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Penn State University Football: Social media and crisis management lessons learned

The jury reached a verdict in the high-profile Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse trial. Sandusky, a former Pennsylvania State University assistant football coach was found guilty on 45 of 48 charges. Sandusky faces potentially hundreds of years in prison for molesting 10 boys over 15 years.

The story has been at the forefront of the news cycle many days since it broke in November 2011. There are many parts of this difficult story that have been analyzed for months in the media.

I wanted to take a look at a part of the story that has not gotten much attention - the social media aspects.

Imagine you are responsible for social media within an organization faced with a major crisis like this one. How would you handle it? How would the senior executives handle it?

The right approach is to be honest and forthright. Communicate the facts quickly and don’t hide. Assign a visible spokesperson. Silence and “no comment” are the enemy.

I spoke with Kelly Burns, a recent Penn State MBA graduate. While a student, Kelly interned with Penn State Football Marketing & Promotions from May 2009 through April 2012, and for the past three summers (2009-2011) she ran the Penn State Football Facebook and Twitter accounts.

“I was very lucky to have the opportunity to assist in developing the Penn State Football Facebook page back when it first launched in summer 2009,” Kelly says. She posted content (information, photos, videos, and the like) that fans enjoyed. “Having the opportunity to interact with Penn State Football fans was incredible because Penn State Football has a history rich in tradition and 'Success with Honor,' and its fans literally wear their pride on their sleeves.”

The Penn State Football Facebook page, currently with nearly 350,000 likes, targeted students, recruits to the football program, alumni, and Penn State football fans in the community. Kelly also developed the @PennStateFball Twitter feed. She read each tweet and Facebook comment and responded personally to many. In her role she frequently put in 40 hours per week on a voluntary basis (!!).

Then the story broke

The grand jury investigation was initiated in the spring of 2008 but had been kept quiet. In the summer of 2011 Kelly was told to remove photos of Sandusky from the Facebook page.

On November 4, 2011 Sandusky was indicted and the next day he was arrested and charged and the story went worldwide instantly. “Our Facebook and Twitter lit up but that was difficult because initially we were not allowed to post,” Kelly says. “We were not permitted to post anything about the scandal, nor were any other people working for the University. We were told to wait until Old Main [Penn State's administrative center on campus which includes the university president's office] made a statement before we could say anything. So we went completely dark.”

On November 11, the social media team was permitted to post about The Blue Ribbon Campaign against child abuse and then on November 16 they were allowed to post some simple messages about football but still nothing about the crisis itself was allowed. Even today, nothing about the scandal has ever been talked about on Penn State social media.

Fan engagement and trolls

“Penn State Football fans were never permitted to post directly onto the Facebook wall, but during this period fans were engaged on Facebook by commenting on posts that were already there, including the Blue Ribbon post. There were as many as 500 comments on some posts that I moderated. Many people aired their opinions whether positive or negative.”

While the majority of people were thoughtful, some were not. “We patrolled for foul language, rude jokes, and other disturbing comments and removed them,” Kelly says. Negativity was fine but with such a sensitive issue, inappropriate language was not allowed. “In several cases we needed to block individuals who insisted on continuing to make fun of Penn State in very inappropriate ways,” she says.

What should have happened

Kelly says that the scandal was discussed in several of her MBA classes, including crisis management discussions with MBA marketing professor, Dr. Ralph Oliva in her brand management class. The class went though classic crisis management steps: Gather facts, report facts (even if the fact is that they don’t know anything), put a name to a spokesperson, say that the incident is isolated and does not reflect the football program as a whole, and acknowledge the deep emotions tied to Penn State Football that fans have, and communicate regularly.

These steps were not taken at Penn State Football. Kelly says it took days before the Board of Trustees issued responses and put a face to leadership.

“We should have done a better job providing a way to communicate with the fans,” Kelly says. “That's not something critical about Penn State Football because it goes up to Old Main, who decided what was allowed to be said. I think in our day and age of social media, that silence was not the right response. Keeping information private is not the way to go when people are talking 24x7 on social media and need reassurance.”

