How To Manage A Blog Crisis Like A Pro

Sep 08

How To Manage A Blog Crisis Like A Pro

by Rohit Bhargava
Category: Digital Influence

A blogger has just said something bad about your company and it’s getting picked up and repeated by others rapidly online … what do you do? One of the toughest things to understand about responding to a negative situation on blogs is the speed with which the conversations happen. Speed matters because in a matter of minutes, content can go viral and not responding early means that your voice is missing in the crucial early conversations and therefore not represented as anyone carries the conversation forward. Aside from that, if you do not respond quickly, you give others a chance to respond for you - and perhaps not favourably. So how do you deal with a negative blog situation if one did arise, and do it quickly?*

Here are a few tips:

Identify the participants: Every blog crisis has three categories of participants: the source, the commenters and the promoters. The source is the place where the story started, the commenters are those who are discussing it, and the promoters are the people spreading the story online. By far the easiest way to build a picture of these people is to simply follow links … visit the original site, click on “About” pages, click on people’s name in blog comments and keep a list of these people.
Evaluate the conversation - In addition to tone of comments (positive, negative), look for frequency, how many different people are commenting and the date and time of last comment to see how active and wide reaching the conversation is. Going beyond blogs, read the “backchannel” of conversation by searching for your keywords and the source blogger on Twitter Search. Often bloggers will offer a running commentary through Twitter, giving you vital background information and possibly even a way to engage the blogger in a real time discussion.
Respond authentically - On blogs, as opposed to other less immediate and personal forms of media, you cannot rely on a carefully crafted press release to create some ambiguity or delicately respond to a crisis. You need to actually have a point of view and share it authentically. This may be an apology, or a promise to investigate further, or a correction of fact. Doing it authentically means you need to have a real person comment (not an anonymous company account).
Publish your point of view - Simply commenting, however, is not the most powerful way to respond to a negative situation. The best way is to publish your point of view on some form of social media that is an asset for your company. This means publishing something on your own corporate blog (if you have one). Then every comment or subsequent discussion can point people back to this content, and even bring the conversation about the issue onto your site.
Monitor and respond to conversation - The most challenging thing about responding to a blog crisis is that you need to keep monitoring the conversation and responding to commentary and dialogue. At some point, it will usually die down … but in social media and on blogs you need to follow through on any conversations you have started, or else risk undoing any positive work you may have done as people feel you are not paying attention to them.

* As you may have realized, this post assumes already that you will be responding to a blogger. There are some very real situations where we have counseled clients NOT to respond to particular blog attacks and where I personally have chosen not to respond to bloggers who may have posted negatively about me. Unfortunately, there is no hard rule for when to respond or when not to as each situation is different.

In addition to this approach, there are several tools that will help as you manage a crisis. Below is a quick list of FREE tools to use (in addition to any monitoring software your company may be using):

Google Alerts - Simple and dependable, if you are monitoring an ongoing situation, set up alerts with Google to get automatic emails as soon as a set combination of terms is mentioned.
RSS Feeds - Set up an RSS feed reader account and subscribe to the blogs who are part of the dialogue.
Twitter Search - Search of keywords, brand mentions or tweets from particular bloggers and individuals involved in the discussion.
Google Blogsearch - Get the URL of the original post and enter it into this tool to see who else is linking to it and talking about it.
Cocomment - After you comment on a blog post, save it on this site and you can easily check to see who has posted a comment after yours, and whether you should respond.
del.icio.us - Keep a private tagged list of all the blogs who are mentioning the crisis and share notes with colleagues on any interactions you have had with them.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 8th, 2008 at 8:42 am and is filed under Digital Influence. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

9 COMMENTS
POST A COMMENT

9 Responses to “How To Manage A Blog Crisis Like A Pro”

mike ashworth Says:
September 8th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Hi Rohit,

You’ve called this a “blog crisis” however I cant help thinking that the term doesnt give full weight to what may be occurring.

If these negative posts are about your Company, isn’t it instead, a Brand Crisis?

