Russ: This is the PKF Texas Entrepreneur’s Playbook. I’m Russ Capper, this week’s guest host, and I’m here once again with Chris Jones, Vice President at Pierpont Communications and head of their Energy in Crisis practices. Pierpont also plays a key role in the Profit and Peril Report. Chris, welcome back to the Playbook once again.

Chris: Thanks Russ, glad to be here.

Russ: You bet. Okay, so we’ve already talked about things that you need to do internally in your company to prepare for international expansion and then we talks about those things that you really need to be aware of in the destination country that you’re headed for. But are there aspects of going international that apply no matter where you’re moving too?

Chris: There certainly are. From a crisis management or planning perspective probably the best example that most everyone’s familiar with would be social media and the role it can play. Social media, as we know, it moves essentially at the speed of light; it can jump boundaries, it can cross time zones and it can really short circuit your crisis communications plans.

Russ: Okay, so what would one do to prepare for that?

Chris: What we like to do is begin monitoring before there’s ever a crisis. We like to have a background monitoring program in place so we understand the normal chatter and the normal sentiment. Then when and if a crisis incident comes along we’ve got a base of and we can see how severe is this incident, who are the influencers in the conversation that allows us to begin to address that.

Russ: Okay, sounds like an aspect of business these days that you have to pay attention to no matter what.

Chris: You cannot ignore that one.

Russ: All right Chris thanks so much.

Chris: Appreciate it.

Russ: You bet. For other international topics visit PKFTexas.com/internationaldesk. This has been another Thought Leader Production brought to you by PKF Texas Entrepreneur’s Playbook.