A surprising aspect of the situation

Kelly told me how fans of Penn State competitors (such as the Ohio State Buckeyes) also used social media and the Penn State Football Facebook page to show their support and understanding for the victims, the PSU Football players, PSU students, alumni, and fans.

She shared one of the best examples of a positive fan post from what is usually considered the enemy, Ohio State. “In this situation the fan laid aside the on-field rivalry to support a much greater cause (to say the least),” Kelly says. Robert Benson, a Buckeye fan, posted in the Nov. 11 comment thread:

"When people are so quick to make sick references to Penn St. I am disgusted. How can anyone label an entire group of people in a negative way and feel good about it? Taking advantage of people who are down, weakened and heartbroken for your own sick pleasure. Does that remind you of someone?

What I see is a community shell shocked and hurt, trying to find their way through all of this. A horrible situation for them. Surely, among them are kids attending Penn St. who themselves have been victims. Your negative comments about Penn St. must hurt them more than anyone would ever know. They want their university to stand for something better than this.

The whole world is watching Penn St. You will find your way and will come out on the other side to represent something good, and maybe something much bigger and important than before.

Keep your chin up Penn St. When we meet you next week, win or lose, we want you at your best.

A Buckeye fan"

Advice from Kelly about crisis management for other organizations

Interestingly, Kelly says that Penn State Football social media, even today, is not back to “business as usual” like it was before the scandal broke. Currently the football accounts are being updated infrequently by Penn State athletics staff only with innocuous press release type content and the fan engagement is minimal as a result.

“At Penn State, there was no crisis management plan in place whatsoever," Kelly says. "I think it’s crucial for organizations to have crisis management plans with a social media component. Set up timetables to issue responses and statements. You need a plan so that people know how to communicate.”

Kelly’s internship ended several months ago. She says that the crisis experience was terrible in many ways and was certainly *not* fun in the time since the scandal broke. But it was a tremendous learning experience. “I just wish things had turned out differently. Even today they are not communicating openly. It remains to be seen if Penn State Football will address the verdict and engage with fans again now.”

Here is the official statement released by Penn State University immediately following the verdict.

What's next for Kelly

Kelly is now looking for a full-time position in the general fields of marketing, PR, and social media. Having spent time speaking with her, I’d highly recommend her for any communications position. If you’re looking for a social media savvy entry-level employee with extensive crisis communications skills, you need to speak to Kelly. Here are Kelly's social coordinates: blog, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn.

Thank you Kelly for sharing your story with us.
And good luck in your career.

Never pitch again

How do you generate new business? Or find a job? Or get ink in mainstream media?

Do you cold call? Do you send email pitches? Do you hang out in your tradeshow booth and approach passersby? Do you go to networking events and hand out business cards?

Each of these methods for generating attention requires you to approach others -- potential new customers or employers or journalists -- to tell them about what you do in the hope that they might be interested.

These classic outbound marketing techniques are all we really had prior to the ability to become brand journalists by creating valuable information on the Web. Yet many people operate as if we are still in 1993 and the only options available are outbound strategies.

Inbound Marketing

Many organizations are finding tremendous success by planting hundreds or even thousands of new business seeds in the form or blog posts, ebooks, infographics, videos, photos, how-to guides, research reports, Twitter feeds, and other forms of Web content.

In a technique called Inbound Marketing, each of these marketing assets gets indexed by Google, Bing, and the other search engines so when people enter search terms related to your business, they find you via your valuable information. When people find something interesting you created, they may share it on their social profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, and the like.

Here are some real-world examples of Inbound Marketing in action in healthcare, from a rock star, in finding a first job, in retail products, for PR agencies, in politics, and for B2B products. You can acheive similar results.

INBOUND 2012

I'll be delivering a keynote at INBOUND 2012, a 3-day inbound marketing conference and training event produced by HubSpot.

