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.