Business Case Study: Using Social Media for crisis communication with General Motors Christopher Barger at PodCamp Toronto
February 22, 2010 by Richard Budman ·
At the recent PodCamp Toronto 2010 social media conference – I had the pleasure of taking in the talk by Christopher Barger – the Director of Social Media for General Motors U.S.A.
Mr. Barger came to Canada for a weekend to discuss how GM made extensive use of online social media in a presentation titled, “The Social Web – Crisis Response & Reputation Rejuvenation.”
Chris started his talk by stating he was given one small problem – and just one week to prepare a communications plan for it.
Simply put, how to deal with the public fallout on what would be the biggest business crisis in North American history – The Chapter 11 filing and bankruptcy of General Motors.
If there ever was a massive public relations challenge – this was it.
Chris knew he wanted his response plan to heavily involve online social media. But he still had convincing to do with some in the executive ranks of GM. Some GM people wondered, in this period of bankruptcy and crisis, was this the right time to be “open and transparent” on social media?
So while there was talk about “going dark” – that is, shut down the GM blogs and facebook groups, and not engage in any new forms of networking (Twitter) – Chris Barger executed a social media plan that pretty much did the exact opposite.
Mr. Barger discussed at his Podcamp talk some key points he discovered and tried to infuse into his social media team.
1. You can’t over-communicate in a crisis.
Before Chris had his social media team respond to reactions regarding the GM crisis. He Listened. And listened, and listened. A key point he stressed during his Podcamp talk. Before GM was going to respond and be open and transparent in what the company was going through – he first listened to find out what people where talking about and where their concerns lie.
And then General Motors started to become something it hadn’t been before with its corporate communications, “OPEN. OPEN. OPEN.” as Barger would call it.
Those first documents and legal filings on the Chapter 11 – Chris and his team broke up key points and tweeted them out – 140 characters at a time. The General Motors CEO sat-down and did multiple live online chats on twitter.
And GM’s Director of Social Media also made sure of one thing – that traditional media, television and newspapers were always made aware of the social media campaign at each step. GM wasn’t going to forget about the traditional media that has spent decades writing about the company in this new communications campaign.
2. Let others tell your story.
The GM social media plan ensured genuine reach out to online news sites and bloggers. And not just the well-known, influencer type with large audiences. If a blogger with a passion for cars and only maybe had an audience of just 200 people per month. Barger decided that was still somebody to reach out too and engage. That small blogger is still a person speaking to 200 people interested in automobiles and that’s a community GM wants to be involved in. So just like the traditional car journalists and big news sites – GM also started to invite the small blogger in for press events and hands-on driving tests.
Another huge benefit to all the conversations that GM was doing in social media – was that traditional, offline media was listening as well to what the company was doing. A lot of GM’s social media efforts were picked up for stories in traditional media sources. And a lot of the time, the tone of the story was this was a different GM – a General Motors that was engaged in new social technologies and listening to its customers and critics (for perhaps, the very first time.)
Some of the initial results of the online campaign included thousands of conversations across many social media platforms and millions of hits for a special website GM put up explaining the situation in better detail.
But with all the online efforts Christopher Barger’s team put in – he never forgot one golden rule – 90% of word-of-mouth advertising still occurs offline. The GM team never forget to keep offline media aware of their communication efforts and ensure dealer and retail touch points was engaged and also participating with the new media.
3. Follow-up and value the relationships you’ve built.
The GM Social Media team can look back to last year and have a good idea of the news sites, bloggers, tweeters, and more that contributed to the dialogue of incredible change that occurred with the company. And when it comes time for the communications team to reach out again for a “GM hands-on” campaign, you can be sure this engaged community that Barger’s team has carefully cultivated, will hear about any new plans – as well, get their invitations.
DISCLOSURE: The author of this post, Richard Budman has done social media work for GM Canada (via MacLaren Momentum agency) on the Cadillac TIFFinsider campaign.
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