Although the comments may be on a blog they could certainly spread like wildfire outside that domain if not managed well.

As you say there could be many reasons for a negative post however what I’m finding more and more is that the reason people are becoming more vocal online is because they are not getting the apology they perceive as being required.

I would like to talk about a scenario where the company has messed up, and lets face it, people and technology are not infallible, problems do occur.

In instances where the Company has screwed up an apology goes a long way to diffusing the situation before it ever becomes one.

With regard to what an apology is, there are some pretty poor attempts at apologies out there these days, “I apologise” and “I regret” do not, in my opinion carry the same meaning as actually saying “I’m sorry”.

Here is my short list as to what a Company needs to do when they have messed up.

Only 3 things that any Company needs to do:

1. Say “I’m sorry” directly to the customer in the opening sentence.
2. Say why/how they screwed up.
3. Say what they are going to do to put it right or ask you what you would like to put it right.

And that’s it….

Often the most vocal opponents of your Company can be turned around and they become some of the most fervent supporters.

Mike Ashworth
Marketing Coach and Consultant
Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, UK
laurent Says:
September 8th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Great synopsis. It seems to require quite a bit of organization and tracking to do it well. How do you execute it as a team? Using the free tools will probably lead to chaos if several marketers are trying to engage after a crisis erupted as they quickly won’t know who has done what.
Rohit Bhargava Says:
September 8th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
@laurent - You’re right that multiple people all trying to respond to the same thing could lead to some duplication. The only solution for that is coordination, though unfortunately most companies are on the opposite side of the spectrum without a dedicated person to respond to these types of conversations.

@Mike - You are totally right about converting negative experiences into positive ones and apologizing in the situation you outlined is definitely the right response. There are lots of other negative “blog crisis” types of situations though … such as a blogger leaking news about your company, or accusing you of some wrongdoing. There are also lots of situations where a blogger may write about your company but is not necessarily a customer, which creates a different requirement for communicating with them (more as media than as a customer, I would argue). The tough thing about writing a post like this is that it offers a framework without trying to assign a one-size-fits-all solution.
Jim Estill Says:
September 8th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
If you can - speak to the person. People tend to not trash people - they trash big faceless companies. Put a “face” on your company.

And of course approach respectfully. Be prepared to take criticism. Listen
namrata Says:
September 14th, 2008 at 8:45 am
hi
thanks for sharing your view points on blog crisis, Can you give us some example where comments on blogs have led to crisis in an organisation?
Thanks
GasPedal's You Can Be a Word of Mouth Marketing Supergenius! Says:
September 15th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Word of Mouth Geniuses of the Week…

Rohit Bhargava, 360 Digital InfluenceHow to Manage a Blog Crisis Like a Pro One of the most important parts of successful word of mouth marketing is dealing with those who say unflattering things. Rohit does an excellent job here of…
Nabila Adnan Says:
September 21st, 2008 at 3:15 am
Thanks for this entry. However this is in an ideal world, if the blogger becomes hostile, and turns it into an issue, what suggestions can you give to control the situation? besides of course the company ensuring to improve the problem.
Andy Says:
March 19th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Jeez…

I don’t know where you got this advice from. But my experience has been completely the opposite.

A few months ago, a young blogger with a strong following made inaccurate statements about our company.

I commented, apologizing and saying I would look into it.

It was like letting a drop of blood into a Piranha tank. The shit-talking got MUCH worse. Everyone jumped on-board because they knew they would get a reaction from our company.

Looking back on this now, I would’ve left that comment alone and everything would’ve been fine.

I know of one podcast in particular that deliberately slanders companies just so they can publish the private emails they receive for comedic value.

The simple fact about blogging is that picking and escalating fights with people is the easiest possible way to generate controversy and traffic.

If Jim Cramer had ignored John Stewart instead of walking into his kangaroo court, he might still have a career.
How to Listen on Twitter | New Media Marketing and More | Alex Ikonn Says:
August 11th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
[...] (Here is one perspective) [...]