Social Media has changed reputation management forever….

…and there are a few things you must know in order to stay alive.

Foreword

The advent of social media changed the rules of reputation and crisis management overnight. The power of online media means that today’s crises emerge at lightning speed, and spread further and faster than ever before. Social media also imposes higher standards of transparency. Incidents which could previously be kept under wraps are now much more likely to become public knowledge (sometimes even before the organisation itself is fully aware of them).

To put it simply, a crisis fuelled by social media is not something you want to face unprepared. Social media poses internal and external risks, both of which could have a potentially devastating effect on your organisation’s reputation and bottom line. You can no longer avoid these risks by not having a social media presence. Whether you’re engaging or not, many of your stakeholders are on social media, including your employees, customers, competitors and, of course, the traditional media.

CrowdControlHQ have partnered with Insignia Communications to raise awareness of new threats of social media and the potential impact this can have on preparing and managing social media elements of the crisis.

James Leavesley Jonathan Hemus

CEO, CrowdControlHQ Director, Insignia Communications

If you have been with your organization for more than five years and the crisis hasn’t happened, some or all of the points below might apply to your company:

a) You are very good at crisis prevention. b) You are very lucky. c) You are sitting on a dynamite barrel and have no idea about it.

Congratulations! If you have been in your position for over five years, there is an 85% chance you have faced at least one major corporate reputation crisis.*

*Any listed corporation faces an 85% likelihood of experiencing a significant corporate crisis in any 5-year period. Source: Oxford Metrica, Aon Reputation Review 2011

Crisis prevention and reputation management have changed significantly during the past few years. Social Media has affected how reputational crises appear and unfold. Whether you are a veteran or you have yet to face the fire, the following will provide a quick update on what a Social Media crisis means and how you can prevent it, prepare for it and manage it in order to minimise the effect on your organization.

Your reputation is more important than ever The asset value of corporate reputation has increased significantly over recent years, but so did the associated risks. Indeed, reputational risk was identified as the greatest risk facing global companies, even higher than regulatory, human capital, IT, market and credit risk.

63% of a company’s market value is attributable to reputation

‘Safeguarding Reputation’ research by Weber

Shandwick and KRC Research, 2007

66% of board members identify reputational risk as their primary

concern when it comes to risk management

EisnerAmper, May 2012

Enter the Social Media Dragon Regardless of what started it or how it started, a crisis will almost always find its way online. According to a 2011 report of the Federation of European Risk Management Associations, reputational risk from social media is cited as a material risk by 50% of risk managers and a bigger cause for concern than cyber attack. So how is a social media-fuelled crisis different?

Increased Frequency With social media, people are creating and sharing more information than ever before. As more information about the organisation is created and shared in social media the frequency of reputational crises has also increased. The greater transparency provided by social media is another reason why the frequency of crises has increased.

Staggering Speed Sharing information with your entire friend network and followers is only one click away. There are 800 million active Facebook users, each of them having 130 friends on average. Equally, Twitter has incredible reach, with opinion formers and journalists over-represented amongst its users. A reputation-damaging scandal can spread in a matter of minutes.

Global Reach What happens at a local level doesn’t stay local anymore. A company’s failure to provide proper work conditions in one isolated factory in China can become the talk of London and New York the next day (if not sooner).

Total Visibility Investors, factory workers and all your stakeholders now have free access to information about your company, its suppliers and customers. And that information is no longer controlled by you: it is created by third parties.

Easy recollection of the crisis They used to say that today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s fish and chip paper. Not any more. Long after the crisis has passed, a simple Google search for your Company’s name will bring back all the articles and posts related to the controversial issues.

More Measurability On the plus side, in the online space everything can be measured and scaled. You can more easily assess the dimensions of a crisis in order to deliver a proportionate response. It also helps with post-crisis review so that you can put plans in place to prevent similar events from occurring again.

More interaction Social Media can facilitate instant dialogue with concerned stakeholders. Addressing concerns quickly, empathetically and directly can go a long way towards defusing a crisis situation and having a positive impact on how the company is viewed.

When the crisis is triggered by events

happening off-line

A crisis is often triggered by unforeseen events happening off-line. These events may concern a specific department or business unit, one of its suppliers: a work-related accident can start an enquiry on the work conditions provided by the organisation; rude treatment of a customer can cause a sudden burst of accumulated dissatisfaction with the company. Regardless of the cause, once the issue is picked up in social media, it will be amplified thousands of times.

