do you want to be perceived?”
All too often, executives in organisations aren’t on the same page when it comes to this basic question – let alone the team… and then they wonder why customers don’t “get it”.
It’s important to articulate and communicate the essence of an organisation – its DNA, if you will – as a foundation for consistent, effective external and internal communication.
The DNA is a summation of why the business exists – its mission (what it wants to achieve), its vision (what the world will be like when the mission has been reached) and its values (the road rules you are committed to following).
With the DNA clearly articulated you can then begin to formulate and align the key messages you want your target audiences to hear and remember about you.
Key messages aren’t advertising tag lines. There are also not words for words sake. They are a succinct summation of your brand, company and offering. They help drive your business objectives and goals – they frame your overall communications.
When we work with organisations, we start the key message building process by auditing materials and tools to identify what key messages are currently being used and, almost inevitably, inconsistencies in those messages.
The most challenging message to develop is the “overarching key message” – a one-sentence statement encapsulating “who” the organisation is and what they’re about.
The next step is to establish the organisation’s communications pillars, or key themes such as “community”, “technical excellence” and “safety”.
Getting your communications foundations right is work, and does require investment, but it pays off in a number of ways including:
- Better cut-through, courtesy of consistency of message
- Time saved through use of pre-considered key messages, company boiler plates and elevator pitches
- Thoughtful communication, tailored to each audience, rather than ad hoc messaging developed on the fly
- Having the executive “on the same page”
- Communications which truly align with your organisation’s vision, mission, goals and objectives.
What we’re up to at Pesel & Carr
- Our office and our hearts have developed a dog shaped hole after the death of Shiva, Barbara Pesel’s much-loved pet poodle and Pesel & Carr office pooch. The WOOF last word section of our newsletter will continue in her memory.
- On a happier note, many thanks to those of you who attended the recent seminar we held on workplace social media with Susan Halliday – we plan to produce an edited version of the recording as a podcast, so watch this space!
- And, congratulations to one of our strategic associates, leading international expert in issues and crisis management, Tony Jaques, on the publication of his latest book, Crisis Proofing (Oxford University Press).
Crisis Proofing a highly readable guide to the creation of a management mind-set committed to reducing the chances of a crisis and how to minimise the damage from any crisis. Recommended reading!
- In other news, Barbara is now the President of Lort Smith, where she has served on the board for 5 years.
Pick of the bunch – communications and PR news from
around the globe
A brief and thought-provoking round-up on the recent Australian #censusfail debacle from a communications perspective – lessons include the need for organisations not to be arrogant.
Final word
Editor-in-chief Mark Forbes didn’t sugar-coat the ‘stuff-up’, explaining on radio that two versions of the advertisement had been prepared – and that they’d ran the wrong one.
Congrats to Mark for getting on the front foot to ‘fess up, and to the Doggies for their victory. WOOF WOOF!
