Social media crises need deft handlingIt’s a cakewalk, really. You know this thing called social media; setting up your social team, managing your company presence on a bunch of social networks, it’s all pretty easy…that is, it’s easy compared to handling a social media crisis in today’s hyper-connected, real-time world. Manning the social media fort when a crisis breaks is truly the test of your organization’s social media prowess, the kind of stuff that separates the wheat from the chaff. At these times, there is no way your brand can run and hide, disconnect your computers and phones and pretend that the problem doesn’t exist – nothing that can prevent your customers, your prospects and your competition (shudder!) from taking to the social media streets and expressing their opinion.
Consider the case of Volkswagen India. A couple of years back, Volkswagen India ran a innovative vibrating print ad for one of its newly launched vehicles, but when the ad drew comparisons to certain adult products, Volkswagen responded with a hugely sexist and derogatory tweet about how women did not understand real driving experiences. As you can imagine, the dam broke and outrage began to flow on social channels. The company’s response while this saga played out? Silence. Then there was the case of Samsung being charged with abandoning independent Indian bloggers that the company had invited to a foreign country because they refused to turn into brand promoters at the firm’s global technology event, but when the story broke on several international news outlets and on Twitter, Samsung took well over the better part of the day to issue… a press release – completely ignoring the maelstrom of negativity that brewed around its brand online for the next couple of days. And who can forget Adobe, who in the face of one of the biggest password database hacks of recent times, chose not to communicate about this issue on their social channels and web sites altogether! For the users who were left wondering if they were impacted by the password breach, their silence was… deafening.
Contrast this with Buffer, the social media scheduling site, which was recently severely hacked. As soon as the firm realized the nature of the issue, the social team swung into action, reaching out to customers acknowledging that they’d messed up, and explaining what they were doing to fix the problem–and this was before most customers were even aware there had been an attack! Over the following 24 hours, a dedicated page on their home page was updated by the hour, and the social channels were used to broadcast progress updates till the matter was resolved.
Notice the difference in how each of these firms handled a crisis on their social platforms? While there is no one silver bullet for all sorts of social media crises, there are a bunch of best practices widely considered to prepare you for the worst. 1. Have a Plan: I cannot overstate this, but your social media activities must be tied to a plan, and part of that plan is to have a clear list of what steps need to be taken should a crisis come up. Your plan should include a link to your Terms of Service, a list of who within the company needs to be notified and what steps should be taken to recover initial control of the situation. Think of it as a fire drill - the same way most companies have disaster planning procedures for offline crises, similar processes must be in place for social media.
2. Pay Attention: The most important thing your brand needs to do is pay attention and listen to the conversation. Going into a crisis blind is not recommended, and you should actively use Google alerts, RSS feeds, Radian6 and HootSuite or other listening software to listen to conversations inside and outside of your brand. These tools will be particularly handy to identify the issue, how it started, who the fan or customer impacted is, and why others are rallying behind the issue – understanding these key elements is critical to shaping a considered and compassionate brand response.
3. Own the Mistake…quickly: In today’s fast-paced digital conversation, speed matters. Your initial response should let the public know that you are acknowledging the issue since ignoring it only makes matters worse. Being as transparent as possible – and as quickly as possible – is key. Don’t let matters fester.
4. Frequent, transparent updates: In the midst of the crisis such as Buffer’s, it’s easy to lose sight of communicating status to your customers in an effort to do what it takes to fix the issue. Consider this - being in the dark about a situation like this is perhaps the most frustrating part for customers, and your timely updates will go a long way in eliminating that problem. And while removing posts or claiming your were hacked may seem the easy thing to do, it’ll just come across as what it is – a cover up.
5. Set The Right Expectations: If you’re a 4-man shop or you just don’t have the bandwidth to respond to the issue in real time, set expectations upfront on the timing within which people should expect your response - be it 12, 24 or 48 hours. Be specific, ensure that the expectation is communicated…and stick to it!
6. Always Keep your Cool: Never get into a public argument with users by posting something negative or argumentative to their comment – doing so will undeniably make matters worse. Take a deep breath and consider how you would react if you were on the other side.
7. Build a dedicated crisis page: Develop an area on your website or blog that contains all the information about the crisis and what is being done about it. Use this when responding to followers and fans, by directing them to that dedicated page to help streamline communication and maintain a consistent message to the consumers.
8. Be Prepared to Create: Depending on the nature of the crisis, it may take a number of content formats – a video, a blog post, a photo gallery – to make a convincing case to your followers. If you’re planning to go through your external web design firm to make this happen, you’re dead in the water. Ask yourself – can you get a video from your CEO on YouTube within 3-6 hours, anytime of the day or night? If the answer’s no, some video recording training and a heavy dose of preparedness is the order of the day.