Blogs in Crisis...

Help!

Blurb on blogs as crisis communication tool from the CorporateBloggingBlog:

Blogs have a role to play in crisis communications. In some ways those communication features we need in a crisis are inherent in blogs. But I think we should be careful and not hope too much from blogs as crisis communication tools - they don't beat TV to show emotions and are probably best for audiences you have relations to already.

If the spin here is "blog vs. TV", these folks are right. In other ways they're very wrong. Especially in one of the later comments in the posting where the author asserts the corporate website will be the primary communications vehicle vs. blogs because "If we're talking about large companies or organizations they all have reasonably good content management systems". You guys need to get out a little more (grin)...

During Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne, I suggested setting up a blog to feed news outlets the same info that our PIOs were publishing via several hundred "press releases" they were typing and faxing and/or calling in to the local media (this was not an optimal system, but its the one they had/chose). A blog to be fed to the media was a great idea - but bad timing. The County communication folks had no idea what a blog was (no big deal - most of corporate America doesn't yet), so there was no chance of pulling it off, even if I set it up.

If a crisis blog was event-focused, and some simple writing style was agreed to (basic publication guidelines), I think this would be an awesome tool for publishing breaking information. It wouldn't replace reporting/TV (this seems to be a focus of the CorporateBloggingBlog piece "people will watch TV anyway"). Blogging could be a tool to GET the information to the TV... that's what I thought, anyway. Some of the TV people after the fact thought it, too...