Non-surprising fact: He’s hired a PR firm to help him navigate through the mess that inevitably happens after he killed a cyclist on a Toronto street.

Surprising Fact: They’re doing a horrible job of it.

Look – I have no problem with his PR team.  They’re good people and they do fantastic work.  It’s disingenuous to slam the work of what would be a “rival” PR outfit, and I don’t want to do that, because I mean it – they really do good work.

Which is why what they’re doing here is just so… odd.  I don’t know – maybe Michael Bryant isn’t paying them a lot of money?  Are they being neutered by an overly cautious legal team?  I don’t know, and I welcome the opportunity to hear from them.  But let’s take a look at the Twitter account “Bryant Facts.”

The good:

• recognizing the role that social media has to play in staying out in front of a particular story
• making at least a token effort at counteracting some of the ‘lies and mis-perceptions’ that are out there.

The bad?  Just about everything else…. for example:

• No icon (classic Twitter newbie mistake.)
• Lack of updates (at the time I’m writing this, the Twitter account hasn’t been updated in over 33 hours.  That’s two or three lifetimes.)
• Not engaging the public or engaging in real conversation
• Lack of third party, verifiable information.  If the role of the account is to respond to misinformation, at least point them to the correct information.  Merely saying “Um, no, you’re wrong” isn’t going to cut it.

At the time I write this, Bryant’s blog is actually faring even worse – rather than four updates, it has only three.   And it leaves no opportunity to provide a comment.

What Bryant’s team has done is taken the social right out of social media.  That’s not harnessing the power of social media;  that’s outright neutering it.

Unbelievably, it even brings attention to negative allegations which may not have been noticed before.  For example, one blog post begins with the words “The “narration” in this YouTube clip is one-sided opinion and contains multiple inaccurate assertions.”  (Thanks for pointing out the video.  I hadn’t seen it before.)

What is their version of the truth?  We may never know.  The author doesn’t tell us what the truth is.  There is no verifiable information provided to an information-hungry, albeit skeptical public.

In this very high profile case, hiring ’spin doctors’ carries a risk in and of itself.  Which is why this is just so perplexing… This ’strategy’ leaves the reader with more questions than answers, and sadly, does so in a way that may make the problem even worse.

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(For those who are non-Canadian, or have been hiding under a rock, Michael Bryant is the former Liberal Attorney General and widely considered a rising star in Ontario Politics until he struck and killed a bicyclist in the city of Toronto, Canada last week.  He has been charged with criminal negligence causing death.)

Kudos.  In my experience, ignoring problems rarely makes them go away.

Long story short – Amanda Bonnen has a Twitter account.  She’s hardly an active user… she’s got about 30 followers.  In Twitterverse, this makes her so small as to be insignificant.  She tweeted “Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.”

That got her sued by Horizon Realty – for $50,000.

I don’t even know where to start with the absolute insanity of this.   I’ll leave the whole ‘they’re right to sue/they’re stupid to sue’ argument off of the table for now.  Let’s just examine the communications here.

Either a) Horizon had mold, and had an upset customer, or b) Horizon didn’t have mold, but a customer was trying to claim they did.  One would assume that the reason for her tweet was simply to vent – after all, with so few followers it’s not like she has a large public following.

Horizon has to be naturally worried about statements like this driving people away from their properties.  That makes sense.

So what’s a prudent course of action here?  Did they call her and ask how to make her a happy customer?  No.  Did they investigate her complaint to determine whether or not there was any veracity to her claims?  No.  Did they send her a nasty letter written in crayon, complaining because she wasn’t playing nice?  No.

They sued her for $50,000.  My favourite line of the whole story is “Bonnen wasn’t contacted before the suit was filed or asked to remove the Tweet, (Horizon Realty’s Jeffrey Michael) said: “We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization.”

So here’s my sole point – in terms of communications, you can’t buy this type of publicity.  Nor would you want to – with coverage across North America, I would suggest that the “good name” of Horizon Realty is going to require a much more vigorous defence after today than before.  In short – it was a collosal, enormous blunder.

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If anyone from Horizon cares to respond, I’m more than happy to print their response verbatim.  It beats getting sued.  Although I’d like to point out that a) I’m in Canada, where if you sue me and lose, you have to pay my court costs and b) as a sole entrepeneur, I doubt you could find enough worth suing over anyway.

Its easy to get overwhelmed in ’social media goodness.’  Social Media are buzzwords that all the cool companies are into.  PR blogs abound with news about the latest social media innovation, or  new ways a company is taking advantage of Twitter.  Dell recently announced they made $3 million selling over Twitter.  I think it’s fantastic.  Anyone who claims social media is a fad has lost the point.   The case records and success stories are proven, and plentiful.  But here’s my point – it doesn’t really matter.

As an avid Twitterer, Facebook user and LinkedIn user, what I’m saying may be considered hypocritical, I accept that.  But what’s far more important than the medium you use to communicate, is whether or not you’re actually communicating.  Let me say that again just to stress my point – it’s not what you use to get the job done – it’s all about making sure you actually get the job done.

I get three pitches every day from people promising to find me 5,000 twitter followers in a day.  The media occasionally make a horserace story out of the fact that one political leader has more facebook friends than another.  Does any of that matter?  Not even a little.

It’s this simple… if you’re an idiot, you’re going to be an idiot in front of 5,000 new people who otherwise have no clue who you are.  If you’re a vacuous bag of hot air, having 1,000 facebook friends doesn’t fix that.  And if your goal really is to be more ‘visible,’ having 5,000 or 500,000 followers isn’t going to help one little bit.

I don’t say this to vent – I’m saying this so everyone can just calm down.  Don’t worry if you’re not on the newest version of “Twittumblerbook.”  Worrying about follower counts is a lot like trying to figure out who was more popular in high school.  The really popular kids may look like they’ve got it going on, but check back in three years.

Be ‘real.’  Be authentic.  Be yourself.  Try to be helpful to other people.  Again – I’m openly admitting my own weaknesses here.  I’ve got as much crap up in my Facebook profile as anyone.

But ask yourself – would you rather be known as someone worth listening to, or someone who begs to be listened to?  Having 100 die-hard fans is worth an order of magnitude more than 5,000 followers who you don’t have a relationship with.

Dell didn’t sell $3 million worth of computers by being loud and obnoxious.  Dell answered questions posed online, tried to be helpful, and presented solutions to people who were frustrated with technology.  The brought value at a valuable time.

The loyalty of your fan-base will come back to help you or haunt you when things don’t go your way.   I am fond of saying that bad things occasionally happen to good companies.  The next time something happens with me, I know I’d rather have 500 hard core loyalists in my corner than 5,000 people who simply know me as someone who fills pixels on their screen.

Just as you don’t use a saw to drive a nail, don’t use social media to substitute for relationship building.  While they may belong in the same toolbox, they’re not the same thing.