Dealing with a crisis has totally changed because of social media but apparently BP didn’t understand this point, as it did not have a strategic plan on how to defend its response to the oil spill on social media, and failed to communicate honestly with the public.

BP’s minimal presence on Facebook and Twitter has proved to be mostly worthless because it lacked a crisis plan. In fact, the top social networks for the most part have done BP more harm than good in recent weeks.

For instance, a search for BP on Facebook is far more likely to produce “Boycott BP” pages – one of which have more than 690,000 followers – than the oil company’s own pages. And a phony BP Twitter account that pokes fun at the company has more than 175,000 followers, whereas BP’s official Twitter account has about 15,000.

This goes to show the importance of social media promotion. Social networks can be a double-edged sword for companies trying to get through a public crisis. If used well, they can help get important messages out to the public. If not used well, they can badly hurt a business’s reputation. More-effective use of social networks could have helped the beleaguered oil company better communicate with the world.

The BP affair could prove very instructive for companies needing to handle problems like this in the future. I can’t think of another company that has faced as big a crisis as BP since the advent of social media.

Short URL & Title:
Dealing with a crisis has totally changed — http://www.torbenrick.eu/t/r/pze

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