More than 2,000 inbound marketers, entrepreneurs and executives are expected in Boston August 27-30 and the agenda includes keynotes, breakout sessions, parties, learning, and fun. I'm speaking the first day but will be at the event the entire time.

HubSpot has kindly offered readers of this blog a 25% discount on tickets to INBOUND 2012. Use the code DMS25. This link has the discount code already applied.

Disclosures: I am Marketer in Residence and on the advisory board at HubSpot. I wrote the foreword to the book Inbound Marketing, by HubSpot co-founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, which is part of my New Rules of Social Media book series.

Amanda Palmer freaks out to celebrate hitting $1 million on Kickstarter

Yesterday evening, I met up with Amanda Palmer (together with my friend Steve Garfield) on Lexington Battle Green.

We filmed a video that I'll be using in an upcoming presentation and which I'll be sharing here in the future.

The timing was awesome as just a few hours before we met, Amanda's Kickstarter for her new album Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra passed the $1 million dollar mark.

Here's Amanda celebrating her milestone which is the largest amount ever raised for a music project on Kickstarter.

I wrote about her new project when she launched a month ago in my blog post We are the media: Amanda Palmer and the future of your business.

There are now over 21,000 backers, including me, Steve, and many of our social friends including Denise Wakeman. I'm looking forward to Amanda’s Boston art opening and concert. If you go to the Boston event, let me know.

Imagine that. Tens of thousands of Amanda's fans backed her new album before they even heard it. That's the power of a fan base and using social media to connect with fans.

One way to do an album is to have a record label fund it. As Amanda shows, there’s a better way: Have your fans fund it and then you retain control.

Direct link to Amanda Palmer Dances to Celebrate Passing $1 Million on Kickstarter on YouTube.

Amanda Palmer site (where you can get a free album preview track).
@AmandaPalmer on Twitter
Amanda's Kickstarter

Avoid controversial topics like politics and religion in your marketing

There are subjects that should not enter into your company's marketing because they are too controversial.

For many organizations, politics and religion are topics to be avoided (unless you work at an issue-based nonprofit, for a political candidate or elected official, or at a church).

Another touchy subject is sex. There may be others in your market.

Most organizations should avoid politics and religion

I've been a subscriber to the Publishers Weekly email newsletter for many years because I like to keep up with what's happening in the book business.

I was surprised this morning to receive an email from PW with the subject line PUBLISHING PEOPLE FOR OBAMA. The email was one big image (reproduced below) which links to a landing page on barackobama.com

I can't figure out for sure if PW sold their list to the Obama campaign or if PW is supporting the President’s reelection. (I think they sold the list).

Either way, I think this was a mistake for PW to venture into politics like this.

Seth Godin says that an email list is permission marketing - "the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them." PW subscribers like me give PW permission to contact us. We can just as easily revoke that permission if we are offended.

If you are in the business of renting your email list, you need to be very careful who you allow to use it. When doing your own marketing, you need to consider the ramifications of alienating people who not share your beliefs.

Note -- this is a marketing blog, not a political one. I am not talking about the merits of the presidential candidates here but rather the marketing aspects of this example.

Educate and inform instead of interrupt and sell

You have the power to elevate yourself on the web to a position of importance.

In the e-marketplace of ideas, successful people educate and inform. They highlight their expertise with videos, content-rich websites, social streams, blogs, ebooks, and images.

We also have the ability to interact and participate in conversations that other people begin on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, chat rooms, and forums.

The key is to focus on buyers' needs, not your own ego.

Stop hyping your products and services. Don't rely on interruption techniques. You'll regret taking advantage of people’s time and attention with unwanted communications.

Instead you need to deliver the right information to buyers, right at the point when they are most receptive.

Organizations gain credibility and loyalty with buyers through content, and smart marketers think and act like publishers in order to create and deliver content targeted directly at their audience.

Don't push product

Teach people something. Share your expertise.

It's counter intuitive: You sell more when you stop selling.

As you build your market people will find you via search engines and talk you up on social networks.

