I have two things lately that I am publically passionate about: social media and photography (I am equally passionate about politics but I keep it off the radar most of the time). Normally I reserve this space to express photography, my thought is that between my work with Tweetup, Southern Socials, and RefreshCA anyone who cares about my take on social media has heard it several times. Today however I wanted to take a brief moment to highlight something great in social media that probably went unnoticed yesterday.

Arkansas Business Publishing Group, who I am a big fan of, launched their inArkansas.com website. I personally think this is a great move by ABPG and will only further establish their dominance in central Arkansas print/web media. However ABPG broke the cardinal rule of website launches, they didn’t monitor it all day on the official launch. Now I’ve been in the web business for a while now, I’ve probably launched somewhere around 50 sites myself, and the rule is that no matter how good your beta and soft launch is tested, it will break and all fall apart the minute you show your face and tell people it is ready and open. There are many reasons for this that I will save for another day, but the fact is that it almost always happens.

Now ABPG has a very talented group of people surrounding this launch, Lance Turner, Chip Taulbee, Brent Birch, and Chris Earls to name a few, all who I know in some context and have respect for the work they do. However after seeing that the inArkansas.com site had been down for a couple of hours on launch day I sent a half joking tweet that said

“Anyone else just getting a message that says “It Works” on inarkansas.com? @ArkBusiness #InArkanFail”.

Believe me, I’ve been there and I’ve had it happen to me. What happen was one of the best moments in social media customer service that I’ve seen in a while. Jeff Hankins publisher and president of ABPG, and a guy who has way more to do than sit around and read tweets, immediately saw the tweet and had his guys fix the problem. He then publically responded apologizing for the problem after it was fixed, and this all took place in a span of less than 15 minutes.

For those of you who know me know that I am focusing on crisis communications as part of a master’s degree I am working on. This is a good example of how to manage even a small crisis effectively. Jeff showed very quickly acknowledge the problem, showed visible leadership as the head of the company, and took action instead of placing blame. In all this was a shining example of how to use social media to respond to issues, and why if you are not monitoring social media you should be.