Working With Bloggers: The Tip of the Iceberg [en]

[fr] La gestion de crise, c'est la partie immergée de l'iceberg -- la véritable raison pour laquelle les médias sociaux (et les relations blogueurs en particulier) ont leur place dans les activités de l'entreprise.

Over the last year, amongst the various things I do, blogger relations have represented a significant part of my paid work. Again and again comes the question of justifying what we do: is the effort invested worth the results?

What we see of our results is the tip of the iceberg: the tweets, the facebook updates, the blogposts. The fact that bloggers who have been given a VIP ticket to an event open only to a select few end up having a more positive image of the brand. The fact that we’re communicating on this or that topic.

I understood really clearly what the rest of the iceberg is thanks to Yan Luong, who was lecturing on Saturday for the SAWI course I co-direct. Amongst many other interesting things, he told us that crisis management was the killer argument to get top management to buy in to social media.

In 2013, a crisis will not just take place offline. People will use social media. You will also have to manage your crisis online. The best way to prepare for this is to be listening, so you can detect signs of an impending crisis online (if that’s where it first manifests), to know your online communities and audience, and have established relationships with key people and ambassadors. The online field will be known to you. It will be easier to navigate. You might even find you already have allies there.

When we work with bloggers and other key online people to establish positive, respectful, and long-lasting relationships, we are in fact doing very proactive crisis management.

That is the immersed part of the iceberg. Of course, people focus on the tip, and say “hey, only 5 bloggers came to your event” or “why are there only 8 blog posts about this?”

But when that crisis ship sails by, you’ll be glad your iceberg also reaches underwater.

2nd Back to Blogging Challenge, day 9. On the team: Nathalie Hamidi (@nathaliehamidi), Evren Kiefer (@evrenk), Claude Vedovini (@cvedovini), Luca Palli (@lpalli), Fleur Marty (@flaoua), Xavier Borderie (@xibe), Rémy Bigot (@remybigot), Jean-François Genoud (@jfgpro), Sally O’Brien (@swissingaround), Marie-Aude Koiransky (@mezgarne), Anne Pastori Zumbach (@anna_zap), Martin Röll (@martinroell), Gabriela Avram (@gabig58), Manuel Schmalstieg (@16kbit), Jan Van Mol (@janvanmol), Gaëtan Fragnière (@gaetanfragniere), Jean-François Jobin (@gieff), Yann Graf (@yanngraf). Hashtag:#back2blog.

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