Corporate Fake News. How to handle it.

From Twitter /Linkedin

By Najit Khan partner/director at Tijanimas Communications SDN BHD

Headlines have always proven to most powerful elements of an article and fake news proves as valuable as strong headlines.

Corporate fake news isn’t new. It is as old as news media is. But it’s the speed that it’s been shared today through social media. If not properly handle, it can affect the corporate reputation.

 It can be the biggest single driver of negativity towards a company and the stock prices of a company can be affected.

If it is not quickly refuted it may not only cause lasting reputational damage, but also subsequent impact on stock price which can take longer to restore.

While it might be tempting to ignore or remove stories based on their lack of authenticity, it can cause even more damage, than real stories.

If there are false accusations or fake news, then the company has to mitigate the damage by challenging the authenticity and potentially even gaining positivity by providing proof to the contrary.

And the response has to be quick, as this can effectively restore reputation and potentially reduce the longer-term damage to stock price.

However, it is also vital for a company to be able to filter out the noise created by the less impactful fake stories, so they only focus on the content likely to cause damage.

This can be done by objectively scoring the sentiment of a piece of fake content and also assigning the source with an influencer score.

If it is from a traditionally trusted source, then it is likely to result in amplification and will be weighted as more important.

If a less established source is also displaying significant amplification, then this will boost the influencer score on this occasion to reflect the impact it is having.

This enables companies to understand which content has the most potential for influencing stakeholder perceptions of their brands, regardless of the accuracy of the source material.

Basically, This is the process of handling the Fake news:

• Prepare a crisis communication plan
• Monitor the solutions effectively by having workflow in place to escalate responses
• Response fast through paid social media channels
• Share positive content that will counter fake news
• Experts opinion, get an expert in the industry to write factual information on the issue
• Don’t over react.
• Also move quickly with employee communication channels
• Use LinkedIn. It’s a great way to connect with the professionals.

http//:www.tijanimas.com.my