Catastrophe Planning 2.0
Copyright Jack Mixner. 714 449 1040. www.mixnerstrategy.com
An old professional friend of mine, Bill Furlow, wrote a - the, perhaps - book on what to do when something goes wrong at your company. He had a step-by-step methodology to follow to head off huge problems.
Times have evolved. Now the bigger threat is the web, namely, responding when someone attacks your company in some electronic manner.
Conlin lays out a useful five-step Playbook (Conlin, page 56).
- Engage Critics - have a blog up and running, with the comments turned on.
- Be Vigilant - have a team looking for dirt on the web.
- Jump In and Open Up - Transparency replaces the once-standard "No Comment."
- Don't Overreact - have a thicker skin and ignor some of what gets said.
- Stay Professional - respond for strategic reasons, not personal ones.
Others are working to establish rules of etiquitte for the web. Tim O'Reilly, coiner of the words "Web 2.0" and Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia are in the midst of creating a set of rules for their blogs. The chief recommendation? Ban anonymous comments (Stone). One of the rules, still open to debate on the web, is that whoever owns the website is responsible for what get posted on it. Web veterans claim that editing or deleting comments isn't correct.
Sometimes you have to go off-message. Sometimes you have to open up more than you feel comfortable with. Sometimes folks respond in ways you hadn't expected.
Welcome to the new economy.
Reference
Conlin, Michelle. Web Attack. BusinessWeek. 16 April 2007. 54. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_16/b4030068.htm?chan=search
Furlow, Bill. http://www.furlowcommunications.com/index.htm
Stone, Brad. A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs. The New York Times. 9 April 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/technology/09blog.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin