I was slightly concerned this week when listening to a crisis comms ‘expert’ talk about digital crisis planning. Why? Because there seems to be a misunderstanding when dealing with a crisis in social media all you need to do is simply adapt your crisis procedures so that responses are more ‘timely’? Yes of course speed is of the essence but to think this is the only thing we need to raise as a consideration to clients is an underestimation of how much due diligence needs to go into online crisis …

Working in both PR and digital comms I have been involved with a number of blogger relations campaigns throughout the years. The most recent one I’ve been involved with has been for one of my clients, ‘make mine Milk’, where we invited mummy (and, not to be forgotten daddy) bloggers down to the London School of Coffee for a morning of Barista training and low fat semi-skimmed milk discussion.  After chatting to many of the attendees about how they liked being approached by PRs, plus some of their worst PR …

As social media professionals we know; when evaluating the success of an online community, it should all be about the level of engagement and not about the number of ‘Likes’ and/or followers – but the truth is, that rightly or wrongly numbers matter.

This is the first thing clients see when they are searching for a benchmark of success, the first indication of what they would naturally infer as popularity and the first thumbs up of a community that seems to be well run – people have said ‘yes’ …

Calling all newbie PR’s – there really is no reason why social media skills are not integrated into your day job. They shouldn’t be seen as specialist tasks, but as an extension to what you do already. The truth is, good PR’s already have the foundations to deal with online communities and media – it’s just about tailoring those skills in the right way:
- Blogger relations – make it part of your wider media relations plan. Yes, you need to adopt a different approach, but good communicators are skilled at …