Identity is Going On Tour With NetBase

One of the many reasons I love Identity, and there are many, is that technology plays a key role in the growth of our agency.

Whether it’s onboarding new tools to better communicate internally or investing in a new service that could benefit our clients, we’ve never been afraid to try new things. Personally, as a geek, it fires me up and makes me excited to come to work every day.

When it comes to our media relations, creative, digital and social media technology stacks, we have some pretty impressive tools in the toolbox. Identity has access to tools for media measurement, content publishing, analytics, SEO management, inbound/automated marketing, contact management (CRM), project management, Web design, video editing, lead scoring and so much more. And while all of these tools are very powerful and help us deliver great work and insights for clients, I have a personal attachment to the tools we use to monitor and analyze social conversations.

For the past eight years, we’ve subscribed to enterprise-level social listening tools that monitor public conversations across the Web. The goal of these platforms is to go beyond what takes place within an owned social media community, like a Business Page on Facebook, and focus on the conversations taking place across the Internet. Using this intelligence, we can learn how things go viral, identify relevant brand conversations at major events and conferences, or see how companies and organizations stack up against each other in terms of social conversation.

While we’ve been able to experiment with different solutions over the years, we absolutely love NetBase. As our preferred social listening platform, NetBase has played a key role in helping us better understand critical client topics, identify holes in communications strategies and measure the impact of crisis situations. Our digital and social media teams leverage the tool on a daily basis, providing insight throughout the day on the conversations important to us and our clients. We’ve had a great relationship with our NetBase contacts, and we’ve recommended the service to peers and clients on multiple occasions.

So, when the team at NetBase asked me to join the NetBase On Tour speaker series, I was pretty psyched. Compared to most of the companies and large agencies using the platform, we’re a small fish among large whales. However, I can confidently say that we leverage the platform to its fullest extent.

Social Media Stories from the Trenches

My presentation, titled “When $#@% Hits the Fan: Navigating Social Media Crisis Situations”, focuses on a topic near and dear to my heart.

Boxing champion Mike Tyson famously said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” I find that statement applies rather appropriately to social media crisis management. Smart companies have a plan and a process ready to kickoff the moment a crisis hits. However, the reality of social media is that it’s hard to plan for every situation.

When you’re dealing with an ecosystem where everyone has an opinion and anyone can create content,  your plan can quickly get torn to shreds.

My presentation focuses on three crisis scenarios that we navigated in 2017: A mass casualty event, a shooting at a popular mixed-use development and a YouTube conspiracy theory video that went too far. I’ll be discussing each unique scenario, what processes we leveraged, what we changed on the fly and what brands can learn from our experiences.

Honestly, 2017 felt like one big dumpster fire in terms of crisis situations. So, why not learn something from it?

Luckily, the great folks at NetBase have asked me to speak at two events. You can catch me on Tuesday, April 24 in Chicago and on Wednesday, May 2 in Detroit.

I hope I’ll see you there!