HOME > News
June News from ALBERT Communications
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
CLICK HERE to read our latest newsletter.
Fall into Autumn with ALBERT Communications
Monday, September 10, 2012
CLICK HERE to read our latest newsletter.
Public Nightmares in a Social Media World
Go ahead, fix those problems. But is it already too late?
Friday, February 10, 2012The past few weeks have brought two nasty stories to the front pages of national newspapers, to the vast social media empire, and to the Twitter-dom of Anderson Cooper and friends.
The first involved Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), one of the world's most prestigious and well-respected pediatric hospitals. The story was about the hospital's alleged refusal to add a three-year old child to the list of potential kidney recipients because she had a mental disability. As with most stories, the devil was in the details, but what we all read, and more importantly, what stuck, was that CHOP didn't want to waste (my word, not theirs) a kidney on a mentally disabled child. Ouch.
Eventually the issue was resolved, but not until the hospital took some serious hits in the press. And on Facebook, and on Twitter, not to mention how it affected the hospital's employees, donors, and Board members.
Fast forward to the more recent public nightmare of the Susan G. Komen Foundation as it made the decision to pull funding from Planned Parenthood. Once again, and as with every story, the issues were complex. But because we’re living and working in a world of real time social media, mistakes like this need to be avoided at all cost.
How? By both accepting and understanding this new reality and planning for the now inevitable fallout. You don’t have to be a social media user to have the bad news spread to your business associates, employees, and investors.
Times have changed. It’s not just the decision you have to live with, but how you will manage it in the court of public opinion – internally and externally.
From CHOP to Susan G. Komen, not to mention Penn State and the Catholic Church, a new kind of planning with an understanding of our new reality could go a long way. Think about how you'll communicate with your stakeholders when faced with a crisis.
After all, in today’s world,everyone really is a critic.
