Some of the comments to Saas’ story are interesting. I wonder if some of the people commenting are communications professionals? It’s unrealistic to expect PR people to go out on boats to fight the oil spill or deploy floating booms to try and stop the spread of the oil.

What BP’s communications team could have done is communicate often, early, and authentically – to convey information about what BP is doing to fight the oil spill. Sure, this post’s title references social media, and Saas’ article is focused on BP’s use of social media. Yet, social media is simply one of many tools enabling companies and brands to communicate with during a crisis.

So what could BP have done using their social media tools?

1. Have a crisis PR plan. Very important. When the shit hits the fan, which it will eventually with any company regardless of size, you need a written crisis PR plan that you’ve a) written down, b) reviewed with the entire management team, and c) that you read at least once a month and update as necessary.

2. Own their brand on Twitter. Duh. Currently twitter.com/BP belongs to some dude named Bryan Pendleton. It sure makes it hard to communicate on Twitter if you haven’t even secured the Twitter ID that most people will look for if they’re trying to find your company or brand. Would you know to search for BP_America on Twitter? I wouldn’t and I doubt most others would either.

3. Use the social media tools in your toolbox. Don’t be afraid to engage even if you’re delivering bad news. In the end, people will hate you more if you stonewall vs. delivering whatever news you’ve got. And, yes, I understand that when you have a burning oil platform that’s threatening to sink, you may not have all the information that you’d like to have. You might not be able to answer every question.

The Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20th. There was nary a tweet from BP America concerning the explosion until April 27th. 7 days? On second thought, maybe BP America should just cancel their Twitter account. 7 days is completely and totally unacceptable.

4. Engage, engage, engage – overcommunicate. When the oil rig exploded, and the company’s emergency responders arrived on the scene and assessed the damage, the crisis PR plan should have been enacted immediately.

If you think the crisis will be as large as the BP America oil spill, create a dedicated news-update page on your website with a prominent link on your home page.

Write a media alert encapsulating the basic facts that you know. Issue the media alert, set up interviews for your CEO regardless if all he can say is we know 2 facts – here they are. “The oil rig is burning, and we’re working hard to control the flames, and that’s the extent of my knowledge.”

Post the media alert on your website – run it by an in-house SEO specialist or your SEO consultant to maximize keywords and phrases that people will be using to search for information about the oil spill. Tweet links to the media alert every 30 minutes. Update your Facebook page (you don’t have a Facebook page? Create one on the fly!) with the text of the media alert and a link to your web page.

Record a video with your CEO articulating the key facts that you know. Upload the video to all the video sites you can via Tubemogul or directly with each site. Tweet links to the video on YouTube every 30 minutes. Link the video on your Facebook page. Embed the video on your dedicated crisis response PR page.

Rinse, repeat every 2-3 hours with a new media alert, again articulating the facts that you know. Yes, I’m very aware that BP is a profitable, public company and there are lawyers screaming that nothing should be said. Hopefully, you’re a CMO or CEO who will ignore the lawyers and communicate. Not take blame for things that are not your fault. C-o-m-m-u-n-i-c-a-t-e — What you know and what you are doing to deal with the issue.

5. Social media emergency squad – Break out the coffee and haul in the mattresses. For a crisis the size of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, you’re crisis PR team is going to be spending a lot of time and energy communicating via social media.

Every piece of content that I mentioned above, Twittering links, posting videos to YouTube and multiple video sites, Facebook page updates, has the potential to create comments – both negative and positive. Roll up your sleeves and get to work. Respond to those comments as a representative of your company. Leave the corporate speak behind and talk informally. Not unprofessionally, informally – there is a difference. Again, tell what you know and what you’re doing.

Don’t even think of pulling a Nestle – criticizing and being sarcastic with your critics. If it makes you feel better, acknowledge their anger and state the facts as you know them.