The art of turning heads with video

I really like this video The art of turning heads... from Cooei, an Australian company founded by sisters Cassandra @castrevitt and Brooke @brooketrevitt.

The video focuses on the problems faced by Cooei's buyer personas (pain from high heels) and uses humor to tell a story quickly.

I asked Cas to tell us a little about how the video was done.

Cas and Brooke did the video on a very tight budget, thinking up the concept themselves and using family and friends as actors. Fortunately, their brother Luke has a background in film so he shot the footage (with a moderately priced Canon 7D DSLR rig) over two days. Friends helped with editing and other aspects. The music rights were acquired through APRA|AMCOS.

Lessons learned

Great video does not need to be expensive. If you have some creative skills and some friends to help, you too can make a professional quality video.

The big challenges are coming up with the concept that will interest your buyers and keeping it short.

Content marketing in highly regulated industries

On the global speaking circuit, I frequently get pushback from audience members who work in highly regulated industries. They claim, erroneously, that laws like HIPAA and regulations like those from the SEC and the FDA forbid them from creating valuable content on the Web or engaging in social media.

Nonsense!

This is just a fear-based excuse perpetuated by lawyers in the pharmaceutical, healthcare, and financial services industries who want to avoid risk at all cost.

Ignoring the data

The fear is particularly shortsighted when considering the data on how people make decisions related to their health. Last week I delivered a talk at the National Healthcare Marketing Summit and had an opportunity to meet many marketers who are happily reaching their audiences with valuable information because they live in reality not fear.

According to data presented at the conference by Tim McGuire from Greenville Hospital System, Bill Moschella of eVariant, and Anne Theis of Salem Health, 80% of Internet users look up health information online.

More than three out of four people use the Web to make healthcare decisions!

Yet 64% of hospital marketing departments devote less than 25% of their marketing budget to interactive. Even more telling is how hospital marketers spend their time. 83% of hospitals devote less than 30% of staff time to interactive media.

This is ridiculous.

The fearful lawyers say “no” to the 80% of customers and potential customers who use the Web to research health? Fear means that hospital marketers are busy making brochures and TV ads instead of creating Web content?

Can your organization afford such a disconnect?!

Learning from Chris Boyer and Inova Health System

For example, Chris Boyer, Director, Digital Communications and Marketing, Inova Health System is doing a terrific job. Inova is Northern Virginia's leading not-for-profit healthcare provider, serving more than 1 million people each year.

Under Chris' leadership, Inova is active on social sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+ and Pinterest (and more). You can see all the social platforms on this page, which also has information on Inova's social media policies. In addition, Chris has a personal blog (as do others in the organization).

But it the content that Inova publishes to reach specific buyer personas that interests me the most. For example, there is a Life with Cancer site that contains valuable information for patients and their families.

In a world where others are fearful of creating content, Inova publishes videos like this one. Phil Gilbert's Story - Relief After Hip Replacement.

Content for Inova’s buyer personas

In the last two years, Chris has transformed the Inova organization to be more focused on creating relevant content. I asked a bunch of questions so that we can all learn from his efforts.

"We take a lot of time understanding who our viewers are and actually write different types of content for different types of users," Chris told me. "Patients are using our patient and visitor information so they're looking for specifics about how to make their stay easier and we write with them in mind. Other people view our services and all the different clinical stuff that we provide at Inova. They could either be referring physicians who want to research what we're doing here or there could be consumers who are actually shopping for healthcare and we want to provide them content that's appropriate for them. It is written so that they don't have read through pages and pages of clinical content to get to the crux of what they're looking for."

Hire journalists

Chris manages the digital marketing and communications team, including a handful of editors and web graphics professionals as well as several part-timers.

A full time social medial manager on the team focuses on social media channels, although there's a lot of content interaction and cross-publication efforts because the lines between social media and the website are blurring tremendously at Inova.

