The business world, especially the field of customer relationship management, is moving too fast. Sometimes, you are being noticed for all the right reasons; the next minute, you are going viral due to a post. Online crises can happen unpredictably. Your best solution to come out of this situation unscathed is to prepare in advance. Proper and effective social media crisis management starts before a problem arises. It is always better to prevent these issues before they even manifest.
How to Deal with Social Media Crisis?
In this article, we will walk you through the process of identifying any potential issues that can affect your online reputation. We will also be giving tips on how to shut down these issues as soon as they emerge. You don’t want a social media crisis to go out of control.
Developing Your Social Media Management Policy
The worst social media situation happens when the handler of your social media pages posts something inappropriate. Luckily, you can easily avoid this If you only have a comprehensive social media policy. It must clearly state the guidelines on appropriately using the company page. You should also highlight all your expectations. Sometimes, your people might also talk about your company on their personal page, be sure that you also have guidelines when mentioning your brand. The details that you will include here may vary depending on the nature of your business. It can also depend upon the size of the company and the industry where you belong. Knowing how to handle a social media crisis requires creating a solid policy.
What Are the Elements to Include in Your Social Media Policy?
Here are some of the elements that must be included in your social media policy. It helps you ensure that you will have a solid social media crisis management plan.
Employee Access
Be sure to remind your employees about the site that they can access when they are at work. Most companies realize the benefits of allowing their people to connect while at work. A complete restriction is no longer an option. Based on the latest study, around 20% of the workers found a solution online for a work issue. Nonetheless, you don’t want them to accidentally post a picture of a naked woman while using your company handle.
Using the Official Company Account
It would be best if you established the people’s identity who can speak on behalf of your company. There should also be a guideline on who is responsible for creating or deleting an account. The procedures in accessing the official company account should also be provided in detail. There should be a standard on the type of content that will be posted.
The Conduct
Learning to deal with social media crisis requires a thorough understanding of your company policy. It includes the code of conduct. Nonetheless, specific social media elements may not be covered with your existing company policy. It must highlight the personal and official use of your social media pages. Personal use is quite a complex subject to tackle. Employees must have the freedom to post what they want when outside the company premises’ borders and off-duty time.
Nevertheless, you must encourage them to remain respectful and responsible when using social media. Be sure that you have a list of prohibited behavior like posting offensive images, obscene comments, plagiarized content, discriminatory posts, and perhaps offensive jokes. They should never post confidential or sensitive information about the company.
Securing Your Social Media Account
You should be aware of all the related social media risks to avoid social media crisis. Weak passwords and other vulnerabilities in your account will easily expose you to all related risks. Your employees are the more probable cause of a security crisis, not the hackers based on the reports. Therefore, limit the number of people who are aware of your password. Those responsible for managing your account should never share the password with anyone. If you can manage the access through a centralized system, that would be better. With this, you can easily revoke the access of those who will choose to leave the company.
How to Secure Your Company’s Social Media Account?
Start by choosing a solid password. It should be a combination of different numbers, letters, special characters, and capitalization. Nevertheless, be sure that you can easily remember it. Never use the same password; with this, you can guarantee that your other account will be safe once they hack into one of your accounts. Also, make sure that you will change it frequently. There should be a predetermined time when you will change your password, for instance, every quarter of the year. Make use of the two-factor authentication system offered by most social media platforms. Finally, you should also invest in programs to secure your account to avoid a potential social media crisis.
Use Social Listening to Avoid Potential Crisis
Having a good social listening program will help you identify any potential issue on your social media before it even becomes a full-blown crisis. For instance, monitoring your brand mentions can warn you if there is a sudden increase in online activity related to your company. Nonetheless, if you want to learn how to handle a social media crisis, you should be focusing more on social sentiments. It pertains to the perception of the public towards your brand. If you notice a sudden change in the sentiment, you should immediately use your social listening tool to understand the reason behind this.
What Are Some of the Best Social Sentiment Analysis Tool?
Social sentiment tools will automatically process the feedback and interpret it as negative or positive rather than going through that post or tweet one by one. Here are some of our recommended tools to help you with your social media crisis management.
- Talkwalker-It does an excellent job of determining how the public perceives your company. It is also helpful when your team is in the process of developing a campaign that your audience will find relevant.
- Repustate– If you are looking for a more sophisticated analysis that accurately determines the public’s sentiments, Repustate is your best option. It could even pick up the slang and short words like ROFL, smh, lol, etc. It will analyze the emojis and identify the intention of using this particular emoji.
- Lexalytics– This one is a text analysis tool that focuses on determining the reason behind the customer’s response to your business.
Define What Social Media Crisis Is
As we mentioned, your social media crisis management will depend upon the size of your company, the nature of your business, etc. A crisis to one company may not necessarily be a concerning situation to you. Therefore, you should have your definition of what this ‘crisis’ is. Also, people will say negative things about your business; you can’t change that fact. Even if you try your best to please them, there will still be people who will be disappointed, and that is not a crisis. Here are some of the qualities of a crisis.
- It has long-term damage to your company, especially to your brand reputation.
- Social crisis has a detrimental impact on your relationship with your existing customers.
- It can influence the reception of the public.
Knowing what counts as a crisis or not can help you prevent them before they even happen. You can also instruct your people on how to respond to them.
What Are Some Examples ?
- Fake News- It is one of the most common and easiest ones to fix. Nonetheless, you need to act fast since these types of crisis can go viral in a single click. Sometimes the damage has already been done. Be sure that you will stay on top even on the rumors about your brand.
- Industry Crisis- This involved the entire industry. Both you and your competitors are affected by this. For instance, when the film industry was tainted due to the Harvey Weinstein Scandal.
- Emerging Crisis- If you fail to anticipate this, it can quickly get out of control.
- Multi-Channel Crisis- Businesses consider this the most dangerous type of social media crisis since it can generate a massive public backlash.
Develop a Crisis Communication Strategy
A comprehensive communication plan for your social media crisis allows you to respond to all arising issues immediately. Instead of brainstorming and debating how to handle this or waiting for the executives to weigh in the situation, your staff can carry out the necessary strategy to prevent things from getting out of control. Knowing how to deal with social media crises requires an immediate response. More than 25% of the problem has reached overseas in just an hour. Most companies will spend at least 21 hours defending themselves against the public in a kind and professional manner. That’s almost an entire day that will give enough time for the crisis to go all over the web.
What Should Be Included in the Communication Plan?
Here are some of the elements that must be added to your company’s crisis communication plan.
- Providing the link of your social media policy
- Pre-approved external information, images, or messages
- The approval process of the message posted on your social media channel
- Updated contact information of key employees
- Communication plan if there are any internal updates
- Responsibilities and roles of the department
- Guideline to identify the magnitude and type of social crisis
Halt All Social Media Postings
All your scheduled posts will sound like a joke during a social media crisis. For instance, did you remember how people can’t access the App Store, and the official Twitter account of App Store tweeted encouraging people to download a cooking app? It only made them look silly. To easily pause the posting, you can use an app like Hootsuite. It is as simple as clicking on the pause icon. Also, warn your companies and inform them that social media posting is suspended.
Finally, when defending your company to the public, you should engage with them but never argue. In a social media crisis, simply issuing an official company statement will not cut it. Keep your response short and avoid being involved in a lengthy discussion since things can go wrong. If possible, move your conversation to private.