A Case Study: What Happens When Business and Politics Mix?
Politics — and political correctness — are tricky things. Everyone’s entitled to their own beliefs, but when a business becomes associated with a political sound bite, those beliefs can create a PR problem. (See our previous post about what PR can’t help you do in…
Stop Selling Spin: Why Facebook Won’t Save You in a PR Crisis
This week, the mainstream media has been blanketed by news coverage of BP’s oil spill off the US gulf coast. With ecological, economic and political repercussions being hotly debated, Erik Sass at MediaPost capitalized on the zeitgeist by turning it into a social media case…
How Empowered Is Your Social Media Team?
Amber Naslund recently touched on a big disconnect in social media: the gap between the employees who oversee a company’s web channels and the employees who actually have the power to improve a customer’s experience. Her points lead to a valid question: are you using…
Making Social Media Adoption Painless
So, what happens when your company wants to use social media, but everybody’s worried about what’s “okay” for them to say? It can be daunting (and expensive) to determine which employees should be allowed to engage the public, speak candidly or answer questions. And explaining…
10 Smarter Things to Say Than “Let’s Make This Go Viral”
Let’s make this more effective. Let’s make this more entertaining. Let’s make this easier to understand. Let’s solve someone’s problem. Let’s eliminate our redundancies. Let’s thank someone who deserves it. Let’s learn more about our customers. Let’s learn more about ourselves. Let’s ask “why?” Let’s…
Defending Your Brand: How Some Companies Are Setting Themselves Up for PR Problems
Not every company feels compelled to use social media. But those who haven’t at least moved to establish their own online presence may be in for a surprise: it’s incredibly easy for someone else to do it for you — and not always with the…
Using Social Media to Manage a PR Crisis
If there’s one recurring reason companies are reluctant to embrace social media, it’s that “something could go wrong.” But when something else goes wrong in your company, are you prepared to use social media as a way to steady the ship? Eileen O’Brien has an…
Letting Go in the New Year: What Is YOUR Company So Afraid Of?
The Buzz Bin’s Mike Mulvihill kicks off the new year with an excellent observation about social media: the way companies obsess over “controlling the message” is strangling the industry. In Mulvihill’s own words (emphasis mine): I’d love to see a survey of how many of…
AT&T vs. Verizon: Why Bad PR Is Still Good for You
In Andrew Cherwenka’s recent case study, he explains how AT&T used Facebook to defend themselves against Verizon’s claims of a better 3G network, and how that plan backfired when the very customers AT&T expected to rally to their defense instead fell silent while the conversation…
3 Social Media Case Studies, 1 Central Lesson
Your social media presence is only as useful as the change it triggers in your business. To that end, here are 3 recent case studies we’ve found, along with the lessons explained (or implied) by each: The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) called in its bloggers…