United Airlines broke songwriter Dave Carrol’s guitar in checked luggage. After being denied compensation, he created a YouTube video about the incident. Four days later, “United Breaks Guitars” had been watched by one million people. This video was the trigger for an outpouring of complaints from other angry customers of United Airlines, who shared, retweeted and reposted the video until more than 150 million people became familiar with the story. As a result, United Airlines’ stock went down 10% - $180 million.

By conducting regular reputational risk assessments companies become aware of the problem areas that could escalate into a crisis. Monitoring the social web for mentions of keywords related to these risks and setting up alerts when conversations around these topics increase can be a way to catch and address issues before they escalate into a full-blown crisis.

As we have seen above, social media has created a completely new environment for reputation management. Updating your reputational risk assessment is essential if you are to be fully prepared for the new risk landscape. Simply put, social media makes crises both more likely and potentially more damaging.

When the crisis is ‘purely social’ Social Media and the new mobile technologies have created a whole new class of reputational crises. No off-line event triggers these incidents; they arise in the online space, often because of the organisation’s own actions on social media. As you will see below, ‘purely social’ incidents and can be as dangerous to the company’s reputation as those triggered by offline events.

Internal causes Your employees can be your organisation’s worst enemy. Many reputational crises are triggered by employees’ actions on social media, either on the company’s accounts or on their personal profiles. Careless posting on the organisation’s accounts When an employee creates and manages the organisation’s social media account from their own personal account, mixing up messages can happen quite easily. There are many instances of accidental or inappropriate posting, which have caused great embarrassment and significant damage to an organisation’s reputation.

In February, someone at Chrysler’s social media agency tweeted from Chrysler’s official Twitter account saying that no one can drive in Detroit, Chrysler’s home city. Consequences? The employee lost his job, the agency got fired and Chrysler had to issue official apologies.

Password and login details are often shared between multiple employees in order for them to access the company’s social media accounts. If an inappropriate post goes out, tracing who is responsible can be almost impossible, especially if a large team is manning the social media accounts of the company and multiple marketing agencies have username and password access.

In January 2012, Boners BBQ posted on their Facebook page a picture of a customer who left a poor tip, and made abusive remarks about her. The post went viral in a couple of hours. It took Boners 16 hours to issue a public apology on their Facebook.

Employees’ behaviour on their own social media accounts affects the organisation’s reputation

According to Edelman’s 2012 TrustBarometer, while CEOs’ and government officials’ credibility plummeted, peers and regular employees’ credibility saw a dramatic rise. Each one of your employees is a spokesperson for your brand, and each one of them has the potential to unleash a storm in social media. In the past years, worker terminations and long tedious lawsuits prompted by social network postings saw a dramatic increase.

Councilor Leslie Ghiz from Cincinnati City Council posted offensive comments aimed at another council member on her Twitter feed. She tweeted during a city council meeting, which started a controversy that ended up damaging public trust in the city council.

Organisation fails to respond or responds in an inappropriate manner Complaints and enquiries left unanswered on the organisation’s social media profiles will affect the organisations’ reputation and alienate their audience. Some organisations have even tried to censor posts containing issues that they don’t wish to address in a public space.

70% of all fan questions posted on social media channels are not

responded to. Source: Social Bakers, 2012

Femfresh’s Facebook page had 5300 likes. One post using euphemistic and infantile words instead of the word vagina started a torrent of comments from outraged fans. As the story went viral, the brand failed to issue any statement. Overwhelmed by criticism, they pulled down the Facebook page.

In 2011, a UK tribunal upheld Apple’s decision to fire an employee who ranted about his job on Facebook. Apple’s social media internal policy clearly states that employees are not allowed to criticise the company on social media.

Getting it right On the plus side, the reputational damage caused by an external event can be minimised by intelligent use of social media. After O2’s one-day service failure, huge numbers of customers vented their frustration on Twitter. The social media team handling @O2 in the UK dealt with their angrier respondents with great skill and humour. In the process, the team managed to win back some of O2’s lost kudos.

Many organisations empower their employees or their marketing agencies to create social media accounts on their behalf . Often, when an employee leaves the organisation he or she will leave with the login details to the social media accounts. In a crisis situation, customers can end up asking questions to an account to which the organisation doesn’t have access anymore.

Responding to a crisis via social media requires the right resources and skills. The heat of a crisis is no time to be finding out whether those resources and skills are up to scratch. Consider running social media simulations to give your team the capability and confidence to successfully communicate via social media, and to assess where you may need to upgrade your resources and processes.

