Highlights of John Kerry’s visit to Pakistan

US Secretary of State will meet high-ranking officials and outgoing president

A visit to Pakistan by US secretary of State John Kerry remained unannounced ahead of time due to security concerns.

Here are the highlights of the three-day visit:

1. Kerry is due to meet high-ranking officials, including Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, outgoing president Asif Ali Zardari and Adviser on Foreign Affairs and National Security Sartaj Aziz.

2. The visit comes at a time when the US seeks to address issues and ease tensions caused by constant US drone strikes in Pakistan, with the latter demanding an end to the strikes.

3. Kerry will also pressure Pakistan to strengthen its crackdown on regions that are considered havens to militant groups and terrorist organizations such as the Talban. This is in light of the US’ plans to pull out its troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

4. This would be the first visit by a high-ranking US official after the Pakistan elections that brought Nawaz Sharif to power. The last visit by a US Secretary of State was by Hilary Clinton in October 2011.

For athletes, social media not all fun and games

Toronto Blue Jays catcher J.P. Arencibia quit Twitter last week with a three-tweet flourish in which he thanked supporters, prayed for haters and lamented that he gave way too much of himself.

And then Arencibia deleted his account. It did not stop the haters.

An account holder billing himself as Michael tweeted this parting shot:

"If jp arencibia had twiter I'd tell him I jus hucked his jersey off the condo balcony #shegawn"

That 94-character broadside stands as a semi-literate illustration of what athletes, entertainers and others in the public eye know only too well: Social media can be antisocial.

A feminist leader in England who succeeded in a public campaign to have Jane Austen's image placed on a new bank note was bombarded by recent tweets threatening to kill or rape her, leading to calls for Twitter to police its site.

Twitter said this week that a button to report abuse soon would be on its Android and desktop Web applications and already was available on its iPhone app and the mobile version of its site.

"We're always trying to improve our services," Twitter spokesman Jim Trotter said by e-mail when asked why the abuse button was being introduced now.

Twitter rules explicitly bar specific threats of violence of the sort some tennis players said they faced at Wimbledon this summer, though not the sort of garden-variety insults lobbed at Arencibia, who is in no mood even to talk about Twitter anymore.

"I'm done with it," he told USA TODAY Sports this week, waving off further comment. But Josh Thole, another Blue Jays catcher, was willing to talk. He quit Twitter in 2011 while a member of the New York Mets.

"It was just constant negativity," Thole said. "As a team we weren't playing well. Personally, I wasn't playing well. So it was becoming a grind. Every time you opened your phone up, you had all these Twitter notifications, and it was, 'You stink,' 'You suck,' 'You should jump off the bridge.' I don't need that.''

Trolls lurk under the bridges they urge others to jump from. That's Internet slang for those who regularly post offensive insults for little more than mean-spirited sport. Craig Kanalley, social media manager for the Buffalo Sabres, has advice for athletes who encounter trolls online: ignore them.

That, Thole said, is easier to say than to do.

"You're always going to see it," he said. "For guys to say, 'I don't read it,' well, you're going to read it, because if you're scrolling through, that's what pops up."

Johnny Manziel doesn't ignore Twitter gibes — he fires back. This week the Texas A&M quarterback engaged with two sportswriters, and when an Oklahoma fan mocked him, Manziel tweeted back, "Sweet bowl game bro," a reference to A&M's 41-13 win against Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl.

Another fan tweeted that Manziel had a lucky year and wouldn't do excrement this year. Manziel tweeted back a picture of his Heisman Trophy, the statue's straight arm apparently aimed at his tormentor's face. Little wonder the combative quarterback passed 400,000 followers this week.

Arencibia had roughly 145,000 followers. Thole said Arencibia told him he quit Twitter for the same reason Thole did two years earlier — too much negativity.

Arencibia was hitting .219 at the time he quit, and his 10 passed balls were worst in the major leagues. That's troll bait.

"Yeah, it can be really nasty," Kanalley said. "As an athlete, you just kind of have to know it's going to be there and there's going to be criticism, especially when times are tough, but you can't let it get to your head."

Kanalley is an authority on Twitter. He founded Breaking Tweets, a news website that tracks world news through the use of Twitter, in 2009 and later joined the Huffington Post as traffic and trends editor. He began working for the Sabres, his favorite team from childhood, a month ago.

"There's always going to be some ignorant-type comments that have nothing to do with sports even, about any number of things," Kanalley said. "That's just the Internet."

He counsels athletes to have a thick skin on Twitter and other social networks.

"I don't know if deleting your account is a good solution," he said. "In some ways, it could make things worse, in my opinion. That's what some of these fans, or whatever you want to call them, that's what they want.

"They want to get a reaction. A lot of them, that's all they're trying to do."

Free speech or threat?

Some trolls traffic in more than mere insults. Some threaten bodily harm.

