By Rebecca Canan

One of my favorite parts of work is getting the non-obvious, top-secret scoop about what communicators are doing. With social media as my specialty, I especially like getting the behind-the-scenes tour of their social media platforms. Who manages their blog? What’s being censored (if anything)? How does the company get value from the site? I recently asked these questions of Nick Caplin, Corporate PR Manager for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. Check out what he had to say here:

Rebecca (CEC): Nick, how is your Comms team at Sony engaged in social media?

Nick (Sony): We have a very small PR team and certainly a very small social media team. We have one guy whose sole job is to run our European PlayStation blog, which launched in June 2009. He also helps with online forums and partners with the online marketing team. That’s one guy with a huge amount of responsibility.

Rebecca (CEC): Let’s give people a quick look at your blog…can you talk briefly about how you’ve been using it?

Sony Europe’s PlayStation Blog

Nick (Sony): Absolutely. I’ve found the blog particularly useful for reputation management. Frequently in our industry, we are at the mercy of Internet rumors. On a daily basis, I’m dealing with 20+ different rumors, many of which may have a damaging effect on the brand if taken seriously. We use the blog as a way to speak directly to our community, address the issues, and have a two-way dialogue. We don’t respond to every rumor, but if one starts to gain in credibility, we turn to the blog to nip it in the bud.

Rebecca (CEC): How many blog posts do you push out in a day?

Nick (Sony): On an average day, we post between 3–5 stories. It’s very important that we have a regular news flow and spread it out throughout the day to ensure that people keep coming back.

Rebecca (CEC): How many comments have you rejected on the blog?

Nick (Sony): All comments are posted unless they break a basic rule, such as bad language or something really inappropriate. People are more than welcome to criticize us or voice their anger at something. We can’t hide from our issues. It doesn’t mean, however, that we’ll necessarily respond to every issue. If we notice a recurring problem, then maybe we won’t respond in the dialogues with them, but we’ll then write a new post specifically addressing that issue.

Rebecca (CEC): How does Sony monitor social media beyond the company’s blog?

Nick (Sony): We have numerous online news monitors, which track mainstream media, specialist media, as well as blogs and a certain element of social media (e.g., Facebook & Twitter). There is still an issue with ways to fully monitor social media effectively. In our case, if we search for every mention of PlayStation in social media in a day, we would have thousands, too many to effectively analyse. I’m still looking for an appropriate solution. We also use a crisis and issue tool, called Find Agent, which is a text service that monitors all the above sites for certain key words and sends me both a text and an email if it finds a potential issue brewing.

CEC Members: To hear the complete discussion with Nick—including advice on generating blog traffic and coordinating with Marketing—visit the CEC site for the full conversation replay.