How to apalogize

When dealing with a crisis it important to own up and apologize for what you did wrong. When apologizing it is important to be quick, honest and sincere. (Stein, 2015) When apologizing about something that you did wrong, you want to address the problem head on. Companies must act quickly when apologizing so that they can take control of the situation. Sometimes when a crisis occurs saying sorry isn't enough and you will have to show stakeholders, the media and consumer that the problem has been solved. 

What did Volkswagen do wrong? The company got caught cheating on American air pollution tests. "Volkswagen installed software known as "defeat devices" in the electronic control module of disease vehicles." (Makortoff, 2015) Volkswagen is not only conducting an external investigation, but also an internal one. "The automaker may be facing fines of up to $37,500 per vehicle. The company will be facing a maximum of an 18 million dollar fine." (Makortoff, 2015)  

This past week, Volkswagen CEO, Martin Winterkorn decided to resign after the company's crisis (Stein, 2015) The next day Volkswagen American CEO, Michael Horn apologized again saying, "We screwed up." Despite both of these statements, that damage had already been done. "Recalls went from 500,000 in the US to 11 million worldwide." (Stein, 2015) 
over avoiding US emission regulations."Winterkorn apologized last Sunday for the automaker's use of technology in its diesel cars that enabled them to avoid compliance with US emission regulations."

In the end, it is always best to take ownership for your mistakes and not try to cover up the try. The public will respect you  for making the effort to correct your error. 

Makortoff, K. (2015, September 22). Retrieved September 26, 2015, from http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/22/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-volkswagen-scandal.html

Stein, L. (2015, September 25). Retrieved September 26, 2015, from http://www.prweek.com/article/1365949/brands-apologize-quick-honest-sincere

One Month Later

This semester I started an internship in the marketing and communications department at St. Rita's

Medical Center. I have been at St. Rita's for a little over a month now and today had the opportunity to help out with the new employee orientation. It is amazing to see how far I have come at this internship from my new employee orientation. Between walking the random halls to figure out where I need to go to get to the 9th floor, which has a bunch of storage, and using the correct elevator to get there. Throughout my time at St. Rita's I have had the opportunity to help with employee forums, help with our new branding initiative and write a variety of papers whether it be a press release or our internal newsletter.

With both the employee forums and branding initiative, my main job was to be there on time and help with whatever needed to be done at the time. With the branding initiative I actually had the opportunity to play an extra in a commercial, and it will be interesting to see if I actually make it in the commercial. Through these experiences I have been able to see how a commercial gets filmed and seeing the things that our company is doing to not only keep our customers happy, but also the employees.

I spend a majority of my day writing various things, whether it is for our internal newsletter, the media or social media. A majority of what I do is take stories and shorten them down to get the most important information, so whatever outlet the information is sent to will be able to read the most important information quickly. I also schedule social media for the entire month at the end of each month. The only thing that I have found with this scheduling of social media is that you need to continue to make sure the information is up-to-date as it's being posted because you don't want your followers to be getting the wrong information or the ling not working.

Even though I have only been at St. Rita's for a short time, I have already learned so much. As my internship continues to progress, I can't wait to see what else is in store, whether that be attending more events and being the representation for our department or just writing more, so that I can continue to gain experience and strengthen my writing abilities.

Social Media Posting Guidelines

Chapter 13 in Real-Time Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott discussed the IBM Social Computing Guidelines and how not all employees have access to social media at work. The IBM Guidelines were created to give helpful and practical advice to individuals on the variety of social media channels we have. These guidelines have been put in place by companies, so employees will know their constraints when posting on social media. It's important that companies pass these guidelines throughout the chains of command, as all employees need to know these so they don't do something stupid via social media and get put on disciplinary action.

In this chapter we also discussed the idea of social media being blocked at work. Executives feel they are the only ones who should have access to social media. The executives feel this way because they want their employees to be productive at work and actually get work done, and they believe if employees have access to social media then they won't get done what they need to. The negative to this is depending on who the company has blocked, their media relations team may not be able to respond to questions and complaints in real-time, if they don't have access.

Through my internship experience I have realized that our society does block social media access at work. Working in the marketing and communications department, I had to get my id and username approved to have access to social media, so I could do daily postings and reply to customers with both positives and negatives in real-time. I believe blocking employee access to be a good thing, but it's also important to have individuals in certain departments allowed access to it as it's their job to keep your company in good standing with your customers via social media.

Social media is going to continue to keep growing and is going to continue to be a bigger part of every company, as this is how companies will engage with their customers and keep them coming back and happy.