While searching for information last night about the disaster created by the spill and collapse of Beyond Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig, I noticed a familiar dynamic within the search results: Crisis communication and political responses to the disaster.
While familiar to someone who examines search results for a living, it is by no means common to see a deliberate strategy to respond to or take advantage of search interest in a catastrophe. This particular crisis communications tactic is all too often ignored. But it’s wise not to ignore it if you’ve got some skin in the game. This is a Google Trends chart of search volume for the phrase “Gulf Oil Spill” during the past 30 days:
And the following is a screencast examination of the search results for that phrase in Bing, Yahoo! and Google. You’ll see both crisis communications tactics at work as well as political responses to the disaster.
The e-Strategy Academy covers all aspects of digital marketing including search optimization & marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, video marketing, mobile marketing & public relations.