MGEMA MUSA ZEPHANIA
BAPRM 42615
16 MONDAY MAY 2016
TIME 00.52AM

How the digital Has Shaped Communication Management

The digital age is rapidly changing communications management in astronomical ways. Everything is digitized now. All businesses are online, and each of them uses social media for all kinds of communication. Come to think of it, the latest statistics shows the  increase in the use of social media platforms. It is believed that this number will increase in the next 5 years.

I was awed with another number. The huge figure representing adults who went online of companies use social media to connect and communicate with customers. This only means one thing — the way business communicates with the customer has changed forever. When a company needs to engage its market, it sends tweets, or creates eye catching statuses on face book. If it needs to expound on matters i.e. updates, important developments, or new product launches, and social media limits the execution, then they can blog about them on their sites.

 How social media has changed crisis communications

The crisis communications has changed with the advent of social media in one main area and that is speed.  Speed is the overarching thing that’s changed.  Previously, there is three key points to this.  Previously management teams or the Boards executive teams so forth would have the golden hour.  The golden hour would be the time in which a situation are broken or there may have been a leak or something’s broken in the news media and then there will be an hour in which you could prepare statements, holding statements and so forth.   

Social media has opened up different company to a range of stake holders who all have the license and the platform to talk about their company through social media.  So the social media has changed the level of channels in which you have to communicate through.  

Previously you would have had your main stake holders, partners, share holders and investors and media.  Now there are those who are the key stake holders, but there is a whole different level, all of those are interacting on social media.  You need to judge each accordingly accordingly and who you should deal with, but social media has changed the amount of channels in which you have to deal and communicate through.

Broadly speaking some businesses are taking the steps to prepare for social media and how it can affect their business. Overarching message is probably that no, companies are not taking necessary steps.  Many companies rely on their corporate affairs or their public relations team to deal with an issue as it breaks.  Social media has changed the speed at which an issue breaks and preparation is vital.  Preparation is everything from having robust protocols and principles and materials ready to deal with an issue as it breaks.  Engagement is everything during a crisis, being open, transparent, engaging with the concern of your audiences and to be able to do this quickly and effectively, you have to be prepared and preparation is a long process and it can require quite a bit of resource and quite an investment from key stakeholders in a business, which does make it difficult, which is probably what is holding back some companies from making the necessary investment in this preparation.

The key hallmarks of effective crisis management are essentially management.  It’s the management of a company and its credibility, crisis and issues expose the company’s management and its credibility.  If you are a listed entity, the markets and multiple stake holders price in the response of management to a stock.  If there are some key things that stand out about effective management, the first is preparation.  Management teams that engage in an open and transparent in a crisis have the right preparation in place.   They have prepared for scenarios.

 Through social media enabled corporate communicators to respond to their audiences and they have been publishing information very faster and being pushed up through an organization social media accounts..  They understand the concern of the audiences and that is one of the key parts to engage with.  Not necessarily how an issue is affecting the company and how it’s affecting management, but engaging with the concern of the audience, that’s one of the key parts and it’s management and its credibility that is the effective hallmark of a good crisis management plan.

 Immediate improvements in crisis communications are in preparation.  Simply finding the resource, the time, particularly at the executive level to engage in how to, and how to react during a crisis.  You have to have these protocols.  It’s no longer enough to just have a communications team or a group of external advisers or a business continuity plan.  When something happens, it’s going to happen incredibly quickly and there are not many businesses across different industries and sectors that are not going to be exposed to multiple stake holders and social media.  Management must be able to respond quickly, think of that 15 minute window and ask themselves how prepared are we to do that and what are we going to say if something breaks.