How social media can improve organisational resilience when disaster strikes

The devastating earthquakes that hit the South Island of New Zealand in 2010 and 2011 and over 4000 bigger aftershocks rattling Christchurch and Canterbury have caused an estimated $40 billion damage to the city, including wide parts of the CBD and around 100,000 homes. While there are parts of the city ‘red-zoned’ and will not be rebuilt, the rebuild of the rest is expected to take at least 15 years. The whole inner city is going to be re-arranged and while this is still undergoing, a lot of local businesses have moved out of the centre to somewhere else.

 

Christchurch, like New Zealand as a whole, has first-world ICT infrastructure and high rates of technology uptake across all sectors of society. This technology uptake and the rising importance of social media in society made the earthquakes one of the first natural disasters, where social media played a major role in direct response but also the long-term recovery. In the immediate aftermath of the major quakes in September 2010 and February 2011, social media services including Twitter provided crucial communication channels for individuals, communities and organizations. With a disrupted electricity supply, and unreliable SMS services, Twitter was an up to date and reliable source for eyewitness accounts and crucial public information.

During the recovery phase social media stayed an important part of people’s lives. While the CBD was corded and totally locked down, people didn’t know if businesses moved somewhere else, what the opening hours under these special circumstances were or which alternatives there were to purchase a certain product, service or simply going out for dinner. Social media enabled people to connect with each other for emotional support, information, calls to action or organizational purposes.

Various online communities developed around the central problems of the earthquakes, from neighbourhood groups helping with insurance claims, to forums and message boards where people posted pictures of lost and found pets or pages where people discussed, how the city should look like after the rebuild, to the Facebook page of the Student Volunteer Army, a student group who organised and coordinated volunteers through a Facebook page.

Apart from the examples mentioned above, I also encountered a couple of business uses in my research. With an online social media platform an organisation or group gains a channel to interact with the community, but also with customers and staff, enhancing business resilience as well.

In the case of Mainland Press, a Christchurch based newspaper business, print production was not possible immediately after the earthquakes. Through a newly found social media site, the Mainland Press reporters were still able to communicate their local news and information until the newspaper went back to normal production. But even after that, their Facebook page ‘Rise Up Christchurch’ remained an important platform for information exchange and discussion with a huge amount of followers.

For other businesses, social media became important a bit later on. To bring life back into the city centre, a transitional mall with shops in shipping containers was build up and re-opened. To spread the news about what was happening there and to keep people up to date about special offers in this new mall, a Facebook page was created and a community was built.

I could go on describing different examples of businesses and other people using social media in the aftermath of the earthquake for different purposes but you probably get what I am aiming for already. All communities are very different and tailored specifically for and through the people engaging, who are interested in the issue, be it earthquake updates, help or the latest news about what is happening in the inner city. Anyway, social media is a great way to keep in touch with your customers, serving as a two-way channel, which enables communication and can help a business or community to reach out and make it more resilient. In most cases, social media was not something organisations or businesses had used before the earthquakes, nor was there a strategy in place for how to deal with the new tool. Even though your social media presence isn’t a core feature in your marketing strategy, it doesn’t hurt to learn these skills and build up a community before a crisis happens.

Martina Wengenmeir is a PhD candidate at the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch, New Zealand. Her research interests lie in cross-medial information flow and online communities and publics.

Rules of crisis management: don't let lightning strike twice

The great Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw famously once said of success, that it “does not consist in never making mistakes, but in never making the same mistake a second time”. In much the same way this rule can be applied to crisis management. To suffer a crisis once is unfortunate; to suffer a crisis a second time is careless.



Last month the Spanish clothing firm Zara caused outrage when it put on sale a piece of clothing which to some resembled the shirts worn by concentration camp prisoners during the Second World War. The shirt had been designed to be ‘wild west’ themed, but unfortunately the large gold star over the chest looked very much like the Star of David.
To Zara’s credit the company acted quickly to take down the offending item from sale. It also posted apologies to anyone who had been offended by the item on its social media feed with a statement recognising the insensitive nature of the shirt.

Unfortunately for Zara, this was not the first time that the clothing brand had been in trouble for using Second World War iconography in its designs. Back in 2007 the company suffered similar negative publicity when a customer noticed a bag they had purchased from the store included four green swastikas. Again, the company immediately withdrew the item from sale, but not before several tabloid newspapers in Britain had run pictures of the company juxtaposed with Adolph Hitler.
There is no doubt that Zara has made an honest mistake in both instances, unfortunately activist groups and NGOs are less forgiving, with several attacking the company on social media for “ignorance” and a “lack of education”.

In both cases the company reacted swiftly to withdraw the offending products from sale. However, in making the same mistake twice the company has left itself open to accusations of carelessness in the way in which it handles its internal quality control processes.

The key thing about pistols (as anyone who has seen a western will know) is to take the gun out of the holster before firing it, otherwise you risk shooting yourself in the foot, and in this case, twice.

Tom Curtin is the Chief Executive of Curtin and Co, a BCI Partner specialising in crisis communications and reputation management. You can view more blogs my Curtin and Co by visiting their website or by joining their Linked In group.

Protecting yourself from a social backlash

The first tweet was sent just over eight years ago when creator Jack Dorsey typed up "just setting up my twttr" and it pinged into the history books. Since then the growth of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other lesser known platforms has fundamentally changed the way we process events and read content.

