Our special edition Overflow Podcast called In the Red Zone with Frank Singleton, addresses the storm that appeared this week after an online entrepreneur named Matt Bacak distributed a press release proclaiming his “elite status” among the twitterverse.
Our concern is not whether his claims are right or wrong, whether his business claims are accurate etc… Our concern comes from the point of view of a Crisis Communications standpoint. How should he respond now that he has reputation has been challenged and negative criticisms have appeared in numerous blog posts? How will he repair the situation now that any new client will come across this fire that flamed up online?
Frank makes the distinction between reputation management and character management. Reputation management is what you “hope” people believe about you and character management is what you “are” … Matt is going to have to deal with repairing the character element. By being somewhat contrite and stating the case that he took his action without understanding the full ramifications .. and letting it die down, he can then get to work on building back his reputation.
In the end, he wants to be relevant, so he needs to start acquiring testimonials identifying specific claims as accurate. Although there will be positive and negative response to these claims due to his reputation situation at the moment, Frank coins the term O+ Communications as what he is striving for .. more positive than negative responses.
As Frank says, “A good apology can keep you in the White House, ask Bill Clinton”
Most importantly, Matt should start to develop a dialogue, getting feedback by personally asking for advice from other online sources. This will turn the one way communications of a PR Web blast and a simple apology into the basis of Social Media communications which contains two-way input.
In the end he shouldn’t pout about the situation, just take solid efforts to engage the online community to help him eliminate his mistakes in the future.
