CorpComms Magazine

It's 9am on a Monday and the London team at GolinHarris are already hard at work, discussing the issues of the day. In a scene which mirrors PR offices across the world, they are flicking through the newspapers, surfing news sites and checking to see that consumers have said about their clients on social  media. Radio 1 is broadcasting a pleasant accompanying buzz in the background.

As the key stories emerge, they gather round a blackboard, noting Qantas's crippling strikes, Jimmy Saville's death, and npower's recent reputational crisis after a £2 million fine from the regulators.

The only difference is that once they are done they  don't be heading back to their desks, writing strategy and press releases or preparing pitches. This particular team will spend the whole day monitoring, reacting and responding on behalf of their clients, ensuring no tweet or blog post goes unnoticed. In fact, they'll spend  every day of every week doing it, and when they go home at night their American offices are picking up the slack.

Welcome to The Bridge, a dedicated newsroom designed to enable GolinHarris employees stay on top  of who is saying what about whom and why.

Launched two months ago, The Bridge setup has been  implemented in GolinHarris's Chicago, New York and  London offices, enabling employees to coordinate their responses and keep up to date around the clock.

Employees in London and Stockholm also monitor the  conversation outside of normal office hours, while the  San Francisco office can help pick up any stories late in the evening that break during Asia's morning. Another  Bridge is planned in one of the Far East offices, most  likely in Singapore, which will significantly boost the  possibility of 24 hour monitoring and real time response rate.

In the London office, two giant flat screens display BBC  News 24 and Sky News, while two more have social  media monitoring feeds scrolling merrily. One is currently running TweetDeck while the other displays Radian6, a monitoring dashboard collating content from a number of social media platforms and measuring  sentiment.

Constantly connected

Perhaps it seems a little overkill to have an entire team of ten monitoring and responding throughout the day. But head of media Neil Henderson believes it is a valuable strategy - even if some clients do not know it yet. 'Big brands can be vulnerable,' he explains. 'Some of them might not think of something like Twitter as a threat. But with two or three million subscribers, that's more than CNN and BBC viewers put together. The reach is enormous. And it's only going to increase.'

A recent recruit, Henderson cites The Bridge as an exciting reason to join GolinHarris, a firm which employs 700 staff in 34 markets. And there certainly seems to be  quite a buzz of excitement among the monitoring team, or 'connectors' as they are known.

Associate community manager Dan Noctor guides me  through the Radian6 setup. Multiple columns fill the  screen, each one carrying different keywords, such as  'chocolate' for their client Toblerone, 'energy' for Good Energy, and 'travel' and 'money' for Expedia.

Radian6 aggregates mentions from Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums and numerous other platforms. It rates whether or not a particular comment is positive, negative or neutral. There are also a variety  of options  enabling users to filter posts by publication date,  influence, engagement and so on.

The user can also opt to view just negative or just positive comments. As soon as a query or negative  comment appears, the GolinHarris connectors respond on behalf of their clients, offering advice, correcting misinformation or simply directing the customer to a  useful resource. The tone of their response depends on the client, says Noctor. 'Toblerone customers tend to be younger and a bit more chatty,' he explains, whereas for someone like [whisky company] Glenfiddich comments might be more formal.'

They are guided by the audience's tone and respond in kind.Of course, with all this promise of constant real  time response comes the burden of client expectation.

Does the possibility of missing a trick carry more risk? 'I think when you're selling a service where everything is  live then you are setting yourself up for that,' agrees Noctor. 'But we monitor everything carefully and ensure that we don't miss anything.'

Reactive and proactive

Henderson recalls an experience while at a different  agency where a client was lambasted online and the  response wasn't quick enough. 'We didn't hear about it until a number of hours later,' he explains.

But crisis management aside, the intention is for The  Bridge to enable a more proactive approach on behalf of the client, engaging with fans and stakeholders. And if  witter starts buzzing about a brand behaving badly, GolinHarris connectors are ready to swoop in offering  comment from one of their clients who is doing it better.

Henderson points out that many agencies have a digital team that monitors social media on behalf of clients but doesn't actively discuss with the media relations team  bout how to translate that into print and broadcast  coverage.

At GolinHarris the same people are responsible for both  aspects. 'The clients wanted a joined up approach to  traditional and digital media,' he says. 'Some agencies don't even have rolling news channels on constantly or  look regularly at news wires or news websites. This is  why clients have been excited about our model - we're  in touch with moving news stories.'

The hive of activity in The Bridge suggests that it is  achieving the desired results. Unsurprisingly it has the employees' full support. 'We're in it all day,' says media manager Neil Watts.

'While we're on the phone it's going on in the background. Because of that it's much easier to be proactive and reactive.'

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