U.S. Fed Cup team member Varvara Lepchenko found a message on her Facebook page at Wimbledon telling her that if she didn't lose her first-round match in London she wouldn't live.

"I used to pay more attention to those things," Lepchenko wrote by e-mail. "Now I don't really care."

Lepchenko, who discovered the message after she'd lost that match to Eva Birnerova 6-2, 4-6, 6-4, said these sorts of threats are often from gamblers who have money on the matches. She said other players have had similar experiences.

"I've heard players' comments, but we always laugh at some of them because they are just hopeless bettors that have no idea how hard we work or that there is actually life besides sitting in front of the live scores and hoping for someone to lose or win," she wrote. "I feel pity for these people."

Eugene Volokh, a free speech expert and professor of law at the UCLA School of Law, says the First Amendment protects most forms of speech, though not threats of violence or instances of libel, "whether on Twitter or in a newspaper article or on a Web page or skywriting."

Writing on Twitter is closer to standing on a soapbox in the public square than to calling someone on the phone, Volokh said. Repeated phone calls or personal letters can be considered harassment in some cases, he said, but the same generally does not apply to insults on Twitter because even if addressed to an individual they are available on a public forum for all to see.

"If someone says, 'I hope you get sick and die,' that is offensive but that is protected by the First Amendment," Volokh said, "unless the subtext is, 'I am the one who can make you sick and causes you to die.' The classic example is the thug who says, 'This is a really nice store, it would be a shame if anything happened to it.' Depending on context, that could be an expression of friendly concern or extortion."

Oakland Athletics relief pitcher Sean Doolittle has heard plenty of nasty stuff about him and his family.

"Back in that stretch in June when I was essentially throwing batting practice, I got some really bad ones," he said. "People going after me, people going after my family, people mad because they lost money because they had a bet."

But Doolittle has no intention of quitting Twitter. He says the appeal for him is the ability to show his personality and dry wit and demonstrate he is more than just a baseball player. "I like to use it as an outlet for fans to see a different side of me," he said.

Kanalley said that's the true benefit for athletes — an unfiltered connection to fans.

"They have this ability to show who they are, the ability to really control the message," he said. "It's their accounts, and they can do that in a way to show their personalities. … If you're going to be absent on these social networks, you're going to miss out."

Tough in spotlight

Cris Collinsworth was on the Tonight Show last week when Jay Leno asked him about Twitter. "Tell me about your experiences," Leno said. "Are they pleasant?"

Collinsworth turned to Katy Perry, sitting next to him on the guest couch. "Do they always say nice things about you?" he asked.

"Oh, no," she said, laughing. "Oh, no."

And then Perry offered the bitter wisdom born of nearly 40 million followers.

"Generally," she said, "comments that are anonymous on the Internet are not typically that nice."

Collinsworth told of broadcasting a game on NBC's Sunday Night Football he thought went pretty well and how he figured he would go read some of the nice things people said about him on Twitter.

At this point Perry's pop-chart voice descended into a husky hoarseness as she did her impression of an Internet troll.

"'Die,'" she rasped. "'You're ugly.' 'You're so fat.'"

And the singer, the NFL analyst and the talk show host all laughed their way to commercial break.

"This is the paradox of being a leader or a celebrity in the digital age," said Nicco Mele, adjunct lecturer in public policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. "There are no intermediaries; whether it's the coach or the team or journalists or PR agent, it's an unfiltered relation, direct access, and that is very challenging for anybody.

"People live years working toward the spotlight and still have trouble managing it."

Thole played in New York when he quit Twitter, but Manziel's experiences suggest the light of social media can shine as brightly on College Station as on the city that never sleeps.

"New York is a different animal, most definitely," Thole said, "but I think you see it everywhere."

Contributing: Erik Gudris. Ortiz reported from Oakland and Brady from McLean, Va.

7 STEPS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA CRISIS MANAGEMENT

Crises spread with the speed of a rocket thanks to our online networks. What to do when you can’t keep anything as a secret and worst of all, when...

The way crises form, spread and how they should be treated has changed with social media. Maybe, we are a little more used to crises in Turkey compared to other countries. We can act more calmly. Turkey is one of the leading countries when it comes to the rates of social media use . It’s one of the best places to test crisis management and  take lessons from, in this social media age. We’ve already been through many incidents that other countries will face in the future. That’s why we have a great deal of experience we can share.

I want to share these experiences in the form of an action plan. Step by step, I’ll tell you what to do. There is no one single truth of course, but I’ll share our advices for every step.

Preparation Is A Must

There is one factor we overlook in marketing while creating value. That is “eliminating the risks”. You may have created more powerful brands and more revenue with your marketing activities. That’s an achievement. Similarly, eliminating the risks of interference with the permanence of this revenue is also an achievement. And it also increases  your brand value.  Just like people who become  more concerned about their health once they’ve lost it; brands see how precious and important it is to be prepared in a crisis.

