A proactive stance can stave off baseless allegations
Social media has forced a change on crisis management and public relations as a whole, altering the way we communicate and respond to situations drastically. As the following quote from a TrendyMinds article explains, what was a hard and fast rule as little as ten years ago may be your ticket to disaster today:
As a general rule, organizations and businesses do more harm than good when they allow a deluge of falsehoods to go unanswered. That’s right—the old adage of legitimizing baseless attacks is BS, in my humble opinion. By holding back, you’re missing an opportunity to get your message out AND you’re allowing someone else to define you in their words. Secondly, we’re in a whole new world of mass communication. It used to be much harder and more expensive to do widespread damage to a person or company’s reputation. Back in the day (you know, the 90s), people had to either put money behind a paid advertising campaign or convince a news outlet to cover your accusations. Now, it’s as easy as hopping on Twitter and Facebook to get the rumor mill cranking and create a buzz.
This is exactly why you need to have a social media infrastructure in place, to monitor, measure, and respond to attackers.
The first step is obviously to detect the beginnings of trouble – the angry customer, the agitated ex-employee, etc. Organizations should respond as quickly as possible in an effort to neutralize the issue, but in the case of a social media attacker, this is often not enough. After that effort, close monitoring is required to determine whether this will stop at one person venting, or whether others will pick up and repeat the messages or similar sentiments. Should this occur, social media efforts must expand to both respond to allegations and work towards creating good will among stakeholders and the accuser’s own circle.
The BCM Blogging Team
https://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/