While GM likely planned ahead to monitor the flurry of discussion in social media to have a pulse on brand sentiment about this change in leadership and may have even outlined their approach to respond or not respond to top-tier business blogs or comments on the Fast Lane blog, it’s unlikely that they anticipated that a family member’s reaction would captivate social media users and blog headlines. Even more troubling is that this post creates a potential perception problem by suggesting that GM was not being truthful when it announced the resignation and instead fired Henderson after only an eight-month tenure.

Beyond being a great case study for making sure that social media is part of your crisis communications planning process, the incident also underscores the need for a systematic approach to evaluating how your situation will play out, what social media flare ups could occur and the appropriate response.

A useful process that comes to mind here is mind mapping. According to Wikipedia, a mind map is a “diagram used to represent ideas, tasks or other items linked to and arranged around a central keyword or situation. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure and classify ideas, and aid in problem solving or decision making. Mindjet, a Text 100 client, makes excellent tools for mind mapping and visual thinking.

By creating a mind map for your crisis communications situation, you can easily evaluate the divergent paths social media could take. For example, the ROUGH start to a mind map for a plant closing could look like this (click on image for a larger view):

By visualizing the crisis, the stakeholders impacted, the initial social media reaction, your strategy and the potential reaction to your response, it’s easy to see where there might be gaps that need to be better addressed.

I’d love your thoughts on this. Do you incorporate social media strategy as part of your crisis communications plans? If so, what is your process? What tools have you found helpful?