Crisis Blogs - Plan Them Well

Don't think you can start a blog when the crisis hits you. Even though Oliver S. Schmidt, Managing Partner of C4CS, has "...yet to walk into a crisis situation that wouldn't have the client partner benefit from utilizing blogs". He also tells me in this interview that "...companies should become familiar with blogging during the pre crisis phase". When I C4CS is a consultancy specializing in strategic communication and crisis management. If you want to know more about Oliver's view on crisis communications in general, you find it at the estimated (pdf) 8 million blogs with a readership of 32 million Internet users at the end of 2004, I have yet to walk into a crisis situation that wouldn't have the client partner benefit from utilizing blogs. But for instance due to time constraints and limited client partner resources we have at times not recommended blogging as part of the crisis communication strategy although it would have helped. And if nobody in the company has blogging experience and 'stealth blogs' haven't been developed as part of the pre crisis planning, staying away from using blogs may at least in some cases be the better option. Things are different with our client partners in Europe and Asia because blogging is not as well known in those markets, and consequently readership numbers are significantly below what I just cited for the U.S. But in a few cases we have successfully used crisis blogs, and I think a lot more will be launched on a global scale in the not too distant future. Fredrik Wacka is the author and founder of the popular CorporateBlogging.Info