6 Steps to Correcting Online Rumors About Your company

I often say that rumors, since based on untruths, do not qualify as a full-on crisis. However, what if the rumors are beginning to go viral and becoming so overpowering that nobody is listening to the facts you’re trying to release to prove their falsehood?

Not only is this a stressful situation, but in this case, if you don’t get your side of the story heard fast and clearly, you may just be headed towards a crisis after all!

So how do you go about making your side of the story heard when reporters, bloggers and the public are more interested in the juicy rumor?

Speak loudly – demand to be heard

If you find yourself faced in a situation such as this, consider the following 6 techniques and strategies to get your side of the story heard – and heard quickly.

Dominate the search enginesWhen people go searching for information on the topic at hand, you want them to find YOUR content first. In a best case scenario, your content would dominate the entire first page of the search engine results. But in order to achieve this, you must:

• Publish informative content
• Use targeted keywords (the terms people are searching for and talking about) within your content and titles
• Repurpose your content:
• Write blog posts
• Publish a white paper
• Add an informative FAQ to your blog or website
• Publish videos to YouTube
• Create infographics (infographics have a tendency to go viral, so this is a great one to consider!)

Prove your credibilityBack your content up with stats, facts, images, video footage, testimonials – anything and everything that will help position you as a credible source, leaving no holes for others to poke into or use against you.

Monitor the discussions and personally answer people’s questionsUse monitoring tools such as Google Alerts and Twilert to monitor for specific keywords that people are talking about. When you detect conversations, discussions or questions that could use some clarification, kindly reply. Be informative, understanding and helpful. Not only will this help you counter the rumors, but you may just make some valuable new relationships along the way!

Look to your advocates and loyal customers for supportThis is another great example of where the real, valuable relationships you create with your customers and fans provide you with a strategic advantage. If you’ve done your job right, you have some devoted customers and fans out there who will want to help you correct any untruths circulating about your company or organization. Ask and you shall receive!

Call in a crisis managerIf things get really bad, it may be time to call in professional help. When searching for the right crisis manager in a situation such as this, make sure that they have experience with:

• Social media crisis management
• Search engine optimization

Know when to walk awaySometimes, the best thing you can do is publish informative content, optimize it for high rankings and find-ability, answer questions and then know when enough is enough. I’m not saying to close yourself off – continue monitoring, answering questions and informing the right people – but don’t waste your time on those narrow-minded individuals who only aim to hurt. You’ll waste a whole lot of time and energy while accomplishing very little. Remember that the right people will have heard you, and they’re the ones worth your time and energy.

Prevention is still always your best strategy

The longer you wait in a crisis, the more you lose control and the more damage the crisis can potentially have on your brand. The same goes with rumors. If you’re monitoring the online discussions that take place around your brand or organization, you’ll catch the rumor forming within it’s early stages, allowing you to extinguish the flames before they go viral and turn into a full-on crisis.

A social media crisis management plan is essential – and monitoring and prevention should always be at the root of that plan.

Have you ever been a victim of a rumor-gone-viral situation, and if so, what are the lessons you learned from the situation that can help others like you? 

I invite you to share your experiences with me below.

How to Run a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign

http://www.inc.com/nicole-carter-and-tim-rice/how-to-run-a-successful-crowdfunding-campaign.html?nav=vid

Water & Salt

The first drama show presented by "Al Balad Street" theater, in which it takes of streets its own space to create a moving theater where its members along with people passing in the streets participate and make the whole drama show!

"Water and Salt" show was held today (10-5-2012) in the streets of Ramallah city where a number of youths tried to express their feelings in a new and special way regarding the Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike. People in the streets were given cups full of water and salt to make them taste the pain the prisoners suffer these days. Some prisoners reached their 73 rd day of continuous hunger strike where they can only drink water and salt in order to survive! Here it came the idea of making people in the streets share Palestinian prisoners their suffering and pain through trying to drink for the first time salty water!

The first drama show presented by "Al Balad Street" theater, in which it takes of streets its own space to create a moving theater where its members along with people passing in the streets participate and make the whole drama show!

"Water and Salt" show was held today (10-5-2012) in the streets of Ramallah city where a number of youths tried to express their feelings in a new and special way regarding the Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike. People in the streets were given cups full of water and salt to make them taste the pain the prisoners suffer these days. Some prisoners reached their 73 rd day of continuous hunger strike where they can only drink water and salt in order to survive! Here it came the idea of making people in the streets share Palestinian prisoners their suffering and pain through trying to drink for the first time salty water!