Long-time readers of this blog know that I frequently talk about hiring journalists to create content. Professional reporters and editors, more than marketers and PR people, are the best staffers for content sites because they understand how to tell a story and don't fall back on product pitching. That's exactly what Inova has done.

"The two main editors for our website are actually former journalists," Chris says. "So they have experience in terms of writing; of course, they started in traditional media. But in the last few years, they migrated over to focus exclusively on online journalism and communications."

Manage fear

I wanted to know how Chris has dealt with the whole "fear" thing. Why has he been successful in hiring journalists and creating content when so many other management teams and legal departments simply say: "no".

"Healthcare organizations typically are very conservative in how they market or communicate about their services," he says. The main concern of management was that a shift to content marketing would mean a shift away from what they thought were the key differentiators of Inova Health System in the market that attract the best physicians. "It took a long time for us to educate that the existing content is not being lost, we're just providing it to each audience in the appropriate places. There will be pages for consumers, pages for physicians that are looking to refer or be employed here. It took a while for them to be comfortable with that."

Measure success

What about the whole ROI thing? With a team of people, there are significant resources devoted to this effort. Is it paying off?

"We use tools like Vocus to measure effectiveness," Chris says. "But I also manage, as part of my larger responsibilities, our CRM team and our customer relationship management database. So I've been creating a social media strategy that is aligned with our customer relationship management database so I can actually measure downstream utilization and ROI of our social media activity."

Chris is a bit of a social media ROI rockstar and was even filmed at a Mayo Clinic conference singing his Social Media ROI Rag.

Chris has three specific areas that he measures:

• New patients. How many people become patients who first connected online either through content on the Website or social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.


• How much money can be saved by using online tools. For example the existing Inova nursing communications is a printed newsletter that goes out to all nursing staff and it costs $80,000 a year to produce. So converting over to a blog they means eliminating that expense while increasing readership.


• Long-term patient engagement and wellness. Chris measures patients (or potential patients) who get involved wellness programs. For example, Inova has email communications focused on how to have a healthy heart, how to eat well, and the like. He’s looking for people who stay healthy because of the information they consume and how that effects things like re-admittance rates.

Advice to the fearful

With all of his success, I wanted Chris to provide suggestions to people in other regulated businesses.

"Realize that you don't have to transform your entire organization all at once," he says. "I found a lot of success in focusing on areas where there are some obvious opportunities and used social communications in those areas. Try something and see how it's working. You're gaining valuable expertise and understanding about how to use the tools. Eventually in most organizations once you introduce social communications to your portfolio, very quickly you'll start to see how it will start to augment, if not replace, some of the current ways that you're communicating."

No excuses

As Chris shows, content marketing is alive and well in highly regulated industries.

Isn't it time for your organization to eliminate fear?

Public relations is not the same as media relations

Back in the day, the only way to easily communicate with your public was to use mainstream media and analysts as your mouthpieces. So the public relations department and the agencies they employed spent a great deal of effort convincing editors, reporters and analysts that your company was one worth talking up.

Prior to the Web, there wasn't an efficient way for organizations to communicate directly to the public.

What's the role of public relations in the new world of the web?

There has been an explosion of channels that organizations can reach their audience directly with valuable online content: videos, ebooks, white papers, photos, infographics, and more – and then have that information shared in social networks.

However, many PR professionals still operate as if their only conduit is mainstream media.

Apologies if you've heard this because I've talked about this many times in the past. But there are still many holdouts so I say it again.

Don't confuse the superset (public relations = reaching the public with your information) with the subset (media relations = using the media to tell your story) and therefore insist that PR is only about mainstream media.

What you need to realize is that these are different activities. Media relations is still valid as a way to get attention. Who doesn't want to be quoted in an important newspaper, magazine, or television broadcast?

Today there are so many other ways to communicate with your publics

If your organization operates this outdated way, my recommendation is to re-name your public relations department the media relations department to reflect what they really do.

In this new world, smart PR pros realize they have a tremendous opportunity if they can effectively communicate directly with the public. They are transforming themselves into content creators. However, most are still operating in the traditional press release and pitching mentality.

