Managing Social Media Crisis, What you need to know?

Digital Marketing Manager, Fouad Khafaga Talks About Crisis Management

Why and how should a business prepare for Crisis Management?


The answer to why is because it will happen. Every business in the world either faced or will face some kind of crisis; that tests everything the brand stands for.


Some brands have an active inertia effect – they work in their business not on their business. Meaning they get engaged and overwhelmed by the day to day activities, that they there is a little thought goes into such strategic problems like crisis management.


The answer to how – is like a story about a King that had to punish his son by throwing a big rock at him. The issue here is that because he is the king he had to follow the law, and because he is a father he didn’t want to hurt his son. He struggled until a tribe leader from his people told him to break that rock into very small stones which then will have minimal effect on the son.


In other words, breaking a crisis down into minimal manageable problems, and having the respective teams deal with those problems to dissolve the crisis is far more likely to prevent the crisis.
Looking at social media, for example with a brand hiding, deleting, ignoring and not responding in a timely manner to their community.


If a brand is that fragile to negative exposure, then that brand is more likely not to survive an avalanche of negative reviews (crisis) when an event goes not as planned.


What’s the worst that could happen?
Brand losses brand equity and ultimately credibility.
A real-life example of a crisis that was managed well would be at an event we recently attended.
We had a total shut down of the internet – the hotel we were in just had Wi-Fi problems, so we were totally cut off not just from producing and publishing content but from updates, behind the scenes work, major events moments, etc.

We were not even able to respond and interact with the audience already present at the event.
The solution was actually dividing the crisis into urgent situations that needed to be solved

• We had a situation room set up (before the event) in a different place with monitoring screen just for social listening, monitoring and interacting with existing audience
• Before the event we had already scheduled content ( quotes, opening remarks, awards announcements ). That content was published by publishing tools
• We had 3 members of the team capture key moments and event milestone live on different platforms through data plan
• Finally we created an event summary videos to make sure that the offline experience was captured online

Steps to Take

As we discussed, there are different types of crises – and planning and forethought can potentially prevent many of them from ever developing; and even if a crisis does then arise, with clear procedure or a chain of command available, the impact can be lessened.


By taking a proactive approach to your business, and putting safeguards and strategies in place, you put your company in a stronger position to deal with any issues that arise.
Actions to take before a Crisis occurs:

1. Develop Clear Social Media Strategies – such as Social Media Management
2. Use Data Analytics to Monitor your Brand – utilized Social Listening to understand your audience
3. Train Your Staff to recognize changes in attitude and trends online and in the venue
4. Brainstorm various situations and make plans for the ones that seem more likely to occur
5. Establish a clear chain of command and assign roles so your staff know who to speak with

Actions to take during a Crisis

1. Gauge the public mood and prepare an appropriate response
2. Be honest and transparent – let your customers hear from you and not a third party
3. Give relevant updates regularly
4. Respond to questions and comments where possible
5. If not possible, post a list of frequently asked questions and direct your audience to those
6. If it has affected people directly – apologies, be humble.

Actions to take after a Crisis

1. Continue monitoring the data analytics to be sure that the situation is resolved
2. Thank people for their patience and encourage their continued support
3. Avoid phrases such as ‘lessons learned’ – give concrete evidence of any changes being made
4. Don’t pretend it didn’t happen – learn from it and grow
   
   
   This post was originally posted here http://bit.ly/2wO7mz7
   Would love to talk more on twitter @Fouad_Khafaga