Despite this, the majority of executives are still terrified of social media, and the backlash which happens during a crisis. Many choose to have no part in it, figuring that a visible online presence will make you a sitting target. When Domino’s 2009 YouTube scandal hit, the pizza company didn’t even have a Twitter account set up and they were unable to communicate or even acknowledge their critics properly.

Burying your head in the sand is not an option. Social media isn’t going away, the various platforms may come and go as fickle as fashion, but the internet is here to stay and it's time for corporations to get a handle on how they interact with social media. Monitor your brand properly, be the first to identify a crisis developing and respond fast.

Whether you have a large social media presence or not, you will be discussed and complained about on twitter. During a crisis, Twitter is the breeding ground of unchecked ‘facts’ and misrepresentation which spread like wildfire. Link Twitter to your press statement, allow Twitter users to read the real facts, even if they chose to ignore them. This also leaves your organisation in a much stronger position, in that it can say it has been in dialogue with all its stakeholders including those who vehemently oppose it.

A core part of your crisis plan should be your digital crisis communications plan. Just as the perfectly phrased (and legally cleared) press statement is ready to go for any well prepared company; a perfectly prepared stream of tweets should be poised in order to get the right message out into the blogosphere fast.

Finally, and most importantly, don’t score an own goal for the Twitter trolls. What can go wrong probably will go wrong. Give those haters a hashtag to use and use it they will, effortlessly turning a carefully constructed hashtag into a bashtag, as seen with the #myNYPD. Earlier this year ‘New York’s Finest’ attempted to generate some good publicity by asking the internet to tweet their experiences of their friendly local police department. What could possibly go wrong? Quite a lot as it turned out, Twitter was flooded with accounts of police brutality and the names of those shot dead by police.

Tom Curtin is the Chief Executive of Curtin and Co, a BCI Partner specialising in crisis communications and reputation management. You can view more blogs my Curtin and Co by visiting their website or by joining their Linked In group.

White Paper Examines Cybercrime and its Stalking Ground: Social Media

The internet fundamentally changed the way we conduct business: we can order goods, make payments and complete entire transactions with just a few mouse clicks. Few of the traditional barriers to commerce - such as time, distance and currency issues - pose the same problems in the internet age as they did before we took our business online.

The story doesn't end there, however. The internet also led to the social media phenomenon. Naturally, humans are not all business, all the time – we are inherently social creatures, and this inclination took root online as strongly as any practical applications. We chat online, we connect with friends, family and colleagues on Facebook, LinkedIn and similar sites, we use Twitter to share thoughts and commentaries... some even use online dating sites to find the next romantic partner. We share details and information about ourselves with others across the internet. Unfortunately, however, it is not only our friends, family and colleagues who can find this info. The fraudsters are tuned in, as well.

A new white paper from CRI Group, “Risks of Cybercrime and Social Media,” explores the troubling crossover where social media meets fraud. The paper's author, CRI Group CEO Zafar I. Anjum, details the factors that make our online socializing so risky: the loss of privacy, the vulnerability to identity theft and other issues. Statistics are presented that provide a comparison of cybercrime losses among the countries where its incidence is highest (note: the U.S. leads in dollar losses).

The paper also highlights the newest regulations to combat cybercrime. Yet, as you'll read, these measures are thus far falling short in seriously controlling the damage caused by this type of crime. More action is needed by government and regulatory authorities worldwide, a point that is clearly asserted, but with one important caveat: individuals using social media also bear a responsibility to take more care, protect themselves, and not become the next cybercrime victim.

Click here to read the white paper in full.

Lara Jezeph is the Marketing and PR Manager (EMEA) at the CRI Group.

Making the most of your conference experience

Andrew Scott
Business Continuity Institute

The BCI is a global organisation with Members, Forums, Chapters and Partners all across the world, but whether it is due to time, distance or perhaps even environmental concerns, unfortunately not everyone who would like to attend the BCM World Conference and Exhibition on the 6th and 7th November will be able to do so. Sadly some people will miss out…

I don’t know about you but I sometimes feel like I’m doing several jobs at once. I'm sure we all do at times but even so, and with the best will in the world, none of us will be able to attend all three streams of the conference at the same time, not to mention the packed exhibition that will be going on or the free seminar programme taking place. With so much happening, we simply cannot attend everything. Again, sadly some people will miss out…

Or will they? Of course attending the conference and listening to the individual presentations will offer the best learning experience. But just because you’re separated by several thousand miles, or only in the next lecture hall, does not mean you have to miss out completely. In this day and age, with many of us using social media, we can take the discussions out of the lecture hall and into the virtual world. We can involve in our conversations all those connected to the Institute, or business continuity in general, whether they are at the conference or not.

If you use Twitter or Linked In, or perhaps Google+ or Facebook, then why not start a discussion online and engage with many more of your BC colleagues. The bonus is that it will help make sure the conversations continue long after the conference is over.

Of course it is also important not to miss out on the earliest form of social networking - talking to your colleagues face to face, at least those who are fortunate to be there with you.

Enjoy the conference and I look forward to meeting many of you there. For those of you on Twitter, the hashtag we will be using is #BCM2013.