How the New YouTube Changes Will Help with your Issues Management

I recently wrote about the two social media platforms you absolutely need to be on, pre-crisis. The first was Twitter and the second was YouTube. When it comes to publishing a video response to a crisis and having it (pretty well instantly) rank at the top of the search engines, YouTube is the platform you want to use. However, YouTube comments are not always the most positive or intelligible comments to be published – but the social platform has recently announced that they’re working towards fixing this.

Set to be released over the next short while, YouTube is making a bunch of changes that will focus on bringing comments from people you care about and want to hear from to the forefront, rather than focusing on displaying them in reverse chronological order.

YouTube comments will also begin to be powered by Google+ which is an interesting way to link the two Google platforms together, as well as encourage people who have you in their circles to be more engaged with your organization on YouTube.

Take a look at what YouTube has announced:

• Comments you care about move to the top: You’ll see posts at the top of the list from the video’s creator, popular personalities, engaged discussions about the video, and people in your Google+ Circles.
• Join the conversation publicly or privately: You can choose to start a conversation so that it is seen by everyone on YouTube and Google+, only people in your Circles or just your bestie. Like Gmail, replies are threaded so you can easily follow conversations.
• Better ways to moderate comments: You have new tools to review comments before they’re posted, block certain words or save time by auto-approving comments from certain fans. These can help you spend less time moderating, and more time sharing videos and connecting with your fans.

What does this mean for your crisis communications and issues management?

It means a few positive things:

1. The opportunity for more engaged and intellectual comments and discussions from people who actually matter (rather than trolls) is always a good thing for your online reputation management.
2. Google+ and YouTube are both great for your search engine rankings (your online reputation). Connecting the two will offer some great advantages when it comes to having your crisis communications seen and heard by the right audiences.
3. Many organizations choose not to open their YouTube videos up to comments due to the types of comments that traditionally get posted to the channel (and I don’t disagree with their choice). With YouTube focusing on fixing this issue, organizations will be given the opportunity to experiment with these new features which will help them control the amount of unacceptable comments published to their videos.
4. If you are faced with an issue that only affects certain stakeholders, want to address the situation but don’t want to expand its reach, YouTube will now allow you to get more targeted with who actually gets to see the videos you publish.

It’s important to keep current!

When it comes to your crisis and issues management, it’s important to keep up to speed with the new features, trends and platforms that are always changing and improving – and the MACM blog is committed to helping you do just that. If you haven’t yet done so, subscribe to this blog (see sidebar to your right) and never miss out on an important update, risk or opportunity that pertains to your organization’s reputation and crisis management.