It is now becoming increasingly common for the media to publish stories on the web first, and print second, but that is only part of the story because everyone’s a journalist these days. It could be you who breaks a global exclusive – not a traditional newspaper or broadcaster.
People are also seeking their news and information from a wide variety of sources – with personal broadcast platforms like Twitter or You Tube, becoming priority ports of call.
Social media provides powerful conversations; often without regulated verification and scrutiny. Information can spread globally, very quickly. It is also powerful because it is now ‘mainstream’. These aren’t 17-year-old male geeks in pyjamas burning the computer mainframe at 3am – many of us are, in some way, engaged in social media.
How businesses and organisations communicate across these lateral conversation flows is the big challenge.
It’s like Wildebeest in the Serengeti but the effect is trillion-fold.
Let’s take one of these challenges – the news cycle. The typical news cycle used to end at 4pm prior to the print deadline or before a programme was broadcast. New technology has made the news cycle like a giant amoeba – constantly shifting and changing shape throughout the day and beyond.
Brands now face a challenge about how they respond to rolling deadlines and new factors such as at what point in the day the story appears. For example, a story could have a bigger effect if it breaks before the daily lunchtime surf (an example here). Different time zones may also need to be considered, with a mass movement or migration at the point when different time zones and cultures log on. It’s like Wildebeest in the Serengeti but the effect is trillion-fold.
This can be especially difficult for managing internal communications, particularly bad news, such as job losses. A UK story breaking before lunchtime will have a bigger audience.
Additionally, the days of people filing their stories then packing up are long gone. Stories can develop very quickly during the day and this movement can come at a left hook and right hook to an organisation caught in the crossfire.
We know influential mainstream bloggers are updating their stories throughout the day. Trying to keep up is posing a big challenge for many corporations. Simply keeping up is no longer good enough, corporations need to have pre-pared answers – sort of response “ready-meals” – to keep up with the treadmill.
Successful corporate communications requires faster response rates; more strategic planning and commitment form the top-down. And there in lies part of the problem, PR people are now so fundamental to the smooth operation of a business. To successfully run an effective PR operation in this new news cycle, there has to be buy-in across departments. This can be difficult when organisations have complex structures, with varying internal cultures and values, such as differing views of the media, compliance reviews and – often at senior levels – very limited knowledge of the internet.
So will it be chicken korma or tikka? An organisation in the eye of the storm must adopt both reactive and proactive strategies. In a crisis situation response delivery can’t keep up with news delivery. This requires an almost military-style operation of forward panning, anticipating how the news could develop before it happens – a few moves ahead each time. As the Queen might remind the Bishop on the chessboard: “One must view crisis management as the norm in PR these days, your Grace.”
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