Dealing With Negative Comments

Hi everyone!

This is my second blog post for my internship so far.

This week I was posed with a real challenge! In my previous post I mentioned that I will be shouldering some of the responsibility for the monitoring and content production for my businesses social media platforms.

Things were going well until I was faced with a  social media crisis. The business that I am interning for is a real estate firm. Apart of the service they provide is rental property management. The firm essentially is an agent for the owner of the property and deals with the day to day management of the property and its tenants.

Unfortunately, tenants can feel frustrated by the administration of this process. This week a disgruntled present tenant took to the firm's social media to vent their frustrations over a delay in repairs to the property they were renting. I was told this is a common grievance among tenants.

My first thought was to delete the comment! After all, it was very negative and aggressive so that can only be bad right? Wrong! I thought about it carefully, consulted my supervisor and proceeded with the following strategy: take the conversation offline. (all those readings in contemporary practice came in handy!).

I replied to the person, as the business, and asked them to please call the relevant property manager on a direct number. I could not speak to the person myself because I am not trained in property management, and I didn’t have the full background of the property and the discussions on the issue. I let the property manager know the person would be calling and that it was important that the conversation was productive.

I was happy and thought the issue would be neutralised within the next 24 hours. I was wrong. The tenant chose to reply aggressively. The comment included profanity and personal attack on a staff member at the firm. Both professionally and ethically I felt out of my depth. Keeping in mind that the businesses reputation was on the line I decided to consult the Frist National Head office. I spoke to their communications team, they took over the matter from there and after another failed attempt had to remove the comments that contained the offensive language and blocked the user. The head office explained to me that they only do this where there is offensive language involved.

I was disappointed that I could not handle the situation myself, but it got me thinking about the ethics surrounding social media censorship. More specifically, the question: when is it ok to delete a negative comment about your business?

I did some reading on the issue both on online blogs and the few peer-reviewed articles I could find (“How large companies react to negative Facebook comments” by Sam H Dekay was interesting!). The consensus was that when comments contain derogatory, threatening, racist or other unacceptable language it is ok to remove them. However, if they do not the organization should not delete them. They should instead view it as constructive criticism and try and resolve the issue with the person offline.

After doing this research, I felt better about the choices I had made, and I feel like I learnt a lot from the experience.

Hello, I just wanted to add an edit to this post. upon reflection I feel as though this was actually more in the realm of an issue, rather than what we would as a full-blown crisis. 

Thanks,

Sarah

Preparing for a crisis

Hello everyone J

This week was definitely a big one for the in-house marketing/PR team at the company* I am currently completing my internship with. The main goal for this week was to discuss and create a crisis communication plan for the organisation in case something were to ever happen. Whilst this was a tricky task, it has been my favourite to date and I was able to use a wide range of PR skills that I have learnt from completing my university degree.

Firstly to prepare I was instructed by my supervisor to read a case study from our organisation’s biggest competitor. This involved understanding how the competitor company successfully dealt with a major crisis with the assistance of a PR consultancy. I was then invited to attend and act as scribe for a three hour workshop/meeting for crisis communication planning. The main objectives for creating the crisis communications plan were to ensure that in the event of a major crisis within the organisation, customers would not be critically impacted and that the brand reputation remains intact with the key stakeholder groups. Attending the workshop was an amazing opportunity for me as I was able to learn a wealth of information.

During the crisis communication meeting, we went over a long list of potential crises that could seriously damage the reputation of our organisation if not dealt with properly. We then decided on a list of key messages which would need to be communicated to stakeholders during a crisis. It was interesting to discover just how much thought and debate goes into constructing the best possible key message for a selected target audience. I also learnt the importance of choosing the right words and sentence structure for a spokesperson representing a company during a crisis. In a crisis situation, an organisation is dependent on the PR team which is why a high-quality crisis communications plan is crucial to have.

This week I was also able to learn a range of different administration skills necessary for PR professionals. This included making spreadsheets with specific information related to customers/clients, creating labels for important mail outs and updating our organisation’s online survey and website. In addition to this, I was also asked to research and compare quotes which I found to be particularly useful. Although these tasks sound quite basic, I had never had an occasion where I needed to do them before and I am appreciative of the fact that I now know how to do them if I ever need to in the future.

Before wrapping up today’s blog post I would like to offer some advice to my fellow students. Firstly, never be afraid to contribute in a team meeting. If you are aware that what you have to say could be valuable to the company then don’t hesitate to raise your hand and say it. Secondly, I find it helps to do some additional research related to your company outside of internship hours. It never hurts to be over prepared and knowledgeable!

Thanks for reading.

- Sarah

* Please note due to a confidentiality agreement I am unable to publish the company’s name

Hypothetical Crises

Hi everyone, I apologise for the delay in uploading this blog, due to some personal issues I had to take some time off. I only just started again this week and it has been pretty busy at the MS Society, with multiple news stories emerging about innovative treatments that are not funded by the Australian Government. It has left Taryn (my supervisor) very busy preparing news releases and statements incase they are needed. 

This has led to my current task of creating a crisis communication plan. The plan will contain possible crises, media releases available on request if there is a crises, the steps the organisation must take to handle the crises, and a statement from either the CEO or General Manager. It hasn’t been an easy job creating a hypothetical scenario with a media release and statement to follow, as I am not aware of the extent of the scenario and how much information will be needed. I don’t have a previous template to go off so it is proving to be a challenging job, but once it’s completed I will be able to check a new area of PR off my list. 

Everything I have learnt at Curtin feels as if it is all coming together, whether it be creating a media kit, writing letters from senior management or creating a social media plan, I finally am using the skills I have learnt in my degree and expanding on them each day. I believe that by the time I graduate and have finished my degree, I will be ready to enter the work force in PR. 

Thanks for reading! Gabby