Steve Rubel covers how Robert Scoble, Buzz Bruggeman and Anil Dash tackled the thorny topic of crisis communications at the Blog Business Summit:
As the trio suggested today up in Seattle, continually nuture your network of blogging allies. This will make it easier to turn to them in the event of a crisis. Regularly feed them news links in good times that are unrelated to your company or cause. This will earn you points in the "favor bank."
Following is mostly a rant on language, its no fault to those who spoke or wrote it, and hope its a reasonable contribution...
Most bloggers don't want to be 'fed' -- they want to be federated. Being a consumer of leads, leaks and sources makes you expend energy and produce wasteful byproducts. Embargos are the most rapidly decaying jounalistic convention of our very real time. Being a producer is chasing down leads, following trails, having a well-tuned bullshit detector and remixing until you feel more than a sensation. Feeding someone information instead of building a relationship is tantamount to a proverbial fish when they want to learn. Relationships are abundant resources while information is but fleeting scarcity. Stop trying to cover the news and be part of it.
We don't put food on our table through what we write, we have our day jobs. We don't want exclusives that give us the edge over the competition, we want inclusives that let us participate in cooperation. We don't make a meal out of leads and sources, we have our own leadership and resources.
Sure, we keep a back-of-mind calculus of social capital, but what's front of mind is how we can trust before defecting. BTW, I have a little golden rule that whenever a tech company starts thinking they are a bank they are on the verge of bankruptcy, and when people do the effect is the same.
Now, there is something to be said about having more to blog about than your company or cause. It's called having a life and sharing some of it. Also keeps you from running out of material and helps you meet people you really should. And if you feed people year round it certainly staves off a crisis. But feed your own people and build a shared understanding within the company on norms and channels (this is their suggestion to have a Lockbox blog, but it really should be a wiki, and not just for activation when the Tylenol is tainted and your Viagra messages don't rise to the occasion).
There, I said all that without mentioning the word conversation.