Palestinian Prisoners on Hunger Strike need your Help

We invite you to exercise all possible pressure on the Israeli occupation authorities in order to ensure the lives of prisoners and detainees on hunger strike in prisons and who number approximately (4600) prisoners, including (8) prisoners and (138) children and (309) administrative detainees, and (27 ) deputies, and a number of political leaders, and these distributors on twenty prisoners and prison and detention center. Demanding to stop the practice of administrative detention arbitrary and political isolation of the family, and let the people of the prisoners in the Gaza Strip to visit Ibnahm, and allow them to continue education, cessation of punitive measures against the prisoners Kmadahma cells, and the imposition of fines, strip searches and humiliating and policies of medical negligence and to ensure dignity and respect for their rights. "

So we urge you to exercise movements popular in all the cities of the world and activities in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike in order to work to save their lives, as the lives of some of them are at high risk, where locked 22 prisoners open food strike for more than 53 days and the family the damaging of wheat broke the record are captured Bilal Diab and Thaer Halaleh where to move their hunger strike (76) days and nearly 1600 prisoners locked in a hunger strike since 27 days.

We invite you to immediately intervene with the Israeli occupation authorities to ensure a response to the demands of family fair, and break the silence about the escalation of violations of the occupation of the international standards of human rights and international humanitarian law, in order to compel the occupation authorities to respect international law and the provisions of the Geneva Conventions of 1947. And stop the practices, humiliating and degrading treatment of human dignity, and systematic violations and arbitrary measures against the practice of Palestinian prisoners in the prisons of the occupation, and the laws and procedures that affect the unjust occupation of thousands of family.

Finally, you are requested to adopt this call your capacity and / or on behalf of your organization and carry out operations and movements of popular media, diplomatic, legal, political and cultural support to ensure and support the struggle of the prisoners in the jails of the Israeli occupation.

We invite you to act now, tomorrow may be too late.

Hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HVkTtNKEmGg
Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad listens to Prisoners relatives as they protest during an EU Event in the West Bank city of Ramallah on May 9

We teach life, sir!

Today, my body was a TV'd massacre.
Today, my body was a TV'd massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits.
Today, my body was a TV'd massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits filled enough with statistics to counter measured response.
And I perfected my English and I learned my UN resolutions.
But still, he asked me, Ms. Ziadah, don't you think that everything would be resolved if you would just stop teaching so much hatred to your children?
Pause.
I look inside of me for strength to be patient but patience is not at the tip of my tongue as the bombs drop over Gaza.
Patience has just escaped me.
Pause. Smile.
We teach life, sir!
Rafeef, remember to smile.
Pause.
We teach life, sir!
We Palestinians teach life after they have occupied the last sky.
We teach life after they have built their settlements and apartheid walls, after the last skies.
We teach life, sir!
But today, my body was a TV'd massacre made to fit into sound-bites and word limits.
And just give us a story, a human story.
You see, this is not political.
We just want to tell people about you and your people so give us a human story.
Don't mention that word "apartheid" and "occupation".
This is not political.
You have to help me as a journalist to help you tell your story which is not a political story.
Today, my body was a TV'd massacre.
How about you give us a story of a woman in Gaza who needs medication?
How about you?
Do you have enough bone-broken limbs to cover the sun?
Hand me over your dead and give me the list of their names in one thousand two hundred word limits.
Today, my body was a TV'd massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits and move those that are desensitized to terrorist blood.
But they felt sorry.
They felt sorry for the cattle over Gaza.
So, I give them UN resolutions and statistics and we condemn and we deplore and we reject.
And these are not two equal sides: occupier and occupied.
And a hundred dead, two hundred dead, and a thousand dead.
And between that, war crime and massacre, I went out words and smile "not exotic"; smile, "not terrorist".
And I recount, I recount a hundred dead, two hundred dead, a thousand dead.
Is anyone out there?
Will anyone listen?
I wish I could veil over their bodies.
I wish I could just run barefoot in every refugee camp and hold every child, cover their ears so they wouldn't have to hear the sound of bombing for the rest of their life the way I do.
Today, my body was a TV'd massacre
And let me just tell you, there's nothing your UN resolutions have ever done about this.
And no sound-bite, no sound-bite I come up with, no matter how good my English gets, no sound-bite, no sound-bite, no sound-bite, no sound-bite will bring them back to life.
No sound-bite will fix this.
We teach life, sir!
We teach life, sir!
We Palestinians wake up every morning to teach the rest of the world life, sir!