Social media has undoubtedly brought businesses many communication advantages but it can also be an added complexity and even be a cause of additional pressure in a crisis situation.
As well as meeting the huge demands of the traditional media during a crisis media management situation, communication teams are now faced with a range of extra channels to monitor, manage and feed.
Social media also means a crisis is likely to reach the mainstream media much quicker than before. In fact, due to due diligence and the need for the traditional media to thoroughly fact check their stories prior to hitting publish it’s not uncommon for citizen journalists and the public to be the first people to break a story via Twitter or Facebook.
Ultimately, your customers will start tweeting and posting information about your crisis as soon as it happens and journalists who spend their days monitoring these channels will get a lead for a story.
In fact your social media manager is likely to be the first person in your organisation to become aware of the crisis.
Regular social media training is essential, but it is also important to remember that the crisis communication principles broadly remain the same.
Here are seven areas to focus on to survive a social media crisis.
Acknowledge
It is unlikely that you are going to know all the details of what has happened and what has gone wrong immediately, and your customers will not expect you to have all the answers. But they will expect you to acknowledge that something has gone wrong as soon as possible.
All too often we see corporate social media accounts fail to acknowledge anything has gone wrong until the issue has actually been resolved. This was the approach adopted by WH Smith when its customers took to social media to complain after they started receiving emails containing the personal information of other customers.
The company’s radio silence approach not only ensured it had no control over the story, but was also extremely unhelpful and uncaring to customers impacted by the issue.
Provide timely updates
You need to continue to provide information to your customers during the duration of the crisis. You can’t simply acknowledge the problem and then remain silent until it is resolved. Make sure they know what you are doing to resolve the issue and that they can see you are continuing to take it seriously.
Regular updates little and often is the key here.Use your social media accounts to regularly drip feed information to your customers and journalists. This approach worked very effectively for McCarran International Airport when a fire broke out on a British Airways flight last year.
Be human
Your customers want to know that you care so you need to ensure your social media messages show compassion, concern, honesty and empathy. Say sorry and mean it. And if you are going to respond to individual tweets makes sure it does not sound robotic or that you are simply copying from some ‘lines to take’.
When Cadbury found itself enduring a Twitter storm after being accused of removing the word ‘Easter’ from its chocolate egg packaging, its responses included the same phrases over and over again.
Not only did it fail to show the human response it was looking for, but repeatedly telling people Easter was ‘on the back’ resulted in further online mockery.
Use the same channels as your customers
If your customers are taking to Twitter, for example, that is the channel you need to be using to keep them updated. Pretty simple stuff, but it is not always followed.
Going back to the WH Smith example we mentioned earlier, the first statement from the retailer came in the form of a response to the mounting press enquiries.
Of course, you have to respond to the media interest, but surely you should be treating the communication with your customers with the same urgency and respect.
Take it offline
Inevitably you are not going to be able to keep everybody happy that you have the crisis under control and these people are likely to post multiple tweets or Facebook posts.
The key here is not to get into an ongoing conversation or argument with them. Ask them to send their contact details to you through a direct message or your email address so you can arrange for someone to give them a call and discuss the individual problems they are experiencing.
This has worked well in my own experiences and has often resulted in a dissenting voice later going on to post something positive about the organisation.
But even if they persist, other customers will be able to see the extra effort you have made with that person.
Stop promotional posts
As soon as you become aware of the crisis, take a look at what tweets and posts you have scheduled to go out and remove any promotional ones.
The last thing you need when you are already under pressure is for a poorly timed social media post to damage your reputation further.
During the horsemeat scandal Tesco forgot to cancel a tweet which said ‘It’s sleepy time so we’re off to hit the hay’. The unfortunate timing of the joke only added to the company’s problems at the time.
Ensure that social media training is a key part of your induction and that all staff have had awareness level training
It’s critical that all of your staff are aware of the social media policies and that they have an understanding of what they can and can’t say online.
What is the escalation process when a member of staff spots a breaking news story on Twitter? Should they state in their profile that they work for your business and that their thoughts and comments remain personal?
Have we missed anything? Let us know in the comments box below.
Media First are media and communications training specialists with over 30 years of experience. We have a team of trainers, each with decades of experience working as journalists, presenters, communications coaches and media trainers.
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