Crisis Communications: PSNH On Twitter
Posted by David, Griffin York & Krause Public Relations
This is an interesting example of the use of Twitter by a company for communication but also in my opinion an example of how if a company is going to use social networking, it can’t and shouldn’t hide from the bad news. I also want to note that PSNH is a subsidiary of a publicly traded company, which are often the most careful about how and what they communicate because of fears that bad news might affect the all-important stock value.
PSNH put a link to this seacoastonline.com editorial in its Twitter feed that includes updates about the outages from the recent ice storms. The editorial calls out another utility more than it does PSNH, for some perceived communication shortfalls and it also makes some good suggestions. For example, the writer suggests that the utilities should send representatives into the hardest hit communities to give in-person updates to residents.
Not a bad suggestion in my opinion and a flip-side example of how even though social media tools like Twitter are a great way to engage and inform people, we shouldn’t forget about “old school” tactics like face-to-face contact, particularly when those who are likely most affected by the ice storm outages may be elderly. However, I’m sure the utilities have very few extra people available to go door-to-door and in the no good deed goes unpunished column, I can foresee another editorial or customer complaints saying “the utilities should have more people fixing downed lines and less people knocking on doors.”
PSNH on Twitter is…PSNH.
(Editorial from Seacoastonline.com as linked to by PSNH.)
Tags: crisis communications, PSNH, public relations, twitter
This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 12:10 pm and is filed under Feature Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
