Jason Pohl
July 15, 2016
WHERE WE’RE GOING
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Introductions
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How it used to be
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Why it’s better now
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How journalists do journalism
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How journalists use social media
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How (good) PR folks use social media
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The practice
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Misperceptions and solutions
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Questions?
ABOUT ME
ABOUT YOU
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Name
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Department/organization
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Explain your most memorable (good or bad) experience trying to pitch a story to a
news organization? How did social media use factor into that experience?
HOW IT USED TO BE (AND WHY IT’S BETTER NOW)
Press releases  News organization  (Some) people (might) see it.
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Slow
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Less interactive
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Difficult to control your message
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Difficult to see to what extent the messaging was working
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Limited audience
HOW MEDIA APPROACH THINGS TODAY
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Story generation
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Facts, round-ups
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Social
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Reader-based
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Immediate
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REACH!
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RESULTS!
NEWS VALUES
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Impact
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Timeliness
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Prominence
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Proximity
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Unusual
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Conflict
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Currency
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Human interest
HOW JOURNALISTS USE SOCIAL MEDIA
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News gathering tool
• Twitter alerts (breaking)
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Reciprocal connection with community
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Personality and branding
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Article sharing
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Self promotion
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What the community is talking about
HOW I COLLECT AND SHARE NEWS
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INTERACTION.
HOW I USE USE SOCIAL MEDIA
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Personality and branding
HOW YOU CAN USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO:
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Share thoughts/events/other news items that are interesting
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Research what else is happening in the field
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Network with other people (journalists) interested in similar fields
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Voice, brand, and control of your message
DIFFERENT WAYS TO CONCEPTUALIZE THIS
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Social Mediated Crisis Communication Theory
• Situational Crisis Communication Theory
• Image Repair Theory, uses and gratification, credibility, among others
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Implications for public relations, crisis communications, journalism, emergency
management, community planning, sociology, risk assessment, linguistics…
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HAVE A PLAN AND KNOW WHY YOU HAVE THAT PLAN
SOCIAL MEDIATED CRISIS COMMUNICATION MODEL
Distinguishes among multiple publics
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Social media content creators
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Social media followers
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Social media inactives
Five primary factors that dictate how an organization will and should communicate
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Crisis origin
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Crisis type
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Organizations infrastructure
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Crisis message form
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Crisis message source
BLOG-MEDIATED CRISIS COMMUNICATION MODEL
SOCIAL MEDIATED CRISIS COMMUNICATION MODEL
PUT ANOTHER WAY…
SO WHAT?
Increasing amount of research offering very real solutions for what crisis communicators
and planners should be doing (Veil et al., 2011)
1) Establish risk and crisis management policies and process approaches
2) Plan pre-event logistics
3) Partner with the public
4) Listen to the public’s concerns and understand the audience
5) Communicate with honesty, candor and openness
6) Collaborate and coordinate with credible sources
7) Meet the needs of the (traditional) media and remain accessible
8) Communicate with compassion, concern, and empathy
9) Accept uncertainty and ambiguity
10) Provide messages of self-efficacy
WHAT THIS LOOKS LIKE IN PRACTICE…
WHAT THIS LOOKS LIKE IN PRACTICE…
“We can have conversations
with the citizens, and they with
one another, in a public forum
for all to see. Through this type
of dialog you start to
understand your community
and what is important to them,”
a practitioner told the authors.
“That is invaluable.”
—JeffCO folks discussing
integrated media plan and the
incident management team
CUT THROUGH THE MISINFORMATION
ONGOING CHALLENGES
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DO NOT ABANDON TRADITIONAL CHANNELS. PERIOD.
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Scoops and exclusivity
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Twitter is not just a 140-character press release
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Make people care about the other stuff
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Have a plan and actually use it. If policy says ONLY info will be posted on Twitter,
make sure that’s the case – and make sure your local media know that.
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IT MUST BE TWO-WAY
If there’s an error, CORRECT IT. Though not ideal, media often will run with the tweets
as an “official” source, so PROOF IT.
THE DEMISE OF JOURNALISTS? NO WAY.
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“The long and short of it is that there is no replacement for face-to-face contact…
and any chief or commander or PIO who thinks they can replace that with social
media is making a grave mistake.”
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Media STILL have greater reach
• Major breaking: Tens of thousands of engaged minutes
• Pageviews, go-to source for information
• Daily engagement and seen as the go-to source for information
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http://www.poynter.org/2011/with-social-media-police-and-reporters-grappleover-control-of-message/134489/
REMEMBER THIS?
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Impact
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Timeliness
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Prominence
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Proximity
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Unusual
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Conflict
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Currency
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Human interest
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Personality, reliability, frequency, value
MISPERCEPTIONS AND REASONS FOR FAILURE
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“I don’t have time to troll Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/Instagram.”
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The other time excuse: “I’m posting 9-5 and nobody is paying attention.”
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“Nobody will see this when there’s so much going on all the time.”
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“I tagged the hashtag to get more likes on my stream account profile.”
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“I need to get this tweet approved and my boss is away.”
INCONSISTENCY
@BPGLOBALPR
@BPGLOBALPR
@BPGLOBALPR
QUESTIONS?
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Jason Pohl
Public safety journalist
Fort Collins Coloradoan
Twitter: @pohl_jason
Cell: 970-222-5929
Email: [email protected]
REFERENCES
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Benoit, W. L. (1995). Accounts, excuses, and apologies: A theory of image restoration
strategies. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
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Benoit, W. L. (1997). Image repair discourse and crisis communication. Public Relations
Review, 23(2), 177-186.
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Coombs, T. W. (2007). Crisis and risk communication special section introduction. Public
Relations Review, 33, 117.
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Coombs, T. W. (2015). What equivocality teaches us about crisis communication. Journal of
Contingencies and Crisis Management. 23(3), 125-128.
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Hughes, A. L. (2012). The evolving role of the public information officer: An examination of
social media in emergency management. Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency
Management, 9(1), 1-22.
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Liu, B. F., Jin, Y., Briones, R., Kuch, B. (2012). Managing turbulence in the blogosphere:
Evaluating the blog-mediated crisis communication model with the American Red Cross.
Journal of Public Relations Research, 24, 353-370.
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Wan, S., Koh, R., Ong, A., Pang, A. (2015). Parody social media accounts: Influence an impact
on organizations during crisis. Public Relations Review, 41, 381-385.