Justin Case You Were Wondering

TweetShare  When Facebook speaks, people listen. So when Zuckerberg and team announced Timeline for brands last week, everyone tuned in…and then quickly went and wrote a post or tweeted about the most important takeaways. Everybody is looking to break the story first. And I thought I had left my journalism days behind in college. There’s [...]

TweetShare  When I was six, my brother took me to Game 6 of the World Series at Royals Stadium. I don’t remember much of the game, but I remember the 9th inning. I remember the missed call by Don Denkinger that left Jorge Orta standing safe at first. I remember Dane Iorg’s bloop single. I [...]

TweetShare    What really happened here? I guess that’s where you have to start right? As a PR pro, it’s always vitally important to know what you’re dealing with. And unless you’ve been living under a rock the last few days, you probably know a lot about the sexual assault charges against former Penn State [...]

TweetShareIf you’re a fan of crime shows, you might have caught the new drama Detroit 1-8-7 a time or two over the past few months. Friday night, there was a different type of mystery on display in Philadelphia — Detroit Less Than Seven. As in the number of players (six) Pistons Coach John Kuester decided [...]

At this point, I think it’s official. The conversation about the Groupon Super Bowl ads has actually passed the amount of conversation about the game itself. One week later, Packers and Steelers fans are still talking about the game. But everyone else is talking about Groupon. You want to know why? Because in the social deals Super Bowl, Groupon is the only team qualified to take the field.

But no matter how much you have practiced, when a serious issue strikes, it’s easy to forget what you’ve learned and even panic just a little. That’s why I wanted to share with you the four R’s – the other part of Betsey’s limeade equation that walks you through what you actually need to do strategically and tactically in a crisis situation.

Crisis communications is not just about managing the communications process during a crisis. Sure that is important and we need a plan for it. But true crisis communications is an everyday process that factors into a brand’s overall listening and engagement strategy. The “every day” is when companies build trust, relationships and advocates – I like to call it building goodwill. You can’t build those things in minutes, hours, days or even weeks when a crisis strikes. Just ask BP, Dominos or Amazon.

People often use the terms crisis and issues differently. Crisis seems to denote something huge, like a CEO having a heart attack or a life-threatening natural disaster. Issues, on the other hand, are much more common. An online customer complaint over the weekend during off hours or a competitor trying to sell their brand on your Facebook page.

You can almost guarantee it with the same certainty you can say the sun will come out tomorrow. Start discussing crisis/issues management with a group of corporate communicators and someone is going to ask, sooner or later: “How do you know when to respond to a complaint about your brand?”

It used to be you’d say limeade and I’d think of the local Sonic. And not a regular limeade, but one of those cherry limeades with extra cherry flavor and two maraschino cherries on the top. Mmm, so good. But our #FHKC office GM, Betsey Solberg, changed all that this week. Here’s what happened.

Since President Obama gave his state of the union address yesterday, I thought it might be interesting to look at the social state of the union and reflect on how far we’ve come with the integration of social media into the business world and how far we still have to go.