6 FACTORS THAT WILL HELP MANAGE A SOCIAL MEDIA CRISIS

In the world of social media, information travels fast. In the same way TikTok videos or memes can go viral overnight and bring positive attention to your company, content that is not so flattering can appear online and bring plenty of unwanted attention.  
 

The key to managing a social media crisis is preparation. Careful preparation means creating a plan to manage a crisis and ensuring proper training for those who manage your social media. This preparation will determine how quickly you can address a crisis and will help your team understand how to engage with the community without worsening things. In other words, be prepared before a crisis occurs. Let's look at six factors that will help you understand and respond to your next social media crisis:  

1. What Defines a Crisis? 

What exactly is a social media crisis? Is It a negative review that has snowballed, a disgruntled ex-employee posting about the company, or a video of an unfortunate customer experience with your company? Let’s face it, with viral content spreading like wildfire across the internet daily, anything is possible, and there are a whole set of new “rules” for communications professionals. It's harder than ever before to protect and maintain your company’s reputation.  
 
Companies large and small should expect to get both positive and negative attention online. After all, social media provides customers a platform to be both your best product evangelist or your biggest critic. It's important to understand that not all negative feedback results in a crisis. The best companies will use that negative feedback to improve their brand and reengage customers. 

Your social team is your eyes and ears when it comes to a real social crisis. They monitor social media accounts daily and should be able to quickly determine when there is an unexpected level of activity around a specific topic. As a team, you'll need to decide how much of this negative activity requires some review. When you decide that a situation is escalating to crisis level, it’s time to review the situation, loop in the entire C-Suite and advisors, and act on your plan. 

2. Building Your Communication Plan  

As an IR/PR/communications agency, we can help you both respond to a crisis or develop a plan for you. But developing a plan is also something you can do internally to be ready the next time something comes up. Remember, social media moves quickly, so you need a plan in place to respond with speed.  

As a rule, your crisis communication plan should include the following: 

• The definition of when online activity becomes a crisis 

• Roles & responsibilities for every department 

• An internal communication plan 

• Contact information for critical employees like the C-Suite and subject matter experts, the board chair, and key external stakeholders (remember to keep this document up to date as people change roles).  

• Approval process for creating, reviewing, and disseminating messaging 

• Pre-approved external messages and images (get these done now so you’re not scrambling when a crisis happens) 

• A link to your social media policy 

 
3. Know When to Engage and HOW 

Once the crisis has been identified, gather all your stakeholders together and publish your initial response. Hopefully, you have something pre-approved to work with, but if an unforeseen circumstance arises, ensure all stakeholders have reviewed your messaging before it's published. Once your initial response is published, it’s not quite time to breathe. It’s time to regroup and work on your longer, more formal message. This can be a statement from your CEO, a press release, a video message, or a longer response to what your next steps will be going forward.  
 
Some negative activity may come from a smaller audience and may not require a formal longer response. Here are few pointers on how to interact with individuals: 

• Keep your responses professional and definitely NOT personal.  

• Responses should be short and invite users to engage with you privately. Offer a phone number or an email or reach out to them through a private message. 

• Do NOT, and I repeat, do NOT get into an argument online for the world to see. This will not help you.

4. Engage Your Team  

You should be communicating with your internal team regularly. Not just your stakeholders, but everyone within the company. It will be extremely helpful to already have open channels in place once you are trying to control the spread of misinformation and rumours. Be honest and explain exactly what they should or should not be saying both at home and externally. 

5. Train Your Team and Be Prepared  

Unfortunately, sometimes crisis situations come from within the company. Ensuring your employees are aware of your social media policies and practices may be helpful in preventing a crisis from happening in the first place.  

 A social media policy should be in place and part of your onboarding program. As social media channels change and new ones are introduced, it is also good practice to review your social media policy regularly. A good social media policy should include: 

• Copyright Guidelines  

• Just because your team is on social media, or works in digital marketing, don’t assume they all know copyright law. 

• Privacy Guidelines 

• If your business interacts with consumers online, make your team is aware of what is allowed to be discussed publicly, and when a conversation needs to move from the public channel to a private channel. 

• If your team attends public or private meetings, make sure they are aware of what content or photos they are allowed to post.  

• Confidentiality  

State clearly (with examples) what business information employees are allowed to share.  

• Brand/Voice Guidelines 

• Are your posts fun and creative? Do they have a more serious and formal tone? Be clear what type of language is expected or not allowed. 

• Passwords & Security 

• Weak passwords and sharing of passwords can be a dangerous security risk. Consider running your social media channels through a consolidated publishing platform to avoid team members sharing passwords and so an administrator can quickly add and delete users as team members change.  

6. Regroup and Review 

Once your team has successfully navigated the crisis, it’s time to regroup and review your processes to see how well your plan held up. What worked? What needs to be reviewed? Keep documentation on everything and reach out to different departments and ask for their feedback.  

Conclusion 

The key to successful crisis management is to be prepared. Know that a crisis can happen to the best of companies, and that it's a matter of when, not if, you will need to react to a situation. Having well-crafted policies that are communicated to management and employees, as well as having a crisis response plan in place will increase the odds that you successfully navigate through a crisis with your company's reputation intact.