Comnicate Blog – Online Newsrooms

This week at Comnicate, we have been thinking about recent PR misjudgements, blunders and all-out disasters. Some that spring to mind are the Australian Labor Party or the collapse of AirAustralia. While these may be extreme examples of damaging public relations, no company is immune to a bout of bad PR. There are endless ways, of course to avoid the defamation of your organisation, these usually begin at the grass roots.

However if you do happen to find yourself in a spot of PR bother, it is important to have a well-thought out plan to combat further damage to your reputation. As with most companies, your website may be the easiest route of access to your business, and in this situation must be used to your biggest advantage. This is where your newsroom can be your most important asset.

Depending on the severity of your PR calamity, good judgement and advice should be fostered to decide on your response. Often companies make the mistake of hoping the storm will quickly blow-over, and their reaction is either too little, too late or non-existent. This is a dangerous situation as it can often cause already angry customers, to become even more furious.

Crisis Management is one of the most important tools of your newsroom, and should be able to submit a detailed and specific response to PR errors, or all-out disasters. Not only can you use it to quickly engage your social media channels but it is also a professional and considered point of reference to smooth over those blunders.

Here at Comnicate, we often emphasise the need for comprehensive online business reputation management and analysis. This is especially important with size and impact of social media today.

So when it comes to Twitter, there is a couple of trend and metrics analyser tools already out there including, Twitalyzer and Trendistic and if you are already clued-up to analysing your Twitter presence you might have heard about BackType. Backtype offered a subscription online service which allowed companies to understand and analyse the impact of their social media outputs, by compiling and reporting data on current and past Twitter conversations.

Earlier this month BackType was acquired by Twitter and announced it will be incorporated to provide a free BackTweets service to Twitter users. Despite the press release reporting that no new registrations will be accepted, Comnicate is confident that this will signal a soon to be released easy-to-use and perhaps over regulated Twitter analytics tool.

Regardless, having a comprehensive understanding of your online reputation and ROI through social media is important to every marketing strategy. Twitter is not the only social media platform your business should be managing, but in saying so, it is conveniently easy. Check out Visible Tweets, Twitter Sheep and Tweetstats for more.

Recently Sony suffered some pretty bad PR when a security breach occurred and personal data was stolen from registered users. However it is not the breach that shocked me the most, it was the virtual lack of response Sony and their feeble attempts to handle such a PR crisis. The breaches occurred somewhere between the 17^th and 19^th of April, but it was not until the 20^th of April that Sony actually shut down their networks and to make matters worse, SonyPR reps were silent on the matter until the 26^th of April when it submitted a press release via their blog.

This got me thinking, if a huge multinational can get PR crisis management so wrong, what are other, perhaps more humble companies plans?

If you your business happens to find themselves in a PR crisis having a corporate newsroom will allow you to respond quickly and appropriately. It is always important to remember that showing integrity will always stand you in good stead, so if a mistake has been made, admit to it. If it is a situation where you cannot release information, take control and explain why, people will appreciate your honesty.

Check out our previous post on corporate newsrooms in crisis management to understand exactly why having a corporate newsroom will provide you with a professional platform to conduct your crisis management.