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Lesson 2 Identifying the Problem or Goal
The War Room
As you collect input from a broad range of sources, you can begin to assess what kind of shape your company, client or nonprofit agency is in. You will see the areas where more communications resources might need to be directed, and you can better understand the qualities that make people want to buy its products or volunteer to support its cause.
With the rapid growth in the role social media is taking on, a number of major companies are starting to launch something often called a “war room.” The idea is to put your best social media people in a large room with the right resources to monitor the company’s reputation every second of the day or night.
For decades PR offices at corporations, nonprofits and in higher education have tried to promote their organizations in the news media and then followed up by collecting newspaper and video clips to measure their success. Now the clipping packages can be pulled together by companies that specialize in this work, or they can be produced in-house using free or paid search engines and services.
Penn State’s University Relations staff produces an email every morning before 8 a.m. that is sent to scores of administrators at its 24 campuses showing key media news coverage and social media coverage from the previous day. This is called the “Issues Update” and also includes a section at the bottom that offers links to general coverage of higher education topics around the country. The thinking here is that if there is a protest at a school in California over high tuition, or a faculty union strike in Florida or a loss of federal funding in Maine, these are issues Penn State could also face in the coming days. So it tries to get everyone thinking about these potential problems in advance.
The war room idea is the same concept, only on Red Bull. Daily updates are not enough. A minute-by-minute understanding of how people view your company, organization or brand is imperative when social media can go viral around the world in seconds.
And updates themselves are not enough. The organization needs to be ready to step in and guide conversations, correct misperceptions and answer questions posed in front of hundreds of other readers that in the past might have just gone unanswered. Instead of once a day looking at what people say about you, it is now important to be engaged in real time with what people are saying.
Instead of simply monitoring what the New York Times or CBS News is reporting about your company or organization, the billion-plus amateur reporters in the social media era must also be followed. It is now important to monitor what John in Hoboken is telling friends online about your company’s mustard, or what Trish in Spokane says about her school’s football team or just what Rene in Tucson thinks about that new model of Ford Mustang.
Calling these social media centers war rooms is likely meant to instill a sense of urgency and importance to this growing area within strategic communications and public relations. Perhaps a more accurate name for the endeavor and its ultimate mission would be to call it the peace room.
And instead of simply tasking your PR team with preparing a daily media analysis, this initiative involves company marketing staff and legal representatives to help broaden the two-way engagement that is possible on a good day and necessary when challenges arise. This is where the old-fashioned customer call-in telephone number and the employee suggestion box meet everyone else on the company or organization’s management team.
These people and the tools at their disposal are in place to help you keep the peace and to keep customers happy, loyal, supportive and ready to buy more of your product in the future. It can serve as the intersection where the goals, values and product of a company or organization can meet consumers, users and supporters’ expectations and needs head-on.