Echologist.com

The following article combines a list of proposal for immediate reactions to the problems found at StudiVZ discussed at a meeting with the founders of StudiVZ.

1. No more private PR by Ehssan, Michael or Dennis

StudiVZ used to be an innocent student project, it is now a large company with a lot of money and it is certainly not innocent.

Anybody who is very young and gets a lot of money to play around with, needs to have a strong personality to cope with the pressure involved with the project.

The StudiVZ founders have the poential to do so – they have made it very far already. With a good coach the founders of StudiVZ can maybe be put back on track, but they need a mentor who knows the business of Venture Capitalism very well, who knows how media works and who knows how to organize a good PR strategy. In fact, this can only be a team of probably very expensive specialists.

Until this team is formed – no more private communication of any of the founders or staff of StudiVZ should be published. No private pictures, no private vids, no stupid things in public – it will only makes things worse!

For the best communication personal integrity counts!

2. Communicate your weaknesses and turn them into strengths!

The bad corporate communication is not a result of bad luck – it is a result of PR-incapability paired with stress and the inability to ask the right persons for support. It is a sign that something along the way went totally wrong – or was meant to go wrong. It is incredible why Holtzbrinck and the Samwer brothers have not advised the founders of StudiVZ on a better PR.

The only way out: admit that you have made mistakes. Go public and tell your users and the media and the blog-o-sphere that you have done wrong and you will do it better.

The worst thing is the “Völkischer Beobachter” scandal. What you can do now concretely is:

• apologize!
• get rid of all domains related to the Völkischer Beobachter
• display an intercultural and tolerant corporate culture at StudiVZ
• support NGOs which work against racism and intolerance

The second worst thing are the technical problems, and again the only answer is:

• go public!
• explain your users in easy words the technical challenges you face
• identify concrete steps what you do about the technical problems
• keep them up to date what is changing
• invite them to participate in the change
• ask the users with IT background for their ideas
3. Develop and practice good corporate governance

The Fake-blogs are bad enough, but Wiki-Manipulation is even worse. If the whole Wikipedia community starts to get the news about the Wikipedia-editing, a whole new storm is blowing. What you need to do now is:

• develope a list of corporate governance rules!
• staff members are not allowed to comment other blogs unless they identify themselves!
• Staff members are not allowed (under all circumstances) to edit Wikipedia entrys related to StudiVZ or its founders

Corporate governance in the environment of web 2.0 needs to involve the whole company culture! This is a long discussion process – but if it’s not done you generate new problems every six or seven weeks.

4. Disclose your income sources and your corporate structure

The first and foremost aim should be to bring an end to speculation about the finances and investment relations of StudiVz. It should be made clear:

• Who is owning the company?
• Who is working for the company?
• How will the company delevop?
• Who will finance the further development of the company?

Any good venture capitalist will tell you that the worst thing you can do is publish your finances. But this is Web 2.0 – your finances will be published sooner or later. Prepare yourself – start creating capitalism 2.0, yield to standards and comply with business ethics, create a new form of added value out of your company. Concretely:

• You don’t have to tell the world how much your earn – this is your thing. But you have to tell the world how much money is involved. Publish how much money is spend on salaries of the 50 people working on the board!
• Get rid of any links to Parship – there is no excuse to be indirectly connected to your investors. If you want to have offices in Italy, Spain, France and Poland – then rent an office by yourself. The Parship deal smells from here to heaven – even though you did not mean it to look like a kick-back financing, it certainly looks it.
• Clean up your company structure – all spin-offs have to have the same owner-structure, the same PR methods, the same marketing, the same financial plans as StudiVZ Germany. Any incoherence will be exploited sooner or later by the blog-o-sphere.
• Nobody understands why Holtzbrinck and the Samwer brothers are so reluctant to help you guys – this whole scandal is increasingly becoming their problem as well. If rumours spread that they let you guys crash, then the value of the company goes down the drain as well. They need to go out into the public as well – or what will be left for them to do is clean up the debris.
5. Prepare for the blow by the media

The next couple of weeks will be tough – media coverage will blow into your face. And media has a strong and durable breath – so do not underestimate its impact. A start-up like StudiVZ is not strong enough to survive a media blow unprepared – but it can survive a media blow if some communication rules are followed.

