When it comes to damage limitation, it can be tempting to turn to social media – but it’s only part of the solution

OK, we get it: social media freed the Arab world, helped consumers embrace all of those adorable but unappreciated corporations, provided a digital platform where I can celebrate the awesomeness that is Me Me Me, and ensured eternal life beyond Ponce de Leon’s wildest dreams.

Such mania surrounds social media that any discussion of its shortcomings is greeted with that most feared of the age’s insults: Luddite!

So, let’s bring a skunk to this picnic and examine some sobering truths as they apply specifically to my peculiar trade, crisis management.

1. Beware the power of social media

When it comes to crisis management the internet is a huge net negative. It has empowered anyone with a grievance with the capability to hold a corporation (in other words my clients) hostage and instantly damage reputations that have been built brick by brick over decades and even centuries.

And, contrary to all of these services that promise to put a lid on digital vituperation – as anyone who has actually been through a geometrically expanding crisis will tell you – it’s a lot easier to light a fire than it is to put one out and tidy up the mess.

In other words, the greatest assembly of spin doctors imaginable cannot make a dent in online discourse once a corporate villain – think BP and Toyota – has been tagged and the crisis vortex starts spinning downward.

The good news is that, in past years, corporations under siege were at the whim of a handful of “old” media outlets that were constitutionally hostile to them. Social media and other online venues, on the other hand, provide opportunities for direct and undiluted communications with key audiences. Toyota did a particularly good job of reaching out to loyal consumers after the initial waves of the “sudden acceleration” crisis passed. Social media is great for “preaching to the choir”, perhaps the most underrated of crisis management devices.

But the fact remains: social media crisis management has a fraction of the power of social media crisis creation.

2. Beware the magical ‘engagement’

“Engagement” has become scripture for corporations under siege by social media. “We need to push back online!” say the aggrieved. Tweet, counter-tweet and so forth.

Next time you hear someone say “push back,” respond by asking, “With what?” If you are going to “engage”, what is the substance of your engagement? In other words, do you have a good counter-narrative or are you essentially guilty of what your company has been accused of?

If you’ve got a compelling message then, by all means, consider engagement, but think about where you do it and how it may be received. Hint: most audiences probably won’t be as impressed with your message as you are.

Sometimes the situation calls for engagement, other times it doesn’t.

A company I know was under siege by angry consumers on Facebook demanding that the company be more “transparent” and answer their questions about a particular product. The company, with utmost sincerity, responded to allegations on the Facebook page of the aggrieved consumers. The reaction was swift, vicious – and totally predictable: the Facebook activists accused the company of “spying” on them and invading their privacy by simply paying attention to their public discussions.

So, let’s get this straight: the same consumers that demanded this company address their concerns were furious that the company had the audacity to learn more about these concerns – in a public forum no less – and then responded to them in the very forum where their demands had been made.

There are a few lessons here. First, sometimes critics don’t really want to change corporate behaviour; they want to attack. Grievance is its own reward for marketing, fundraising, ideological and political purposes. Second, sometimes when companies think they are doing the right thing by responding, they simply end up inflaming the discussion.

For every company that “engages” online to some profitable end, there are a handful that do nothing – and end up better off for it, thank you very much.

I recently had a consumer product client facing a core group of angry shoppers that had set up a victims’ website. Our assessment was that this website wasn’t getting much traction so, in this case, we advised them to – dare I say it? – not engage. The storm passed, the online drama receded, and our client got quietly back to business, which had been the goal all along.

There is also the issue of how fast one responds to social media. No one disputes that speed is important these days, but speedy communications can also lead to errant tweets (ask former US Congressman Anthony Weiner, he of the Twitter sexting scandal) and disingenuous assurances. One of the biggest challenges we face is what happens when the media and public demand answers that the subject of controversy doesn’t have.

In February 2010, filmmaker Kevin Smith was dismissed from a Southwest Airlines flight ostensibly because he was deemed too big for one seat. Furious, he tweeted his outrage to his one million-plus followers. Southwest, mortified by the incident, attempted to reach Smith immediately. When it was clear that Smith would not be easy to locate, Southwest apologised via Twitter. Soon after, Smith announced it was time to end his Twitter war and move on.

Not all adverse events, however, are that cut and dried. It’s not easy to counter-tweet product safety allegations, which, by nature, are often accompanied by nuance and context. And when outrage and catastrophe are involved, anything a company does is usually deemed to have been botched. BP could never have tweeted their way out of the Gulf of Mexico disaster, despite the fact that more than a few PR pundits incredibly seemed to think so. 

3. Be sober and specific about social media’s merits

Social media and its attendant technologies have great capabilities, but they also have stark limitations. To this end, I have to wonder if all of these tech-evangelists sending valentines to the internet because of its transformative role in the Arab spring have had to actually communicate with the good people of these faraway lands. I had a recent engagement that involved outreach in the Middle East and found that the internet was almost always down, Skype was a static-riddled joke, and cell phone service was nonexistent.

Did social media and technology play a role in organising democratic forces? Absolutely, but town criers ably used horses to incite the American Revolution a few centuries ago. Point being that even if you’ve got good tactics, in the end, they’re just tactics that present both opportunities and shortcomings.

Real crisis managers are ruthlessly committed to practicality – what actually works on planet Earth as opposed to what might work in a business school simulation on Saturn. If you don’t have a technology that can be reliably used to defend your company in order to reduce the intensity and lifespan of a corporate attack, then that technology is worthless. And if that technology will only make the problem worse, then it’s lethal. 

Let’s applaud social media when and where it has utility. But let’s not be ostracised for our scepticism when the tech-evangelism that permeates our age doesn’t meet real-world crisis management demands.

Eric Dezenhall is chief executive of Dezenhall Resources, a risk communications firm, and the author of eight books including Damage Control: The Essential Lessons of Crisis Management.

Ethical Corporation and its sister organisation Useful Social Media will publish a new research report in June on the power of social media and its use in crisis communications