technology crisis

Considering many current events, I was drawn to the importance social media has had on crisis management, especially in terms of crisis PR.

Last week, I sat earnestly at my office desk, attempting to wrap up my tasks before heading across the street to the local mall for my part time job. Minutes before leaving the office, I receive a tweet on TweetDeck from a local radio DJ about the Red Line crash. I read it, shared the information aloud with the office, closed the program and left. I don’t take public transportation, and my family/friends in the area either don’t take the metro or aren’t on the Red Line, so I didn’t think much of it.

Hours later, as I’m walking out of job number two, the discussion is on the fatal accident. I turn my phone on to find a couple texts from concerned friends. I call my mother—who hadn’t watched the news just yet, but was glad to know I was safe. It made me think.

Technology has drastically changed the way we communicate with others. Seven plus years ago, I ate my morning cereal, oblivious to the catastrophe in NYC, regardless of it’s instant streaming on TV, radios and the Web. It wasn’t until an hour or so after the first plane hit that I was even aware of the national security risk. The mobile technology that we currently have available to us did not exist. Granted, we were permitted immediate gratification to our needs with live streaming, but the actual response, the outcry, was not immediate.

Any rider on the Red Line last week could have instantly “tweeted” their state of mind. Within minutes of the accident, reports were being filed, agencies were pushed to make statements they weren’t quiet ready to make, all because the phenomena known as social media, microblogging, etc. is out there, beating the prepared message to the punch.

Even now, as I slowly peruse today’s tweets from the 30 or so people/organizations I faithfully follow, I’m looking for information that I haven’t already consumed in my daily browsing of the internet, newsletters, water-cooler conversation.

Public relations professionals are pushed to a new level of firsts. A level they haven’t had to experience since the advent of the television. Web stories would wait, reporters could wait, the newsroom would wait; but when the consumer, the targeted audience is already speculating and sharing their impressions before you even are notified of the occurrence, then the professional is given the lesser hand.

I’m brought back to a discussion we had in my PRI class. My professor was discussing her role in implementing a crisis management plan for my alma mater, a role that is rather difficult, because you can’t always prepare for everything. While deciding on the actual delivery of the University’s message, she had time to prepare. The school’s response had to be swift and immediate. The message: At this time, our primary concern is the safety of our students. That was it. Simply put, no elaborate showcasing of the school’s plans for the future, no leaked information. But that was then.

Given the exact same circumstances, today, that message would not suffice. She would be battling with the Tweets of the concerned student who raced down that hallway at 3 a.m., trying to make it out of the building before the smoke consumed him. She’d be messing with the frantic blog of another student, eager to put the story on “paper” while the images are vivid. She’d be concerned with these immediate responses being picked up, a student complaining that the system was flawed, a parent outraged over text messages received, a news story featuring quotes from someone’s blog or another’s twitter profile. Social media platforms designed to allow the regular Joe and Jane to speak up, creates a crisis management nightmare.

In a matter of minutes, a once carefully considered, well-crafted crisis management plan can go to shambles in the hands of social media conversation. This change places a huge responsibility on the shoulders of PR planners and crisis management engineers everywhere. If nothing else, its something that needs to be carefully considered before executing that well-crafted, carefully considered crisis management plan.

UPDATE: With Sarah Palin's recent resignation, here are some tips from Forbes about crisis communication, and delivering a well-thought resignation.