6. Hashtag response – A continuation of the previous bullet. Monitor relevant hashtags – #BP #Oilspill #GulfCoastdisaster #Greedyoilexecs – and respond as outlined above. Yes, respond, individually and repeatedly. Is that over kill? Maybe. But do you want to make a full-scale communications response to a crisis? If so, then you need to be communicating where people are communicating – comment sections, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Again, use common sense here. Don’t get into back-and-forth arguments with someone via Twitter if they’re not going to be convinced that you’re conveying facts and information. Now’s not the time to engage in a public debate about global petroleum usage. Respond once, maybe twice, then move on.

7. Wikipedia – Keep an eye on your Wikipedia page. If critics of your company jump in with inaccurate information, correct the page with citation.

8. Convey volunteer information – this is potentially risky, but it’s worth mentioning. As we all now sadly know, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and the resulting oil spill is a monumental environmental disaster, and it’s frankly beyond the scope of BP America and its employees to contain the damage of the oil on wildlife.

BP could regularly post via their website and social media channels volunteer opportunities for people to help with the disaster relief.

Those are my crisis PR strategies for BP America written in about an hour. But, I’ve written more than one crisis PR plan, and utilizing social media tools for crisis PR is something I’ve been thinking about – and using.

The big question is, what would you add? What would you have done differently? How would your advice differ? I’d love to hear from you.

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Maclaren, a British high-end stroller company, currently faces a recall of 1 million umbrella strollers because the stroller’s folding hinge can amputate a child’s fingertips. According to reports, 12 children have already been injured.

Unfortunately, Maclaren fumbled their response to the recall. Here are a few things that Maclaren could have done differently.

1. Your website MUST work – We’re living in a digital world. When a PR storm hits your company, your customers aren’t going to call your 1-800 number. They’re going to hit your site to find out what’s going on. According to Time magazine’s story about Maclaren’s crisis, on Monday their website was basically inaccessible.

If you’re in charge of your company’s PR crisis plan, anticipate sudden, huge bursts of web traffic. If you wake up tomorrow with the FTC issuing a recall on one of your products, do you know exactly who you can call at your company who can immediately make the call to increase bandwidth and server capacity to handle the onslaught to your company’s website? If not, you need to think about this now – not when the storm hits.

Also, today, if you visited the Maclaren website, you’d be hard pressed to immediately find any information about the recall. There’s a link for recall in the top right-hand navigation menu of the page. The word “recall” is the same size font and color as the rest of the nav menu words. Why not have a prominent button that no one would miss – Maclaren Stroller Recall – We Want to Keep Your Child’s Fingers Safe – Please Click Here for Detailed Info

2. Twitter – It doesn’t really matter if you’re an active participant, just listening, or think that people on Twitter only talk about what they’re having for lunch. When a crisis hits, your customers, your critics, your evangelists, will be discussing your crisis on Twitter. And so should you. Certainly, you can also use traditional PR crisis tactics – press conferences, conference calls with reporters, 1-on-1 briefings with key reporters, but you should also be using Twitter aggressively to combat and negate the storm.

Maclaren execs could have first issued pro-active messages about the recall via Twitter – including a link to a webpage with all the info about the recall. Then, they could start engaging 1-on-1 with anyone mentioning or discussing the recall. If someone turns to Twitter to ask about a company’s recall, and then immediately gets a response directly from the company, that’s a whole lot better than an echo chamber of customers discussing, griping, complaining about a company’s recall with nary a tweet or word directly from the company.

3. Engage Your Critics ProActively – Moms and Dads these days are blogging about the trials and tribulations of parenthood. The Time article pointed out that many parenting bloggers were vocal in their consternation at the recall and Maclaren’s fumbled response. Here’s where the all-nighter comes in. In addition to an around-the-clock, proactive Twitter outreach strategy, Maclaren should have been engaging bloggers. First, they could have scoured the blogosphere for any mention of the recall and responded in the comments of the blog explaining the recall and what parents could do to order the stroller widget that fixes the hinge danger. But, Maclaren could have gone beyond responding via comments. They could have drafted a quick “blog response” to the crisis – an expansion of the blog comment text – and offered/suggested that bloggers run the item as a guest post. Would some bloggers have refused? Certainly. But some would have published it.

