A social media crisis is a situation where your brand faces a significant and negative public reaction on social media platforms. This can be triggered by various factors, such as a product defect, a customer complaint, a competitor attack, a legal issue, or a social or environmental controversy. A social media crisis can escalate quickly and spread to other media channels, affecting your brand reputation and trust among your target audience and stakeholders.
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In my experience, being as transparent, honest and timely with your response can make all the difference to your customers and audience. For example, Slack experienced a major outage in 2022 that left many users unable to access the platform - people were frustrated to say the least as many companies use Slack as their go-to for messaging day-to-day (and this was impacting precious working time!). After the issue was identified, Slack owned the issue immediately and provided regular updates to their users via their status page about every half hour - they even took to Twitter to sincerely apologize to those impacted by the outage in a playful and genuine way (check it out here: https://twitter.com/SlackHQ/status/1496222844086276099?s=20).
The RSR framework is a simple tool that helps you evaluate the impact and severity of a social media crisis based on four dimensions: reach, sentiment, relevance, and influence. Reach refers to the number and diversity of people who are exposed to the negative messages about your brand. Sentiment refers to the tone and emotion of the messages, whether they are angry, sarcastic, or indifferent. Relevance refers to the alignment of the messages with your brand values, mission, and goals. Influence refers to the authority and credibility of the sources who are spreading the messages, such as influencers, journalists, or experts.
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By applying the RSR framework, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of the impact and severity of the crisis across different dimensions. This knowledge will enable you to tailor your response strategy accordingly, effectively addressing the reach, sentiment, relevance, and influence of the crisis messages. Remember to maintain transparency, empathy, and a commitment to your brand's values throughout your response efforts.
Depending on the level of impact and severity of each dimension, you can apply different strategies and tactics to manage a social media crisis. For example, if the reach is high, you need to monitor the situation closely and communicate frequently and transparently with your audience. If the sentiment is negative, you need to acknowledge the problem, apologize sincerely, and offer solutions or compensation. If the relevance is high, you need to align your response with your brand values and mission, and show empathy and responsibility. If the influence is high, you need to engage with the sources directly and address their concerns or criticisms.
After you implement your social media crisis response, you need to measure the effectiveness of your actions and evaluate the results. You can use various metrics and indicators to track the changes in the four dimensions of the RSR framework over time. For example, you can measure the reach by the number of mentions, impressions, and shares of the negative messages. You can measure the sentiment by the percentage of positive, negative, and neutral messages. You can measure the relevance by the topics and keywords that are associated with your brand. You can measure the influence by the number and quality of sources who are talking about your brand.
The best way to deal with a social media crisis is to prevent it from happening or reduce its risk. You can do this by following some best practices and guidelines for your social media marketing. For example, you can create a social media policy and guidelines for your brand and employees, and train them on how to use social media professionally and ethically. You can also conduct regular audits and tests on your products, services, and campaigns, and identify any potential issues or vulnerabilities. You can also build a loyal and engaged community around your brand, and listen to their feedback and suggestions.
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Have a crisis communication plan in place. Monitor social media for mentions of your brand! Apologize for any inconvenience or harm that the crisis has caused, Be responsive to customers!!
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To prevent (very difficult) or reduce the risk (more attainable) of a social media crisis, you and your team should be doing the following regularly: -Develop a solid social media strategy with clear guidelines and policies. -Monitor online conversations to detect potential issues early on. -Engage with your audience, respond promptly, and address concerns openly. -Train employees on social media best practices and crisis management. -Regularly review and update your privacy and data protection policies. -Conduct thorough research before partnering with influencers or running campaigns. -Implement a crisis communication plan and establish designated spokespersons. -Stay proactive by monitoring trends and potential reputational risks.
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Spike alerts! Set these up for any major past crisis keywords, and set alerts for a sudden increase in tags or mentions. This is a function in many many analytics and scheduling platforms. Spend the time to find out if you have them. Additionally, if your social media software doesn't have it, your PR team's software may have it. Work with them to create that alert and set it up for your entire team to have access to it. Final hack: Slack can receive emails. Set up the spike alert to show up in slack if that's where you're team responds the quickest.
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Most of my customer service complaints are fake or people that I have shared words with who are environmentally UNFRIENDLY to small creatures of the ocean. Yes, if its something I have done an apology is always appropriate, however, avoiding something to apologize is my best policy. Responding immediately whether good or bad is a professional courtesy. There are good and bad things about social media, the worst being that people feel entitled to write the worst smear possible and something they would never have the hutzpah to say to my face. That is wrong!
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