That’s why everyone in your company needs to be competent in social media. Corporate social media policies are recommended often but I have to say that they won’t be taken into consideration if they look like user manuals. You should prefer policies that are as simple and short as possible. And, lastly, you need to have tools that can be used to monitor and manage the crisis, just like the fire extinguishers that people use in case of a fire. For instance, you should prepare a crisis meeting room and get ready to follow what people are talking about and what the hottest topic is simultaneously. I particularly recommend crisis management room because it’s hard to create instant coordination between distant teams.

Are Your Relationships Ready?

Social media is a world where everyone is equal and no one owns the communication channels. Brands are actually very lonely and powerless between millions of other users. On social media, you need to create “brand friends”. Maybe, after a while, we’ll measure success on social media with the number of “brand friends” we’ve made instead of fan numbers of our pages. Brand friends know you, trust you and defend you when it’s necessary. They know about your brand’s values and its human side because you’ve built a relationship beforehand. People who will defend your brand on social media most effectively are these brand friends. Brands should trigger this process proactively, find their brand friends, listen to them and strengthen their relationships because it’s very dangerous to be alone on social media.

Do You Know Your Stakeholders?

Knowing your stakeholders is very important for crisis-time communication. In view, the biggest group of stakeholders are your customers. However, employees and internal communication are as crucial as stakeholders. In a crisis, the spirits and the attitude of people are very important. It must be one of your top priorities to share the current situation with your team, lead them and keep their spirits up. In short, you should focus on keeping your team powerful and motivated first. And then, you need to study your stakeholders carefully before choosing a strategy.
For example, you’ve identified your customers as stakeholders. There are many different subsegments such as existing customers, new customers, people who react excessively etc. and different motivations for each subsegment. It’s important to create a stakeholders map and  think about their motivations and communication channels that lead to them. And lastly, you shouldn’t forget that you have different stakeholders like suppliers, government, journalists and investors apart from your customers.

Choice of A Strategy

The stakeholder map you’ve created will be the base of your strategy. Although it may change instance to instance, you shouldn’t spend too much time for building a strategy because generally the current situation changes at an unpredictable rate. At this point, scenario analysis is a priceless asset and the best management way is to keep the team updated with short and frequent meetings. There are some strategic decisions you need to make: “What’s your message?”, “What’s your attitude?”, “How will  you create plausibility?”, “Will there  be any official statements made? How frequent will they be?”

Micro Management /Know Your Tools

You need to know your resources and communication channels in order to apply your strategy. Of course, the most important ones will be your social media channels. However, you should know that the communication campaign run on these channels won’t reach many people. You can make your messages reach bigger crowds  by supporting them with Facebook and Twitter ads. You need to make a true analysis of your already existing tools and platforms, such as e-mailing, press releases, statements on your web pages and stores; and you should analyze how and when you can use them.

Another important issue is “micro management”. Think about it, thousands of people are speaking against your brand on social media. What should you do? Should you answer all of them or remain silent? Should you use corporate accounts to answer them? I personally recommend a third solution: Your crisis team can express that they’re company employees and  answer those people with their real Twitter accounts. Although, again, it changes from instance to instance, giving an answer is much better than not saying anything. Correcting misinformations as fast as possible prevents crises from  getting bigger. The reason I recommend to use employees’ accounts is that by doing this you’ll start a dialogue instead of just “answering” and it’ll feel more convincing and genuine.

Abundant Records, Abundant Information Flow

In a crisis, you need to collect as much material as possible to communicate through and when necessary, defend yourselves with. If your job is related to some kind of a “field”, your field teams should definitely take as many photos with their smartphones as possible. During crisis management, you need to search for materials that will provide you with advantage. These might be security camera recordings, interviews with witnesses, statistics about the company etc. Keep them prepared in order to build a strategy and share when necessary. And lastly, when it comes to social media tracking, finding positive comments, marking them and making sure that they are seen by many others are also parts of the job.

Making Statements On Social Media

In the social media age, there are also some things you need to be careful about while making statements. First of all, timing is crucial. We’ve seen that in “Gezi Parkı” events. There were days in which almost 5 million messages were  shared. If you want to make a statement about any situation in a world where conversation is this fast, it’s better you make it as early as you can. And don’t forget that people don’t read on the internet. The more you visualize and simplify your messages the more probable that they will be read. In some instances, if the CEO of the company is an influential person on social media, it’ll be beneficial to let him make the first explanation. Finally, use advertising channels actively in order to get your messages heard by the right people on social media.

Crises, if they are treated right, can turn into big opportunities. Don’t forget that your customers will remember you with your attitude in these crises. Other memories will fade away but the ones in crises won’t. We don’t have to be perfect and we don’t have to choose a side but we have to be sensitive, all the time. What people actually appreciate is this sensitivity that brands show.