Crisis Management on Social Media

Social media managers, community support teams and customer service representatives must be ready to respond rapidly in the event of a crisis, be it product issues, PR missteps or natural disaster. A plan must be in place for coordinating customer responses during such times – such as providing communication guidelines and answering commonly asked questions that may arise during this period.
Create roles and responsibilities, develop an approval process and distribute it to all employees to reduce confusion and chaos during an unexpectedly high amount of communication. You should also maintain a list of trusted journalists or influencers whom can guide the conversation towards positivity.
Make sure that your team has access to a social media management tool capable of automatically listening and detecting a problem, analyzing its impact, escalate and moderate approved responses, cancel planned and active ads, create mitigating content for publication and rally advocates during a crisis situation. In addition, this solution should enable tracking performance over time so you can make continuous improvements.
As soon as an issue arises, it’s essential to identify whether it constitutes a problem or crisis. A minor customer service issue might be easily remedied with standard customer care techniques like offering discounts or coupons to dissatisfied consumers; on the other hand, more serious situations such as McDonald’s pink slime scandal could threaten its future and reputation – for instance the pink slime scandal was considered such an emergency by fast food giants such as Taco Bell and Burger King.
Once the crisis has subsided, it’s important to assess and learn from what transpired. This provides an opportunity for team collaboration with leadership as they devise solutions to prevent similar incidents from reoccurring in future. Furthermore, measuring its impact will enable you to understand just how badly your reputation was affected so you can plan for future endeavors accordingly.
Establishing a social media crisis management strategy is essential for all brands, no matter their size. An incident can spread virally quickly, leaving brands vulnerable. An approach with strategic plans in place can minimize damage and help companies recover quickly from an incident by aligning all departments on an ideal state during crisis situations, configuring new tools/technology/training teams as necessary and training teams on best practices during incidents. If you don’t already have one in place now is the time to start! Download our free workbook by filling in your details below; it promises your information stays safe secure & can unsubscribe at any time! We promise not to share or sell our information or any time; just click to opt-out any time! We promise not share or sell our information! We promise keeping your information safe & can unsubscribe at any time!