Social media has become a "must have" in today's business world, but fears about opening the floodgates for negative viral buzz still hold some back from participating. In an article for this week's Crisis Manager newsletter, online marketing and branding expert Cindy Ratzlaff explains why staying out of the conversation will only create larger problems. A quote:If a company stays away from soci..

This week's Crisis Manager features articles from two authors new to the pages of our newsletter. First up is an article by online branding and marketing expert Cindy Ratzlaff, named one of the top 30 Women Entrepreneurs to Follow on Twitter by Forbes, that explains how to defuse the fear social media that many organizations still hold on to. The second is a piece full of advice regarding disast..

Egg producers are no strangers to recalls, but following the most recent salmonella outbreak, one of the largest in U.S. history, some are looking towards an emerging service that could lend a hand in recall crisis management. BusinessInsurance.com explains:The recall of half a billion eggs tainted by salmonella linked to chicken feed likely will cost hundreds of millions of dollars and ignite f..

I blogged recently at emergencymgmt.com about the new Pew Research Center study of media coverage of the gulf spill. This should be mandatory reading for all crisis communicators.(the study, not my blog post)  No time left today so I won’t repeat my remarks from Crisis Comm–but would love to hear some reaction and your take on lessons learned from this report and the media coverage for the ..

The Philippine police force is facing international criticism after their bungling of the recent hostage situation in Manila cost eight Hong Kong tourists their lives. Broadcast on nearly every major television network, the incident has destroyed any last remaining shreds of good reputation the force held on to and exposed its lackadaisical crisis management methods. This quote from an article o..

I’m guessing most in America have finally diverted their attention away from the spill. For those who are still watching you might have noticed the back and forth in the media about the “Manhattan-size” underwater plume. NOAA and the Unified Command science team provided an oil spill “budget” that a couple of weeks ago showed all but 26% of the oil gone, and the 26% being rapidly degra..

I’ve seen a lot of debate in the last while about HP’s decision to fire their impressively performing CEO Mark Hurd. The two lines of argument are thus: Anti-firing: the guy’s a superstar, he delivered the goods, you’re going to toss a guy that can do that much for your company and shareholders under the bus for some minor expense reporting errors? Pro-firing: Well there’s this thing a..

There are many steps to be taken in a crisis, and while there are differing opinions as to which is most important, Davia Temin made a convincing case for one in a recent Forbes.com article. A quote:Most important of all--in any crisis--is to short-circuit denial! It's a human trait when disaster strikes to go straight into "this can not possibly be happening to me." Or "if it is happening, it c..

A recent national poll found American's faith in traditional media to be holding at extremely low levels, and with no signs of improvement in sight. Here are the numbers, from Gallup.com:Americans continue to express near-record-low confidence in newspapers and television news -- with no more than 25% of Americans saying they have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in either. These vi..

The latest Gallup results continue the trend in declining confidence in our primary sources of news–newspapers and TV. Actually, I say primary and that is not so much the case any more as the switch to Internet as the primary source continues apace. Now, you would think wouldn’t you that with the growing presence of the Internet as a source of information, that trust in newspapers and TV wou..

A Washington State fire department is learning crisis management on the fly as it copes with an underage drinking incident involving several of its high-ranking members with a major funding vote approaching. While the response from the department's Chief shows that he is aware of some of the tenets of both crisis and reputation management, not following through 100% may cost him. This quote from..

Here at least is a scientist with some integrity and honesty. Dr. Crozier, an expert on Gulf of Mexico ecology, admits that he played a role in creating a doomsday scenario around the Gulf spill, a scenario that is proving to be wrong. Before I go further and get attacked for “defending BP” full disclosure–I’ve worked with BP for years and have supported them in this spill, so I will say..

Gosh darn I hope this is a trend. DailyDog reports that Goldman Sachs is banning bad language from internal emails. I’ve been talking about “toxic talk” for some time now and believe that the cursing, swearing, foul language combined with the vitriol and hyper-partisanship that characterizes so much of social media and blogs is damaging. Damaging to the people who participate, damaging to ..

Measuring the success of a crisis communications campaign while it's still in progress provides the opportunity to gauge ones performance against the expectations of both the public and media. The question that often arises, though, is how do you do the measuring? Lucky for our readers, BCM President Jonathan Bernstein has written an article titled "How to Easily Measure Crisis Communications Pe..