As an ex-PR professional, Catharine P. Taylor marvels at social media’s role in the aftermath of Toyota’s recall debacle.

Taylor contrasts the old school PR approach, where declining to comment was an art form, with Toyota’s mad dash to confront customer questions and complaints on the web.  In “Toyota’s Crisis: Prism Into How Social Media Has Radicalized Public Relations,” she uncovers  two critical lessons. First, when a crisis hits, it’s vital to jump into the fray and confront every relevant social media outlet. For example, Toyota began a website called toyotaconversations.com (run by TweetMeme), specifically for the recent recall situation. That leads to the second point, which is providing a high degree of transparency. While Toyota is presenting some information in a fairly unvarnished way, all the tweets from “Toyota Conversations” are exclusively from the company and are essentially upbeat. However, Toyota’s Facebook page is set up to accommodate those looking for a more “social” conversation.

The SSN Take: Dump the bunker mentality during a crisis and apply social media liberally. For a successful recovery process, be transparent and come clean at the start!

David Hardt, March 21, 2010

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