TMI?

I've just read Jim Horton's post on http://online-pr.blogspot.com/, "Crisis - A Fictional Case." In this post, Jim describes a fictional story where a sudden explosion occurs, and is immediately mass-broadcast by numerous cell phone photos, Tweets, blogs, TV interviews and on Facebook. He says there was no opportunity for the company to control the flow of information. The story was instantly blown out of proportion, alarming employees and leaders both on-site and out of the area, as well as family and friends of employees, and neighbors of the plant that had the explosion.

While in this fictional story it ended up that, indeed, people had injured and even died in the explosion, Horton makes an excellent observation about the proliferation of "uninformed information flow" in the social media age. Everyone is a reporter, just as when cameras went digital, everyone became a photographer. Suddenly, everyone appears to be an expert. That said, is there anything PR professionals can do about this dilemma, besides put out fires?

While it's true the immediate outpouring of information in Horton's example could not be prevented, the fictional company could have had a better crisis communications plan in place that would've helped alleviate some of the pain. The VP of communications was not immediately alerted by someone at the plant involved. Rather, it was someone from another office who informed him - he was actually getting his information from AP, like any reporter. So, among other failings, right away, the communicator didn't have a link to accurate information.

As I've mentioned before, mass flow of information can be our best friend - but it can also be our worst enemy. Thus, as PR professionals we must be prepared for the inevitable - the crisis at our workplace - and have an excellent plan ready to go when it happens. We can enjoy the rapid spread of good news when that happens for us - but we can never be too prepared for the rapid spread of bad news.