Social networks help amplify and resolve public relations nightmares

The incident with Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines poses significant threat to Southwest's perception as the good guy of the airline industry and also potentially opens up a lot of discrimination questions about the organization. While traditional news organizations have reported on the story, the public relations problem really arose when Smith took to Twitter to air his grievances.

Because the social network can reach consumers faster than Southwest can issue a statement, the problem is able to spread. But this is not a bad thing for public relations. Southwest, like most companies these days, has a company blog. The company was able to respond directly to the Twitter outbreak by posting a quick response, allowing their reasons to be heard directly, and in a more personal manner than a traditional news brief would permit.

As the issue persists, the conversation is able to evolve in a more organic way as both sides are able to interact directly with consumers or fans to flesh out the problem. I think it is important to see the outrage directly from the person involved, but I also think it is important to understand Southwest's reasoning behind their choices. Without the social networks amplifying the situation, I think it would have been more easily swept under the rug by Southwest (of course it helps that Kevin Smith is famous, but arguably this could happen with anyone thanks to Twitter).

The fact that they are forced to respond in this way will perhaps encourage them to evaluate potentially discriminatory processes more carefully because their reputation is more threatened now. Though it may seem like Twitter creates more public relations problems for companies, I tend to think it helps companies be more accountable and better respond to their publics. As a public relations professional I think it offers a much more honest and open way to reach out to consumers and ultimately, when handled correctly, can turn the situation into a positive for the company.

Of course, the more severe the infraction, the harder it is to solve through social networks, but people are talking about the companies no matter what, so why ignore that?