How to Respond to a Social Media Crisis
While not every social media marketer is going to experience a lot of success with their brand, most are going to eventually experience a crisis. Social media crises happen quickly and with frightening regularity, from a couple of spammers bombing your page to a negative trend that’s causing your sales numbers to plummet severely.
There are many steps you can take in order to avoid such a crisis, but even the most proactive people in the world still have to find that they’re reactive at times. Think of it like living in a hurricane zone. Sure, stronger structures are a must, so there’s a lot to be said for proactive precautions. However, another hurricane is still going to blow in, despite your best efforts. So how are you going to handle it?
Here are some tips to help you weather that proverbial storm.
Tips for Quickly and Effectively Handling a Crisis in Social Media
1: Have a Reputation to Fall Back On
The first tip discussed here deals with how being proactive can help you eliminate some of the reactive steps you would otherwise have to take. To put it another way, having a solid online reputation may cause some people to look past the faults and at the positive aspects of your brand.
Do you remember when McDonald’s was dealing with controversy a few years back due to some managers influencing employee votes for elections? Yeah; few remember it, and that’s because the brand has a solid reputation that acts like oily glass when controversy tries to stick to it. So the stronger you can build up your positive reputation, the better you’ll be at handling any crisis.
2: Never Neglect the Situation
Now it’s time to get into the actual particulars of what to do when a crisis rears its head. The first thing to remember: Never ignore the situation! Even if you think it’s only a troll trying to wreak havoc on one of your social media pages, you need to step into action. Don’t feed the thing; that’s only going to make it stronger. Just step in and shut it down, preparing for damage control.
The same holds true with any type of crisis. You need to pay attention to it. A pesky mole on your arm can unfortunately be a sign of something a lot more serious. Think of a crisis the same way. Even something that seems minor can become major if neglected.
3: Build Up a Strong System
One of the best ways to handle every situation is to have a system in place for dealing with certain crises in social media. This isn’t to say that you need an entire department dedicated to dealing with PR. However, you still need to direct the negativity away from the rest of your brand. You want to segment things off when a crisis appears.
Having a thorough FAQ section may help solve someone’s angst before they take it out in profanity-laced comments. Having a support system may quell the frustration before it boils over. Having a separate email or area to deal with angry fans/customers will help to direct the crisis away from the rest of your brand. Do you see what we’re getting at here? It’s about creating a firewall around the perception of your brand. If a crisis appears, you can direct it to another channel that’s outside of the public eye.
4: Act ASAP
No matter what type of crisis it is, your quick action is required. Stepping in to act quickly grants you a few benefits. First and foremost, you can quarantine it before it spreads. Secondly, you might be able to nip it in the bud. Most importantly, however, acting quickly gives you ample time to deal with the crisis at hand.
Rather than catching it late after it’s already grown and spread, getting it in its infancy opens many more doors and allows you to think of a working solution. And as vague as that may sound, it’s important to understand that every crisis is different. Catching it early allows you to troubleshoot issues and to implement different solutions depending on the particular crisis.
5: Put a Happy Face on It
One of the best things you can do with any social media crisis is to put a happy face on it. This is when the PR comes into play. For instance, if your particular crisis is a couple of angry customers who are plastering your social pages with messages about how badly your brand sucks or how misleading the description is, step in and speak to these people directly and offer them something to atone.
Even if it’s not your fault and what you’re dealing with are a few knuckleheads who threaten to spoil the entire barrel with their bad apple status, soothing this particular beast will help to prevent the spread of the crisis. People who don’t know your brand from Adam will jump aboard a sinking ship just to poke more holes in it; that’s just how the Internet works. So if you can slap a happy face on something, bite that bullet and do it.
6: Be Opportunistic (Or Ready to Move)
There are two main options you have available to you after a crisis, with the former before far more important to your brand than the latter. Be opportunistic about the crisis, or simply move on. For instance, you can use a solved crisis to your benefit. You can showcase to your existing fanbase how you quickly and effectively handled a crisis and how you satisfied disgruntled customers.
Though if you can’t find any opportunity to work to your advantage with the crisis, then you must simply move on from it. Don’t bring it up; don’t waste your time sending out apology messages to everyone. If you can’t spin it in your favor—and provided that the crisis has been quelled—move on like it never happened.
Every brand is most likely going to experience some sort of crisis. How you handle it says a lot about your business aptitude and your willingness to compete in today’s social media market. Work constantly to keep a great reputation, and always remember to handle crises quickly by segmented them off, working some PR, and trying to spin them into gold.
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