154: Why Social Media Sleuthing Can Bring it All Down Quickly

Yesterday I was talking to a deputy police chief, a longtime detective, about a case in the news and why I think this case in particular marks a turning point in managing and also solving a digital crisis.

So everybody stop scrolling and pay attention to this poster. There's a missing person named Gabby Petito, and there's a lot more than just that. But pause this, so screenshot it. Share this. This girl is actively missing, but hold on. Hi, my name is Miranda BAKER, and on August 29th, my boyfriend and I picked up Brian at Grand Teton National park at 5:30 at night at Colter Bay. I'm hoping this can help someone identify him, because I saw him from TikTok. Hey guys, I know we were very hopeful for a different kind of update, but a body has been found that does resemble Gabby's body. This was over in Teton where she was last seen, and my thoughts are with her family right now. I just hope she gets justice for what has happened. I probably won't continue to update on this page, but I'll link some people down below that will continue to update. But I really think an important takeaway here is we know how much power social media has over these kinds of cases.

Welcome to a podcast that helps you create the right response at the right time and deliver it in the right place, especially when your reputation is at risk online. Let me start off by telling you something that you already know. True crime is an obsession, particularly with women. Now, according to a study out of the University of Illinois, they found that women, but not men, overwhelmingly chose to read and follow true crime stories over stories about war or gang violence. All right, so why am I bringing this up? Because that research fits into what is happening surrounding the viral mania of trying to solve the Gabby Petito case. So in this episode, I want to connect a true crime obsession, an obsession over this case, to why communicators need to be a little obsessed with online and social media sleuthing as it relates to their company. I know what you're asking. Why does this matter, all of this matter, on a podcast about public relations and crisis management? Well, if you've even dipped a toe into this Gabby Petito case, especially online, on Instagram, on TikTok, on Reddit, in the Facebook groups, you can see that there is a quest for information. All of these Internet sleuths want to get to the bottom of the matter. It indicates this passion that people have when they want to uncover something wrong or uncover an injustice or uncover something that they don't think is right. The same can apply to business, to your business, to your organization. People are drawn to stories. Women as this study indicates out of the University of Illinois, women are drawn to stories. If there is a story, the more lurid the story, people are going to follow it. People are going to follow the steps of the victim. People are going to find the clues. They're going to look for the narratives. They're going to uncover their own evidence. So whether it's a bloody true crime or whether they feel it's a crime against them as a customer, they are going to get to the bottom of this mystery example. Who didn't listen to this podcast back in 2014? This is a global tell link prepaid call from Adnan say it an inmate at a Maryland correctional facility from this American Life and WBEZ Chicago.

It's serial.

I did and I feels like almost everyone I knew did as well. I certainly looked up that case online as soon as I listened to it on a podcast. I went home and started googling all the characters in the story. Serial started it from that podcast digital point of view, in my opinion. But we could go back to OJ Simpson. We can go back to JonBenet Ramsey when people are compiling evidence. And then it was television, it was reporters, and then the public. They were just left to talk about it. But now people can become their own sluice, they can become their own detectives. They can take the information that they find online themselves and solve cases. If Nicole Brown Simpson lived in a time where there was a ring doorbell on her home in Brentwood, that case would have been locked up in two days. We would have known who was wearing the bloody glove, who had the knife. We would have seen Ron come up to the door with the glasses. It would have been open and shut. True crime enthusiasts are giving us a look into the lengths that people will go to get to the bottom of a story. And that's what talking about with this detective on the phone last night. Our conversation was about solving crimes in the age of digital and social media. And what prompted this conversation when I started asking him about it was watching the press conferences from the Gabby Petito case. I had noticed that Gabby's parents had both hired a lawyer and the lawyer came out at a press conference with their statement. And in that statement, Gabby's parents were asking Brian Laundrie's parents, where's Gabby? We know you know the answers. And I wanted to ask him how much was the was law enforcement involved in that press conference? Here's a clip. Maybe you'd start thinking what I was thinking about.

I'm Rick Stafford and I represent the Schmidt and the Petito family. I have a letter that they want to send to Christopher and Rebecca Laundrie.

And I'm going to read it at.

This time and then I'll take limited questions. Christopher and Rebecca Laundrie, we are writing.

