When you think of social media for business, the first thing that comes to your mind is how to market your brand on social media. Many brands have realized that social media is one of the best marketing tools to promote and connect with the audience. Social media may look simple in the beginning, but it requires a lot of resources and planning to create content. It needs creativity and inspiration in order to build a long term commitment. A strategy needs to be designed, devised and executed well in order to bring out the desired results.
Social media marketing is one of the popular tool to create brand awareness. There are some uncertainties, which may be disastrous for your brand like negative review or a public relations crisis. A crisis situation needs to be taken care of immediately before it harms brand reputation and there is nothing like social media that can handle a crisis situation fast and better.
People have a certain perception about your brand and when such a situation occurs, how well your brand survives the test of times is important. The negative impact of the situation can be significantly reduced if you have a solid social media crisis management in place.
The first and foremost step is to have a plan in place. You never know what kind of situation may knock at your door, so it is better to be prepared for the unexpected. So, what does your brand need to do in a crisis situation?
It’s all about the timing
Social media heavily relies on timing. So, if there is a crisis in your company, instead of diving into conversations on how to tackle it, act upon it fast. The sooner you will address the issue to your customers, you can prove to be a dedicated and reliable brand in such times. You gain trust from your customers by making them aware of the disruption of the service or an impending blunder before it even happens. This will help in maintaining the transparency and gain more respect for your brand. You will also have to give out instructions to your customers and be prepared appropriately for the crisis.
Updating frequently is the key to manage the crisis well. This is when you will have to answer to all your customer grievances. This is an important activity, which you need to follow until your brand is out of the crisis situation.
Control the conversation
When there is a crisis situation, your social media page is the first place where customers seek information. Unlike your website, social media pages are updated regularly with fresh updates and interaction galore. But often it is seen that customers give out their insights and try to harm your brand image in the process. It should be your responsibility to take control of the conversation. Use appropriate hashtags for the events and continue to use them for further conversations across all the social media platforms. This will help in building trustworthiness, reliability and an honest opinion about your brand.
By performing this activity from the very beginning will not only restrict the customers to harm your brand image on the social media, but also make sure that your brand is providing all the information to the customers related to the crisis.
One of the best examples was South West Airlines. After the July 2013 crash of its Flight 345, the airlines officially issues a hashtag by which all the news about the situation could be found. The airlines made a conscious effort to engage with its Twitter followers within half an hour after the incident took place. The quick response and the bold decision to step into social media helped the company gain considerable admiration and respect from customers, media and social media analysts.
Pause all the scheduled posts
In worst situations like a crisis, it is better to put a hold on all your pre-scheduled posts. For example, if you have scheduled a post that says, “Happy #ThrowbackThursday and have a great day”, while your product has just caused a serious injury to someone, then your brand won’t come off well at all. Therefore, it is your responsibility to put a hold on all the updates until the problem has been averted. Once the crisis has passed, determine if your scheduled posts are relevant to be posted now.
Stick to a designated source for information
As a brand, you are advised to limit the number of sources for people to look for information regarding the crisis. Scattered information can easily be represented. Hence, it is better to have a focused approach towards providing information to the customers. Choose a platform where all the information will be posted and make use of other channels to direct the traffic towards the main source.
Give a call to action
When you are in a service crisis, don’t wait too long to send out an instruction or advice to the customers on what to do next. Making your customers wait will even worsen the situation. Even if you don’t have an explanation yet, ensure that you give out some information or what needs to be done in your updates. These can be redirecting the customers to an external source of information or advice and giving out practical tips on how they can minimize the impact of the situation. In all your updates, make sure to add what you are currently doing to fix the problem and what people can do to reduce the impact.
Don’t pounce on negative publicity
There will be cases where negative information be shared across social media channels. This information will be illegitimate and the explanations that haven’t been sourced from authenticated sites. While you may be pushed to react aggressively towards such feeds by trying to censor the information or by intimidating to take legal action. In this kind of situation, it is always advised to be calm. This helps in keeping the integrity of your brand and further strengthen the trust with your customers.
One of the best examples of an aggressive behavior on social media was from a payday lending firm, Wonga. In 2014, the firm lashed out to a satirical artwork created by a Twitter user, which reflected a negative image of the brand. The company sent out a threatening legal notice, which stated a court action if the image wasn’t removed from Twitter. This created an uproar in the media and Twitter world, who backlashed on Wonga to trying to remove the user and eliminate creativity.
Some things are better left as a lie
If you have taken a full control of the conversation on the social media channels and used appropriate hashtags, all the other illegitimate information should be just left to lie. If necessary, warn your customers in advance against such sources. For all the official updates on the critical situation, let your customers know that you are the one who will help them out. You just need to provide true information that your customers can trust, rely upon and can depend upon your brand in the future.