• Approach media systematically!
• Establish press contacts by researching which journalists work on online issues.
• Invite them, give them material for their articles, treat them with respect and decency.
• It’s not about you as the founders of StudiVZ, it’s about the users of StudiVZ – feature the diversity and creativity of the users!
• Control what information you want to share – and control what information you don’t want to share. If media uses your private pictures and videos, then make it clear that everybody has personal rights and restrict the access to your videos. But don’t hide them under the table – explain how these videos surfaced and why they will not happen again.
• Make it clear that you want true partnerships with media – you don’t want the media to kiss your feet, but you also don’t want to be trashed.
• Protect anybody in your immediate surrounding – there are some “journalists” who would go very far for a good story.

The media strategy that you need is not like a normal media strategy. Normal Crisis PR won’t help! You need a team of very experienced and motivated people!

6. Interaction is the key to business success
• …with your high-profile users

There are some users which are very active within StudiVZ, created groups, stirred discussions. These users need to be identified and approached. Their value for the network should not be underestimated. These users could help to create a better feedback and they should be involved when designing the company’s strategy for the next six months. This is a classic tool of a stakeholder dialogue used by any large company – StudiVZ should introduce it as well.

• …with the blogger community.

StudiVZ should especially focus on bloggers. They comment on StudiVZ and shape the public opinion. Very soon the main-stream media will start discussing StudiVZ – and then you need the bloggers as a support. Establish personal contacts and support these bloggers in writing well-researched articles about StudiVZ.

• …with small business using StudiVZ

Other Start ups only became succesful when they allowed other businesses to form some sort of symbiosis with them – for instance the PowerSellers on Ebay or the BookShops on Amazon.Com. But this is only possible if StudiVZ opens up to new ideas – invite SMEs to discuss co-operation strategies with you.

7. Make StudiVZ a meta network and encourage copy-cats

The list of social-networks around the world is long – what is the unique selling point of StudiVZ? The users? No! It could be the first true meta-network that allows the connections all profiles of the users from the various networks and connects them with the profiles of other people. But if you want to do this, you need to make efforts to get everybody at one table.
Secondly, open the source of your program code and encourage copy-cats – you have the unique knowledge how the make such networks work. If you allow other networks to be created using StudiVZ, StudiVZ will be a real innovation.
How about Sportler-VZ – for all sport players in the world? PoliticiansVZ – for all politicians in the world? SchülerVZ – for school students? AktivenVZ – for young volunteers? Or JounalistsVZ – for journalists?

8. Take communication into your hand

Right now, you are only re-acting. You are only commenting what is happening in the blog-sphere. Your communication is random (although it has improved a little bit). You need to be in control which information you disclose and which information you do not want to share.

• Relax!Any panic reactions have to be avoided!
• Plan your communication in steps of three days and no communication in between: one press release/blog every three days is more then enough.
• Before you give any press interviews, write down for yourself what you want to say – and don’t say more. Get the help of somebody who is experienced in coaching politicians to work with press.
• Counter the bad PR by spreading good news – it is a shame that the 1 million user threshold was given away so easily. It could have been celebrated by a huge party with 20.000 StudiVZ users in Berlin or with a million users in all large cities of Germany.
• Carefully try to convey the following image, over and over again: you guys are hard-working, innovative students who have made some mistakes but who would like to give the students in Germany and Europe a new social experience! Again, it’s not about you as founders of StudiVZ, or the fifty people working in the office, it’s about the million users.

This entry was posted on Mittwoch, November 15th, 2006 at 06:20 and is filed under echologist. Tags: communication, crisis, marketing, public relation, social networks, studivz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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