4. Facebook – Maclaren was right on in their Facebook strategy. Again, according to Time magazine, “An entry on the “Maclaren Baby” page instructs consumers to e-mail sales@maclarenbaby.com with their name, address, telephone number, stroller model and stroller Vin number.” This is good, proactive communication via social media. However, I wonder if Maclaren used the feature available to any Facebook page , “Send an Update to Fans.” If they didn’t, they should have. A simple update on a Facebook page can easily get lost in the stream of Facebook news. An update gives the message a little more Facebook urgency and attention.

Here’s the link to Maclaren’s website re: the recall:

http://recall.maclarenbaby.com/

What else could Maclaren done to get their message out yesterday when the FTC announced the recall?

Photo – bbaunch, some rights reserved

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The tactics deployed recently have nothing to do with debating and discussing healthcare. They’ve been purposely orchestrated to a) drown out the discussion that is trying to happen, and b) from a PR perspective provide a great video clip for the local TV news of people angry about potential healthcare changes and awkward shots of U.S. politicians trying to reason with “angry” constituents.

I immediately started thinking, “What PR counsel would I give in dealing with these mobs and disruption tactics?”

From a marketing perspective, what would you do if your company introduced a product that stirred anger/antipathy from consumers? What would you do if you tried to hold public meetings to discuss a topic of concern to your customers, and your competitor orchestrated people to scream at your CEO and shout down whatever he/she tried to say, regardless of what he was saying.

1. Don’t follow Nardelli’s meeting style. Unfortunately for Bob Nardelli, a once-successful General Electric executive, he will forever be remembered for his biggest business blunder ever – running a dictatorial Home Depot shareholders meeting amidst a bitter year of criticism over the size of his pay packages during a time when he was firing as many experienced, hourly Home Depot workers as he possibly could while keeping the doors of the stores open for business.

Nardelli’s shareholder meeting was memorable to say the least. The board of directors didn’t show up. Nardelli sat alone on stage. Whenever an unhappy shareholder began talking, a very large digital clock began counting down. When the allotted time finished, Nardelli insisted the person stop talking or be immediately removed from the building.

If you won’t all the details, Joe Nocera wrote a memorable New York Times story detailing Nardelli’s fiasco.

2. Don’t give them a platform. If your opponents have shown that they’re not interested in a genuine debate, and they simply want to draw you into awkward situations where you try to reason with several people frothing at the mouth – awkward situations that will be filmed and uploaded to YouTube within minutes – don’t give them the opportunity. In that scenario, they’ve succeeded on one front. They’ve denied you the ability to hold a public meeting.

To use a warfare quote, to succeed in warfare you should fight on the battlefield of your choosing – not the one of your enemy’s choosing. Deny them the confrontation.

3. Do use the platforms that allow you to broadcast – and not receive. If the opposition’s sole aim is to disrupt your message and discussion, use media that goes over, around, and under them. Using this healthcare debate example, the Obama administration should go into campaign mode. If the other side is solely focused on disruption, ignore them and go around them. (I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t know all the legal ramifications of political advertising and what’s allowed for these types of policy debates).

Instead of the infamous Harry and Louise commercials that tanked the Clintons’ healthcare overhaul, healthcare proponents should be flooding the TV, radio, and the Internet w/ ads that articulate their positions. Millions of dollars spent to explain your position will go a lot farther and can’t be disrupted by a vocal minority screaming.

4. Make your points, but appeal to emotions. One DNC ad has tried to engage the people disrupting town meetings – and make an issue of their tactics. Not a good move. Acknowledging the yellers in the least, lends them credibility. Ignore them.

Instead, run multiple ads featuring real people from all walks of life who are struggling with healthcare issues – small business people who are going to be forced to fire workers or stop providing health insurance due to the skyrocketing costs, people who have been denied healthcare because of preexisting conditions, and people who are hard workers, love their families, and can’t afford out-of-pocket health insurance for their families. Humanize the issue. Don’t yell, don’t scream, just show the impact of spiraling healthcare costs on a wide spectrum of Americans.

Lots of people talk about using social media to “join the conversation.” What if that conversation is one-sided and the other side only wants to scream, yell, and disrupt? How do you join that conversation?

What would you do if your company was faced with an angry, mob that wasn’t interested in a genuine debate?

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