External causes

Brandjacking ‘Brandjacking’ occurs when someone assumes the online identity of another entity for the purposes of acquiring that person’s or organisation’s brand equity; similar to “passing off”.

The Arctic Ready and the accompanying "Let's Go!“ hoax engineered by Greenpeace and The Yes Lab aims to increase awareness of Shell's drilling plans in the Arctic. The ‘Arctic Ready’ site is so similar to Shell’s that it confused many into thinking that it actually was a failed social media experiment of the company. Arctic Ready allows visitors to create their own ads, overlaying custom text over photos of polar bears, whales, narwhals and birds. The website received over 2 million page views over a few days. Part of the same brandjacking campaign was also the false twitter handle @Shellisprepared, a spoof account for the Shell Social Media Team which, despite its parody content, fooled many into thinking it was actually engaging on behalf of Shell. The "BP Public Relations" (@BPGlobalPR) fake Twitter account launched by Greenpeace during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill has more than 150,000 followers, three times more than the actual BP account.

Brand jacking can happen to any organisation, and preventing it is almost impossible. But listening across social media channels for mentions of your organisation will intercept fake social media accounts in the early hours and allow you to take action.

Brand ambassadors’ actions Brand ambassadors represent your organisation’s values. Sometimes, their actions on their personal social media accounts can seriously threaten your reputation.

On the eve of the London Olympics, two members of the Australian Olympic swim team came under fire for posing with three guns and posting the photo on Facebook. The mainstream media took up the photo immediately and linked it to the massacre in Port Arthur from 1996. Following the flood of comments from enraged Australians, the Australian Olympic Committee considered keeping both swimmers off the team for the "foolish" action that was "clearly inappropriate for members of the 2012 Australian Olympic team."

There are many ways in which a celebrity can potentially damage your brand on social media; foreseeing all of them is impossible, though reputational risk assessments can help. Monitoring your brand ambassadors’ social media presence provides a way to stay on top of any situation that might arise.

Slurs and abuse on your Facebook pages Anyone can post anything on your organisation’s Facebook timeline. Your company is still responsible for the content, even if it was posted by an external user. Racial slurs, swear-words and spam links can gravely affect your organisation’s reputation and alienate your public.

While your employees and marketing agencies work 8 hours/day, 5 days/week , internet spammers and trolls never sleep. A racist post left un-deleted on your Facebook page over the week-end can have serious consequences. More and more companies are looking for solutions to monitor their pages 24/7.

Greek athlete Voula Papachristou, who had been part of Greece's Olympic delegation to London, was expelled from the team over a racist post on her Twitter account. The athlete is said to have referred to the West Nile virus and immigrants in Greece.

Three magic words: prepare, prepare, prepare Symantec’s 2011 Social Media Protection Flash revealed that 94% of 1225 surveyed organisations had experienced “negative consequences related to social media”. Whilst many organisations focus their crisis management planning on threats such as cyber attack, terrorism or natural disasters, attending to the internal and external risks of social media is at least as important in crisis prevention. The previous examples demonstrate the perils of ignoring this imperative in social media crisis management.

76% of social media crises could have been avoided or diminished if only companies made some internal investment in social media planning and preparedness. Altimeter’s Social Business Readiness Report, August 2011

Reducing the likelihood of a social media crisis is an effort that should start from providing the adequate social media policies and training to your own employees. This process has three steps:

1. Create a social media policy Employees need to know where they stand with regard to social media. And businesses need to establish clear guidelines to reduce the likelihood of self-inflicted reputational harm. Drafting a social media policy is the first step in achieving these goals. 2. Communicate your social media policy Policies only have value when they are communicated to staff so make sure that every employee is aware of the policy and is briefed on it as part of their induction procedure. The danger you must avoid is creating the perfect social media policy that no one has ever read. 3. Embed your social media policy The third step – and the one that really makes the difference – is embedding your social media policy within the organisation. Reading a policy is one thing; understanding and embracing it is quite another. One of the best ways of doing this is via a social media crisis simulation where members of staff have to apply the policy against a realistic scenario. It takes the policy from being dry words to something that employees have tested and applied, but in a safe environment. Prepare to keep them updated as new situations arise and have to be dealt with.

Who is CrowdControlHQ?

Once policies and guidelines are in place, your organisation also needs the support infrastructure that will keeps your social media activity organised and protected. CrowdControlHQ is a web based social media risk management and monitoring tool that allows the entire organisation to operate safely in the social space whilst giving marketing and operational teams a suite of time-saving features, alerts and insights.