This letter to ask you to help find our daughter. So for those of you who aren't familiar with the case, here's a quick catch up. So Gabby petito is a 22 year old woman. Well, sadly she now was a 22 year old woman. And why it sparked national interest is because so many people online, a lot of women on TikTok, you know, on Reddit, they were trying to figure out what happened to her. And Gabby was an influencer. You know, she was recording and documenting her trips with her fiance, kind of the van life out there. And so there was all these digital footprints about where they were. There was video, there were posts, there were hashtags, you know, there were emojis. There was so much digital evidence out there for people to start scouring all this information to follow them on their cross country road trip that she and her fiance made out in Utah and Wyoming. So they posted these photos, they posted videos of their journey primarily on Instagram and YouTube. But then on September 1st, Brian Laundrie returned home from the trip alone. Ten days after that is when Gabby's parents reported her missing. They were suspicious about the posts that they had seen online. They felt it was not in Gabby's voice. There was also a text from Gabby that didn't seem like it came from Gabby. Gabby asking about her grandfather, but using the name Stan. There are a lot of clues in there for her parents certainly to reach out to the police, but certainly all the hordes of amateur sleuths to start on the case as well. The FBI is working on it, of course, local law enforcement in Utah, Wyoming and in Florida where Brian Laundrie lived with his family. It came out this week that the manner of death was a homicide. And all eyes are towards the suspect, though I don't even know if they're considering him a suspect or a person of interest. But this national sensation certainly became one because of the people who watch it. You know, for all of us who are watching it on, unfold in real time on social media. And there are people on there certainly who feel like they have more evidence than the detectives, that they are pointing the detectives to the evidence. It was Internet sleuths that found the white van and One rabbit hole that I went down is they were showing the video and it looked like someone was in Gabby's van. And this is after she had gone missing for a couple days. You could see a hat in the window that they didn't think was Gabby's hat. You could see a couple in a truck that looked like Brian Laundrie's parents that were near the scene of the crime. I mean, there's so much there. So at the time of this recording, we don't know the, the connection between Brian Laundry's parents and Gabby's disappearance and murder. We don't know, but I suspect we're going to find out. So I had asked this detective, tell me, how often do these detectives, you know, do. Does law enforcement use technology and social media? And he said, certainly they use technology. There is black. There's a black box in every, in every vehicle. They can follow GPS tracks. He had mentioned the ring video camera to me. He also talked about cell phones pinging on towers where you can triangulate a location, the Google searches. He even mentioned how the police can catfish suspects on social media if they want to get and infiltrate into a gang. They might find a picture of a scantily CL woman online and catfish a suspect to start revealing more information or getting family members to reveal information. They can certainly help craft statements, you know, with family that can be used in the press. He had, he had also told me about a case of a well known actor who was certainly in the press, who was not charged right away. So this story played out definitely in the press, all over social media, like it became like a huge story. And he had mentioned to me that the police worked with a national morning news show and prompted the host to ask questions of this celebrity, to back the celebrity into a corner to get evidence about statements proving their guilt. So they loaded the anchor with questions, which is all incredibly fascinating. But when I got to the topic of this Internet sleuthing, he admitted, this is new. This is a new territory. So now back to you, back to your business, back to your organization. Why does this matter? Well, here are three benchmarks I want you to think about and what I noticed when I was watching and following this case and how it ties back into managing a crisis or managing a reputation or managing an incident that's happening on behalf of your business, your organization, your board, your town, you know, wherever it is that you're representing. And these are the three things. One, women search. Women like to search online. The study that I cited earlier that was linking to True crime, but it shows. Like when there is an obsession, when there's a story, when there's a narrative to be found, women are pretty darn savvy to and want that information. Two women are nimble on social media. They can quickly pivot to a number of networks. They know how to use it. They know how to scour video. Certainly men do as well. I mean, definitely. Even in the Gabby Petito case, there's plenty of guys out there, but overwhelmingly, the people who are showing up on my feed are people who are young women and them going back and forth between this account. I saw this on Instagram. I saw this emoji. Watch what he says here. Look, I went to Brian Laundrie's Finsta account, which is a fake Instagram account, and this is what he posted four hours ago. And now it just changed an hour ago. It is incredible how nimble people can be on social media. And three women, and I'm saying this is one of them, can get to the bottom of anything. And if you have a woman who's a digital native, a someone who's a millennial Gen Z, and they want to find something online, they are going to find it. And they are. Chances are they're going to find it before your business finds it. So