Chat rooms and news groups are quickly evolving into venues that can't be ignored if you plan on becoming not only adept, but a forerunner, in effectively managing PR on the Internet. And although they've become a nagging reminder of how easy the Internet has made it for bad PR to rear its ugly head - re-resurrected ad infinitum (or ad nauseum) - they have to be monitored.
The key PR precept for monitoring these kinds of online forums is to dismiss any alarmist thinking. You should always be looking for red flags (speculation, rumors or happenings that one day you could be asked to respond to on behalf of your company). But you must realize that you can't control what's being said. Instead, you can use these online exchanges for fodder to:
- Anticipate, and prevent crises;
- Decide how you'll address the press or shareholders if need be;
- Find new chat rooms and news groups to track;
- Determine if you want to respond on your Web site; and
- Foreshadow how constituents might react to yet-to-be-released news.
"News groups and chat rooms both need to be tracked," says Steven Blinn, principal with the New York-based PR boutique Steven Blinn & Associates. "Any corporation, large or small, has to realize the propensity that exists for a company's identity to be damaged or for that damage to manifest itself on the Internet."
Monitoring online public perception of an industry or corporation isn't something that's very costly and is likely an endeavor that can be handled in-house or through the media analysis firm (or PR agency) you use. What you'll first need to do is spend several weeks getting input from staffers to put together a list of known news groups and chat rooms that drive industry buzz. After that, you need to assign point people to spend several hours a week logging on to these discussion groups as well as industry-specific sites and mainstream news sites, such as http://www.prnewswire.com, to look for goings-on.
From Car Talk to Doll Talk
Both Cerritos, Calif.-based Isuzu and El Segundo, Calif.-based Mattel realized the bent these unique communications channels have for impacting how companies are (or may potentially be) perceived in the public domain. Today, that domain has to include the Internet and the millions who use it every day as an easy-to-access font of information.
Although Suzanne Segelbaum, senior product manager for Mattel's Barbie marketing, says Mattel opted not to respond on its http://www.barbie.com site when the now-squelched "Pink Anger Campaign" (doll collectors were angry about bad Barbie haircuts and tight shoes) was at full throttle earlier this year, she admitted that Mattel staffers consistently tracked what was happening online. Mattel staffers would go online to gauge what kind of attention the doll collectors - who were lodging their complaints on pink stationery - were stirring up.
The campaign has since died down but the PR lesson remains.
And here's another example: the Isuzu controversy (it's embroiled in a civil suit) with Consumer Reports (published by Consumer Union) over the alleged rollover of tested Troopers. Even though the allegations don't have the legs they did last year and the online rumors, dialogue and pontificating have subsided, the brouhaha couldn't provide a more sterling example of what the PR climate is like today.
Resources To Help You
The need for companies (or the agencies they hire) to monitor news groups and chat rooms has become so strong that Porter Novelli Interactive (a division of PN in Boston) has created proprietary software called Retriever that's expected to cut down on the man hours required to do this kind of tracking, according to Mike Sockol, corp. director.
Although the system's in its infancy and is being tested with one of PNI's clients, Sockol said that up to 10 staffers can each spend several hours online every week tracking the buzz for its 30 clients, many of them Fortune 1000s and associations.
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Buzz Tracking: News Groups Worth Checking Out Lycos has just recently started hosting news groups: at http://chat.lycoschat.com/, in which you'll find these areas: auto, business, careers, computers, education, entertainment, fashion, government, health, kids, money, news, people, space/sci-fi, shopping, sports and travel. Check out http://www.dejanews.com and browse the biz newsgroup hierarchy. Offerings include: biz.books, biz.comp, biz entrepreneurs, biz.general, biz.jobs, bizmarketplace and biznext. Visit http://www.liszt.com/news/ - you'll find Usenet alternative news groups (3,831); computer news groups (844); talk news groups (28); business news groups (43); recreational news groups (649) and social issues news groups. Source: PR NEWS & Steven Blinn |
And for the devil's advocates who say you can't control what's going to be said about you or your company so you might as well spend PR time managing those things that you can, Sockol has one response: "There was this man named Pierre Salinger (former BM PR exec) who had this tremendous reputation and one day [in late fall of 1996] he comes out and says, and it's on the Internet mind you, it was a missile that shot down that TWA flight." Months later, TWA was still trying to respond to the allegation.
In fact, Blinn's firm is earning a reputation for basing, in part, the PR it does for its eight clients (including eShare, a developer of online communications software whose competitor is ichat) in monitoring what's being said in news groups and in chat rooms. And because there are literally thousands of these kind of interactive forums, Blinn's hired several staffers who spend about 20 hours a week as online communications troubleshooters. In addition to tracking what's happening in news groups and chat rooms, they also check the wires to find out what recent news has been posted.
Ironically, though, Blinn says that he finds a lot of companies are forgetting to include this as part of what makes up a progressive PR program.
When The Heat's Turned Up
If you don't keep monitoring chat rooms and news groups in perspective, you may end up more overwhelmed than informed. The key is allotting for yourself (and those you manage) a certain amount of time each day, or week, for this kind of research and damage control.
Just consider what Jim Caudill, head of PR for winery Kendall-Jackson does. Caudill's found a PR formula that so far has worked:Kendall-Jackson sponsors an America Online wine forum that Caudill visits several times a week. And he also visits CompuServe's The Bacchus Wine Forum to get the scoop on wine lovers' concerns.
Visiting these sites isn't a replacement for his other PR online dependencies: scanning online newspapers, finding out what's new on Dow Jones or through the Associated Press and reading all the e-mail that comes his way. He also reads major trade publications, such as Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast, to search for new online trends or for just-surfaced news groups.
Most importantly, Caudill says that a PR department must double or triple its surfing efforts when it's in the midst of a crisis or a public-perception issue.
When Kendall-Jackson was in court for its lawsuit against E&J Gallo Winery over trademark issues concerning one of Gallo's labels, Caudill said there was one site, http://www.winebusiness.com, that posted trial transcripts and became an information-gathering pool for journalists. He visited it daily and it gave him a heads-up on what he might later be asked to address.
And Caudill is one of those who points out that this kind of monitoring can be shared within a division and doesn't have to cost a company a lot. Of his core PR budget, which is several million dollars every year, he estimates he devotes less than $150,000 to this kind of PR work. (Suzanne Segelbaum, 310/252-2544; Jim Caudill, 707/525-6229; Steven Blinn, 212/721-5529; Mike Sockol, 617/587-2800)