Moving on from last week’s discussion of mishandled transparency, I want to talk about how companies can utilize new social media and transparency during times of crisis. A slideshow by Livingston Communications, “Crisis Communication on the Social Web,” emphasizes that it is critical to not forget the human element of crisis communication. It is not just a matter giving the facts: don’t forget that people respond to genuine emotions, authentic tone, and real conversation.
In one example, Scott Monty of Ford Motor Company used Twitter to be openly transparent when a crisis situation arose at the company. According to Ron Ploof’s “The Ranger Station Fire,” (embedded at the bottom of this post). Ford sent a notice to the owner of a Ford fan site, The Ranger Station, to turn over the URL and pay the company $5,000. The owner of the URL posted this information on his website and fans of the site started an uproar.
Through a series of 138 Tweets over 19 hours Monty kept followers of his Twitter account updated on the issues at hand. He asked followers to “retweet” the messages that he posted so that he could reach more people.
More information came out that the site owner was selling counterfeit goods on the site and that was why Ford had sent the letter. Monty was able to come to an agreement with the site owner and the crisis was dispelled. If you would like to read about it in more depth here is Ron Ploof’s “The Ranger Station Fire.”
You can also listen to this podcast interview with Scott Monty from: For Immediate Release’s The Hobson & Holtz Report. Monty talks in depth about the role of Twitter in this situation.
This is an example of how Twitter can be utilized to reach people quickly and keep them updated as little things arise. By keeping in touch with key publics and letting them know what is going on during a situation, your company shows that it cares and wants to reach a solution. No one can predict when problems will occur, but being able to reach people quickly (like using Twitter), you can put a face to your issues.
I really enjoyed this post because it reminded me a lot of my post about Twitter from a week ago. Ford is a great example of a company that uses Twitter as an integral part of their social media strategy. I loved the resources you found and the story about the ranger station fire. It was a really great example of how this was implemented and successful. Thank you for increasing my insight from another perspective (transparency). It was neat to see a similar focus treated in a different light.
From a customer’s standpoint, I agree that being authentic and real with an audience during a crisis is much more effective than if a company were to use technical, business jargon. In Ford’s case, I think that it was amazingly clever of Scott Monty to Tweet about the issue at hand with The Ranger Station because, as you mentioned, it helped put a face to the company, making the company seem more personable and easily approachable. I also liked how Monty tweeted about the situation, keeping his followers constantly updated, because it helps show Ford’s publics that, as a company, Ford cares about being transparent and truthful with its publics, no matter what the situation.
[...] Whether it’s communicating to your consumers on a social network like Twitter (see the Ford post) or letting employees communicate via podcasts (see the Microsoft post). Participation in dialog [...]
[...] Twitter has even been used to combat crises. Take Ford Motor Company, for example. In “The Ranger Station Fire” fiasco, Scott Monty utilized Twitter, and tweeted 138 times over 19 hours, helping calm the online [...]