Today, Altimeter Group released “Social Business Readiness: Advanced Companies Prepare Internally” — a report which investigates how well companies today are prepared for social media crises and solutions to the challenge of managing issues and crisis online. Weber Shandwick provided input toward the thinking and analysis of this report, which includes the citation of our social crisis simulator FireBell, PRWeek’s 2011 PR Innovation of the Year.
According to Altimeter while companies are quick to deploy the latest social media technology, most are not prepared for the threat of social media crises, or the long-term impacts to business. They found that social media crises are on the rise, even though most (76%) could have been diminished or averted, had companies invested internally.
We’ve executed many FireBell drills with our clients in 2011 and have been counseling clients in social and traditional crises for many years. We find this great report to be parallel to our observations — quickest way of saying it: social media issues and crisis are about dialogue, not messaging. This is a very difficult shift for any organization to adapt to as organizations are, well, organizations, not individuals. The pace at which that dialogue clips along is always going to be difficult to match for companies.
That is by no means to suggest doom and gloom; many solutions can be found in the report — job #1 being “prepare.”
Check it out, it’s a fabulous read.