Fourth Wall Explains: When Things Go Wrong in Social Media…

One of the greatest concerns companies and individuals face in digital marketing is dealing with the potential social media backlash. Indeed, our trends last week showed just how feisty netizens could turn out to be.?

Just look at what happened on one of the pre-ticket selling days for the K-pop group Seventeen’s concert. The surge of fans purchasing tickets overwhelmed LiveNation, the event’s organizer, and SM Tickets, the ticket sellers. As the sellers, SM Tickets took the initial burden of addressing the customers’ concerns. Despite their persistent clarification that they are just facilitators of the ticket selling, SM Tickets kept receiving complaints, putting them in a bad light. They tried to direct the disgruntled customers to LiveNation, but LiveNation passed the bucket back to SM Tickets by asking for their help.

That only worsened matters, as incensed fans and netizens also began trashing LiveNation altogether, calling it incompetent.?

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Another example is the innocent celebratory video of famous TikToker Nicole Caluag, which turned into a nightmare. In this video, she celebrated her younger sister’s success in securing a ticket to Seventeen’s concert. Some netizens then inquired how they purchased the ticket. She reacted defensively, pleading that they stop bullying her sister, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The response annoyed many netizens because, for one, they felt it failed to respond to their fundamental question. For another, they thought that the mention of her sister’s learning condition was playing the victim card. Thus, they relentlessly lampooned her through memes.?Consequently, in the words of one netizen, it “degraded” not only her image but also of her family.?

?The two cases suggest that however well-meant or innocent, what you post or share will inevitably incite adverse reactions and, thus, a potential backlash. So, how should you deal with it??

There is no definitive answer, but we can at least take Donnalyn Bartolome’s case as a model for dealing with social media criticism.?

When netizens called out her sexy baby photoshoot as encouraging pedophiles, Donnalyn responded not by passing the blame (unlike LiveNation) or by citing some mental health/learning condition (unlike Nicole Caluag). Instead, what she did can be broken down into the following:?

1. Acknowledge the mistake. She did not deny the error. Neither did she beat around the bush when talking about it. She said it directly and sincerely apologized for not knowing its effect, as pointed out by netizens.
2. Accept responsibility.?She did not?point fingers. She did not cite her condition. Instead, she accepted full responsibility for what happened.
3. Do something.?She clearly laid out the next steps that she would take to fix the mistake. She stated that she is coordinating with Facebook to copyright the photos before taking down the post to gain the rights to have any reshared post taken down as well.

?As we face growing demands for a satisfying experience among stakeholders in the coming months, we should remember that adequately addressing their concerns when things get bad IS part of providing an ideal experience. And any brand that gets into such a problem should do the three critical steps of acknowledging the mistake, accepting responsibility, and acting on the solution. This is the basic formula to get things right when things go wrong on social media. Every time a brand does this, it receives praise from delighted customers. Conversely, if any of these steps go missing, it spirals into further backlash.?

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Fourth Wall is the pioneer sociocultural research firm in the Philippines. We enable consultants and organizations to leverage behavior to make optimal decisions that lead to adaptation and growth.