that's why I mentioned in my book Indestructible, the difference between a digital native and a digital misfit. Digital natives, you know, these are people who are comfortable in tech. These are people who grew up at a time when technology was in their hands. They went to school with technology. They're comfortable not only using it, but sharing their life on it. Compare that to digital misfits. They're less so. They're more reluctant to use technology, to use social media. They're also the people who are more likely to disparage it. They're the people who just don't understand it. So instead of just coming out and admitting it, or even learning about it, embracing it, they want to keep it at bay. And they want to tell people, oh, social media, it's filled with mobs. It's filled with a bunch of anonymous, nameless people who are out to get us. You've heard me say that plenty, plenty of times, because people have said it to me plenty and plenty of times. But digital natives, your future customers, your current customers, they are drawn to community. They are drawn to knowledge. They are drawn to this feeling of moving a needle with an immediate response. So whether it's solving a murder online or uncovering problems with your Business problems that they're having, they're going to get to the bottom of it. They will leave reviews on Yelp, they will leave reviews on a Facebook page. They will ask questions. If you're selling something online and they have a question about it, they're going to ask that question online. They're not going to pick up the phone and talk to one person one on one in private. They're going to ask a question in front of everyone. They are going to be bold on social media, because social media is a bold medium. It doesn't take a crime to make an army of Internet sleuths to dig in to the fact of the matter of any case. And it could be an influencer killed out in a national park, or it could be why they're not getting the service that they deserve. It could be questions that they have about people. It could be questions about how businesses run. It could be questions about the culture of a business, questions about the behavior of someone on your staff or your leadership. It could be the history of the commentary, it could be the social media history of a leader. I had mentioned last week, I talked about or two weeks ago, Rachel Hollis, the CEO of the Hollis company, the influencer. When she went into yet another crisis, one of the first things she did is she clamped down her Twitter feed. She didn't want people to scrutinize it. So public statements, meeting minutes, documents, anything that can leave a digital footprint can be incriminating to a reputation and it can be damaging to a reputation because someone is going to uncover it. And chances are that someone is your customer, is your stakeholder, or is someone who wants some justice, they're going to enact some type of justice. And that someone is likely going to be a woman. Not in all cases, but in many cases. So the solution, shore up your communications, make sure you have the resources. That means make sure you have a team. Having just one communicator in today's day and age is really, really difficult. It's really hard on that one communicator. So either build up that team or hire people. Hire someone who's, I don't know, an expert in it that can help you with this. Give communicators a seat at the table, at the front table, at the head table. Listen to them, take their opinion in, be ready for anything and everything that can happen. So three solutions. If you are managing a business, running a business, or you're communicating on behalf of one, especially as it relates to social media, and in this case of Gabby Petito, imagine the people who are investigating that case. Imagine the fervor behind it. Just jump in online, find a hashtag, where is Gabby Petito? Take two minutes and see firsthand the fervor. Your customer could have the same fervor against you in the future. So here are three solutions. One, make sure you have a monitoring program in place. Make sure there is some software, not necessarily a human resource at all times, but technology, AI technology that will monitor when people are speaking about you and also gauge maybe the sentiment. Is it positive? Is it negative? Is it neutral? Next, if there is a problem that's coming up, if there's things bubbling online, you want to pinpoint it right away. Pinpoint your problem. What is the problem? Is it a problem with trust? Is it a problem with a timeline? Is it a problem with what someone said? At what time? What does the evidence show? Pinpoint the problem. And three, lastly, be prepared to respond in kind. If people are talking about you online, you go online and you answer them. People are asking you on your Facebook page, you're going to go on your Facebook page and you're going to answer them. If it comes up on Twitter, you have journalists asking you about something on Twitter, you're going to put your statement on Twitter, you're going to do something that ends up on Twitter. Those three solutions have a monitoring program. Two, pinpoint your problem. And three, respond in kind. So in every podcast, I add an indestructible tip. Here it is. Your next crisis, whether it's a big one or a micro one, will be a digital crisis. It will either start there or it will end up there, but it will be there. This doesn't mean to clam up and never use social media, okay? It's the opposite. You want to put yourself out there. No longer are we in a time of the unquestioned CEO, the unquestioned official, the unquestioned board, the unquestioned customer service member, service staff. People ask questions because people want answers. People will always have questions. And now they have a place to ask them. And it's where everyone is looking online. That's all for this week on the podcast. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you here again next week. Bye for now.