If you're an entrepreneur or executive, don't put your PR department in charge of content creation for your company (unless they understand completely the power of the new world).

We are the media: Amanda Palmer and the future of your business

UPDATE - May 29, 2012. This afternoon, Amanda's Kickstarter crossed the $1 million threshold, the first music project on Kickstarter to do so.

I met up with her just a few hours later and posted this Amanda Palmer freaks out to celebrate hitting $1 million on Kickstarter.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++
On April 6, 2010 after a two year fight Amanda Palmer finally freed herself from her record deal with Roadrunner Records. For the seven years prior to her label divorce, anything she had written and recorded (either solo or with her band, The Dresden Dolls) has technically been owned and under the ultimate control of the label.

Amanda knew she could do better on her own

So after much planning, Amanda chose a 30-day Kickstarter to fund her new album: amanda palmer & the grand theft orchestra.

As I write this, within two days, more than 6,000 people have backed the project with an incredible $350,000. And there are 29 days to go. (Each time I refresh Amanda’s Kickstarter page, the total grows.)

One fan at a time

Amanda connects with her fans every day and has built a tremendous fan base. She's very active on social networks - 550,000+ Twitter followers at @AmandaPalmer for example. Her site is a great example of a content rich resource for fans and her blog is always a great read (often with hundreds of comments on a post).

Regular readers of this blog may recall that I’ve written about her before in these posts: How Amanda Palmer made $11,000 on Twitter in two hours (which contains my wide ranging video interview with Amanda) and Amanda Palmer divorces her record label.

Crowdsourcing a new record and a new band

Rather than going the traditional route and having a label fund her new record, Amanda is going directly to her fans via Kickstarter.

Amanda writes: "since i'm now without a giant label to front the gazillions of dollars that it always takes to manufacture and promote a record this big, i'm coming to you to gather funds so that i have the capital to put it out with a huge fucking bang. i think kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms like this are the BEST way to put out music right now - no label, no rules, no fuss, no muss. just us, the music, and the art. i'm also making sure EVERY PRODUCT sold through this kickstarter is unique to this campaign, to reward all of you who KNEW ME WHEN and were willing to support me from Day One."

There are packages starting at just $1 (a digital download of the album) to $10,000 (dinner with Amanda plus all sorts of extras). I dig the $5,000 level, which includes Amanda coming to your house for a party. The package I chose was a pledge of $300 and includes tickets to a VIP party and intimate show with Amanda and the band in Boston (there are similar options in other cities).

We are the media: Amanda Palmer and the future of music

In just a few days, Amanda has raised more money via her fans than she would have gotten from her label for producing her album. And she retains complete control. Who knows how much she might end up with at the end of the month?

To succeed at this technique, a musician has got to build a fan base one person at a time. Social media is a great way to connect before and after the live gig, but the personal connection is essential.

"Being a touring musician means meeting fans," Amanda told me. "I go out and meet fans after every gig. It's important to make contact in real life and not just online in social media like Twitter. If you don't meet fans in real life too, then you're a fraud. If you're not comfortable getting into the sweat with them and talking with people at shows, then how can you do it successfully online? I love connecting with fans. Speaking to people at the merchandise table after the show is great. I can stay there forever."

The future of your business

If you read this blog, you know that I am a huge live music fan. I see parallels to all kinds of businesses – including yours.

While your work may be completely different from that of a rock star, Amanda has something to teach you.

Your product comes first and must be created with passion. You’ve got to engage with your customers on a human level. Social networking can help you build your fan base. And if you do these things well, you can build a great company and a fantastic career.

Say it with fewer words

My blog posts always seem to be long. Sometimes as much as 500 words (or more). I find it difficult to say something in just a few words.

But we're all busy with so many things demanding our attention. When you see a long blog post, are you eager to read it? Maybe not.

Brevity: "the attribute of being brief or fleeting."

Sometimes brevity is best. I'm trying to say things with fewer words.