Your reputation is everything. It’s your brand’s largest, most valuable asset. These days, it’s not uncommon to see social media crises present in the form of management transitions, product quality issues, customer service issues, and more. In the 24/7 environment of social media, managing a crisis is crucial to guiding the topic of conversation to a risk-mitigated destination.
Here are how the world’s biggest brands have protected themselves with social media crisis management:
1. Monitor Your Brand
You don’t want a social media crisis breaking out on platforms where you’re not aware of it. That’s why you need a social media crisis management team to monitor the situation. This involves monitoring your brand’s social media accounts, your mentions, and what the conversation surrounding your brand is. If a crisis were to ever occur, you at least know where it’s happening and can respond accordingly.
Social media is filled with citizen journalists looking to take down brands, mainstream reporters seeking stories, users seeking justice, and unsubstantiated accusations. Stop the snowball from running further down the hill and gaining more weight. Be quick in your response. Your brand will be judged by how much time it takes them to address something.
2. Prepare For the Worst
Prepare a well-researched crisis communication plan ahead of time. Years of hard work building your brand can be shattered in a few moments when a social media crisis breaks out. Identify specific vulnerabilities to your business and the response your brand will take should you encounter these. Your organization’s representatives – from management to entry-level – should have a guided plan in place.
3. Accept Responsibility
If there’s responsibility to accept, do so. Consumers value honesty. When a brand is being dishonest, it hurts their reputation in sometimes permanent ways. If there’s blame to accept, accepting it is a step in the right direction towards getting the conversation to a healthy, constructive place for your brand.
4. Be Clear in Public Communications
You don’t want to give out conflicting information or make statements that could be seen as inaccurate or misleading. Be very clear in communicating publicly on social media in crisis response.
5. Do Not Respond Emotionally
Emotion isn’t the worst thing – when it’s controlled. Responding angrily on social media doesn’t reflect well on any brand. You’re only inviting in more criticism by using your emotions rather than stepping back, taking a breath, and giving some thought on the best strategy. Though a timely response is best in managing a social media crisis, keep negative emotions out of it.
The best social media crisis management will involve you acknowledging what went wrong. A social media crisis doesn’t occur without a reason. Before you defend yourself or issue a statement, look honestly at what’s being said. Acknowledge these points in your statement response. You want fans of your brand to be heard and feel acknowledged, especially if the crisis is widespread and affecting a significant percentage of your audience.
6. When Ready, Defend Yourself
Social media crisis management is centered on defense. If there’s truth or details not being publicized in the crisis conversation, correct the record. It’s on the brand under fire to make the case for its survival. You have to defend yourself. Silence can perceived as guilt. If there’s something inaccurate or if the record needs to be corrected, it’s on those overseeing management to make the moves to correctly frame a brand’s actions.
7. Focus on Positives Above Negatives
When responding to a social media crisis, a statement should convey more positive, forward-looking sentiments than calling attention to the negative conversation around your brand. Admittedly, this can be difficult because in order to move forward, we have to draw some attention to the negatives. Just remember, throughout a message like this, emphasize positive qualities and your pledge towards improvement.
8. Put Crisis behind You As Quickly As Possible
Ideally, you want to manage and handle a social media crisis as quickly as possible. If a corporative executive is being accused of something, remove them from their position and conduct an investigation. If a brand partner is experiencing a crisis around a confirmed action that reflects poorly on you, sever ties with them. Make moves quickly to ensure a crisis is fully managed and put in your rear-view as best as it can be.
9. Be Presumptive with Minor Crises
Sometimes events occur in organizations that we know could develop into a social media crisis should the information get out. If you have a supply chain disruption, have to do a recall, or a similar issue has presented, take the lead on it and put out a statement rather than letting customers discover the problem themselves. The more honest you are about minor crises, the more you reduce the anger that can sometimes exist around disruptions in service.
10. Do Not Use President Trump As Your Role Model
President Trump notoriously refuses to apologize, is readily willing to use lies and misdirection to confuse his followers, responds to accusations by making accusations on the accusers, and generates controversy after controversy at a rate that it’s impossible to linger on any which one. Regardless of what your political affiliation is, these approaches to social media crisis management are terrible and if used by your brand will sink it. Be smart. Accept responsibility. Don’t get deep into name-calling.
