Who Blogged in a Crisis

We are now into the stretch--three chapters and 10,000-15,000 words to the end of Naked Conversations. We've loved writing this book and we'll miss it when it's completed. We are now writing a chapter called "Blogging in a Crisis." The chapter so far is revisiting Kensington, Electronic Arts aand Kryptonite and discusses what might have happened had they blogged during their crises.  We also report on what Mena Trott, co-founder of Six Apart did during the crisis she had when they started charging for previously free licenses.

But we are looking for your help.  Please tell us who you know of who has used a blog to reduce the intensity of a crisis or has blogged to successfully avoid having one. We're also interested in hearing about companies that got hurt by not blogging.

Please keep those cards and letters coming in. Membership-supported Naked Conversations depends opon readers like you for support.

Comments

[steven streight aka vaspers the grate]

I've lost my patience with this site.

How can you think you can write a book on blogs when you can't even delete comment spam?

This is a poor example of a "business blog".

I no longer have any confidence in this project.

[shel Israel]

Steve,

I cannot speak for Robert, but I delete comment spam several times daily on all of my postings. Where is this comment spam?

[Anon]

Aren't you also looking for examples of how blogging/bloggers exacerbated a crisis?

[Silke Schümann]

I consider a book, that concentrates on success only, as a book of poor judgement. Isn't it much better to just look at blogging in a crisis and not blogging in a crisis rather than looking at the subject just from the point of successful blogging.

Blogging is defnitely not some sort of wonder cure to communication problems.

It looks to me as if your are turning every problem to Blognail in order to deal with it with your blogginghammer.

But there are screws and a lot of other kind of problems.

Not looking at cases with as much neutral perspective as you can, will be more or less the same as delete any voice in comments, that oppose.

[shel Israel]

Anon,

Thanks. I think that's a very good suggestion. Can you send us a few examples, and it would be helpful if you identified yourself, so that we would better identify your perspective.

[shel Israel]

Silke,

I'm not certain that you have been reading the preceding chapters. First, the book is not an objective, balanced analysis of blogging. It is a book about why businesses should blog. That being said, we have taken a pretty balanced view throughout. Our general formula in each chapter is to say why the subject interests us. Then to report on examples we have found, then to conclude by saying why we think the subject is important.

For example, a few chapters back, we noted that German businesses don't blog nearly as much as the French do. We speculated that this is for cultural reasons--that German business people cling to privacy. Perhaps you disagree. Perhaps you can give us a more balanced perspective. We would welcome it.

[james governor]

i think your definition of crisis is a bit limited. i mean - it seems to be informed by traditional PR thinking ie crisis management. When i think of blogs responding to crises i think of the Tsunami. blogs helped to get people and help to where it needed to be, with no formal central mechanisms. the Tsunami was a real crisis that blogs responded to. the "businesses" involved were largely non-profit, but that doesnt make their response to the "humanitarian crisis" any less.

[shel Israel]

James,
Thanks for the comment. In fact, we do make mention in the chapter that blogging has so far been at its best during crisis such as the tsunami, going back to 9/11. But this is a book about why businesses should blog and we are looking for companies that used blogs during a crisis in their businesses. We've yalked about companies like Electronics Art and Kryptonite that were hurt by ignoring blogs during a crisis. We are looking for stories of companies that used blogging to lessen damage. This is of course a lesser crisis than the tsunami, or even David Koch being lost on a mountain, but business is the central focus of the book.

[james governor]

that's all understood. perhaps a different word than crisis? maybe i am just a bit sensitive at the moment, living in London and all. its hard to give a hoot about folks like Kryptonite, and problems of their own making...

how about blogging in a PR shitstorm.

[Donna Tocci]

Hello:
I see that you are using Kryptonite as an example in your book. Please do feel free to contact me for any information you may need.
Donna Tocci
Kryptonite

[Silke Schümann]

Hi Shel,
as you might have noticed I write a corporate blog and you might call an attack on one's brand a crisis. I just created a new brand and launched it in no time through my independant blog on http://a2o.blogg.de.

Luckily I hadn't launched my blog under my own domain, thus the blog stayed intacted and changing the brand was just a matter of design.

I had a splendid start with my new site http://silkester.de and the attacker will have a pretty hard time with the google-memory. He hasn't really realized what I was doing with my blog. What and why you should blog is pretty unknown in Germany. There are only a few who understand the techniques and use it appropriate for their purposes.

There is a crisis on a potatoe called Linda, which is doomed to small private gardens, if farmer Karsten Ellenberg won't succeed. At present farmer Ellenberg has better cards than the potatoe grower Europlant. My blog is just one of the main sources in google on the first results of the subject and still there seems to be little to no response.

You're right, when you say, German entrepreneurs stick to privacy, but at times they need to communicate. If they stumble into it like jamba did it on Spreeblick, they happen to appear on major magazines and in major TV-shows. Since then cancel all abos or the information on refund for parents is easily found in search engines and commonly known by now. I don't think jamba would have had a chance to prevent if they had put up a blog. It is a matter of their business modell not one of communication.

[Christopher Carfi]

(careens back on topic)

The folks over at Bigha did a nice job when the green-laser-on-airliner incident occurred. It looks like their blog has been deprecated from the home page (traded notes on Noah Acres regarding this a bit back; it was apparently for layout/aesthetic reasons, whatever).

That being said, Bigha's handling via their blog of the crisis they were facing at the time was exemplary.

http://www.bigha.com/blog/archives/000061.php?139
http://www.bigha.com/blog/archives/000064.php
etc.

[shel Israel]

Christopher, thanks for the suggestion and we did check it out. I agree with you that bigha handled press unuendos pretty well, but unless there is more to the story, I'm not certain what the crisis was. Is there something you can add?