Monday, 1 April 2013

Crisis Management; The art of the impossible in today's 21st century game of Chinese whispers?

 Trying to prevent havoc reeking before the world knows about it now is like trying to ask Kerry Katona to finally do us a favour and draw the curtain on fame; it’s just not going to happen.

News doesn’t primarily come from news papers anymore; we see it on Twitter or Facebook first. Checking social media has become a compulsory procedure for most people before they even get out of bed in the morning!

Take, for example, the horse meat scandal. My twitter feed was filled with endless (and mostly lame) horse meat jokes before I had even switched on the news or picked up a paper. But how awesome is that? Scary. But awesome!

Potentially stories could get dangerously mislead and out of hand before we can even say ‘Crisis Management’. Twitter is like a 21st century game of Chinese whispers, it’s become a news source, whether reliable, or not, like social media’s answer to Wikipedia.

Twitter has around 500 million users. So, 500 million people could potentially hear your side of the story. Amazing right? Use it! Yes, news of your crisis could break out; in fact, news of your crisis will break out. But your reaction can get out just as quick.
If anything, this horse meat scandal became more of a mockery than a problem; not only were people more bothered about who had the best horse meat joke but most were questioning how big a deal it really was? Why don’t we eat horse? Why don’t we ride cows? I’m sure there are very feasible explanations to both but you get the jist. A quick flick through the paper a couple of weeks later and I saw adverts from Tesco, Aldi and Morrisons, each simultaneously pressing how amazingly fresh and pure their BRITISH meat is, with their customers best interest always at heart. All hail British farmers and that money shaped hole burning through their pockets. Crisis? What crisis?

Twitter provides a platform for topical debates and opinions which could steer towards you in a positive way. Use it! Do not let it use you!

I will leave you with some Twitter Statistics, courtesy of http://www.statisticbrain.com/twitter-statistics/

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