How we help you stay prepared:

At organisational level

• Keep social media usernames and passwords secure

• Full audit trail of engagement activity

• Controlled access to social media profiles

• Protect your Facebook Pages from abusive content 24/7

• Monitor the social web to identify external risks

• Ensure compliance to policies and guidelines

At operational level:

• Gather Insight and report on campaign success

• Manage campaigns and co-ordinate social media activity

• Monitor and respond to comments across the social web

• Engage with audiences in an abuse-free environment

• Set up work-flows to ensure operational effectiveness

• Share best practice and collaborate across teams

How we help you manage and overcome the crisis:

• Immediately restrict unauthorised access to social media accounts

• Monitor what people are saying and see when, where and who is talking about the crisis

• Deliver team alerts when conversation volume on certain topics rises above or below normal

• Engage with your community to explain the issue by posting a unified message to multiple accounts

• Respond or remove abusive posts in a timely manner

• Ensure your crisis plans are held in a safe place within CrowdControlHQ, where everyone involved can access them

• Terminate access of certain team members if there are only certain users authorised to respond and engage with a community during a crisis.

Who is Insignia Communications?

Insignia is a communication consultancy which helps organisations protect their reputation through crisis communication planning, training and handling.

We do this through: Reputational risk assessments Reputational risk assessments identify and prioritise events, incidents and issues which could threaten an organisation’s reputation. Understanding the risks likely to damage your reputation in a social media world is the first step towards managing them. Scenario planning Scenario planning ahead of a crisis helps you make the best decisions for long term reputation protection. Understanding the likely twists and turns of a social-media-fuelled crisis enables you to prepare effective response strategies and take swift action to protect your reputation. Crisis communication plan development Crisis communication plans help you respond effectively in a crisis through clear principles, processes, checklists and resources to shape decision-making. Today’s crisis communication plan must integrate social media if it is to be truly effective in protecting reputation. Crisis simulations and exercises A crisis simulation is the first step in stress-testing your crisis plans and ensuring that your people have the knowledge and skills to successfully apply it. It’s only by experiencing a simulated crisis that you can be confident that you are match-fit for a real one. Social media simulations The best way of getting to grips with the impact of social media on reputation management is not in the heat of crisis, but through a training exercise which allows people to experience what it feels like to be in the eye of the storm – but without any of the associated danger. A social media simulation delivers this. Crisis handling No organisation can eliminate the possibility of a crisis, so being seen to manage a crisis well is essential. Insignia offers crisis communication counsel to protect your reputation when the chips are down.

About the authors

James Leavesley –CEO of CrowdControlHQ

James is CEO and Co-Founder of CrowdControlHQ. He studied for his undergraduate degree at the University of Leeds then went on to complete his MBA at University College Dublin. He then spent the next 10 years in specialist marketing and business development roles across a number of different sectors with responsibilities including developing companies in Eastern Europe and Russia. James finally found his calling after meeting his business partner Calum Brannan, where they began to focus on building corporate software in emerging technologies.

Follow James on Twitter: @leavesj

Calum Brannan – Co-founder of CrowdControlHQ Calum is

responsible for innovation and vision at CrowdcontrolHQ.

He set up his first business at 15 and Sky News calls him

"one of UK's most promising young entrepreneurs". He is a

social media analyst, having appeared as a commentator on Al Jazeera, ITN and various other outlets. This year Calum was nominated as a "Young Master" of the year by Google and Entrepreneur Country Magazine.

Follow Calum on Twitter: @CalumBrannan

Jonathan Hemus – Director of Insignia Communications

Insignia’s founder Jonathan Hemus is an experienced communication counsellor with over 20 years’ experience providing reputation management advice and training to world leading organisations and brands. Before launching Insignia in 2008, he was for ten years global leader of PR consultancy Porter Novelli’s global crisis and issues management practice. At Insignia he has developed plans and delivered training to prevent and prepare for crisis, and advised organisations in the midst of major incidents and issues. He is a regular media commentator on reputation management matters.

Follow Jonathan on Twitter: @jhemusinsignia

Contact us:

Find us online: http://crowdcontrolhq.com/ UK: 0845 686 5044 Intl: +44 (0) 845 686 5044 E-mail us: hello@crowdcontrolhq.com Find us on Twitter: @CrowdControlHQ The Fireworks, 3-6 The Old Firestation, 68 Albion Street, Birmingham, B1 3EA

Find us online: www.insigniacomms.com Tel: +44 121 382 5304 Email us: info@insigniacomms.com Find us on Twitter: @jhemusinsignia Insignia Communications, 308 Birmingham Road, Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, B72 1DP