Social Media Crisis Management

On Thursday, September 11, 2014 at 11:11am the lights went out across Concordia University Irvine’s campus. Yup, we lost all power across our entire university in the middle of a school/work day with temperatures in the high 90s. I packed up my things, grabbed my intern, and headed out to set up Social Media Crisis Central to begin managing the power outage situation online. I was happy to be at a place with free wifi, food, and air conditioning (thank you Panera Bread)! Like I said, we have been having 90+ degree days here in Southern California. I know that social media plays a key role during crises but this was the first time it played a key role during one of CUI's crises. Fortunately, I was prepared due to a Marketing and Communication Crisis Plan that I had helped designed, tools to help me monitor, and a solid report with the Crisis Management Team for on-campus news and updates.

Since you should have a plan of action beforehand, and organization and communication are vital when monitoring social media, I am offering my suggestions on how to prepare and manage social media throughout the stages of a crisis.

1. I beg you. Please do not enter a crisis without one. If you are one of the many who has not written out a Crisis Communication plan, stop what you are doing and start writing. This plan will give you some clarity during a stressful situation. The plan should include all members of your organization’s Emergency Management Team. For a university this may include: Campus Safety, University Services, Provost Office, Marketing and Communications, IT Services, Wellness Center, and others. It’s not good enough to just have a plan. The most important part of having the plan is knowing your role in it. The less questions you need to ask during a crisis the more helpful your role will be. Nothing can fully prepare you for a crisis but knowing your role during it can help move things forward safely and securely.

2. Crises should never be handled by one person or department. Most likely your organization will have an Emergency Management Team that spans across departments and personnel. That team will be critical for communicating news and updates as well as tactics being deployed during the incident. On a smaller scale, know who is on team. I knew beforehand that I would need help managing and monitoring social media so I built in crisis management time with my student intern, Shea Frates. She was wonderful! She monitored conversations while I was getting updates from the Provost, created “Emergency” images just in case we needed them, and spoke with prospective students who reached out to us via Twitter because our main website was down (a topic to discuss later). Not only was Shea helpful to me but it was a major learning experience for her! Anytime a student employee can get hands-training and add experiences to their resume, I become a better manager who adds value beyond my organization. Having a personal team doesn’t always mean having people work in your role, it can also be as basic as someone getting you food or coffee. When you are in crisis management mode you forget the basics, like eating, until you are exhausted and have a headache. I was surrounded by supportive friends/co-workers who kept me fed through the night and kept me company until I was able to go to bed (which was 12:37am). Sometimes the best team you can have are ones who just stand by your side to cheer you on.

3. Thank goodness for Hootsuite! I cannot image managing and monitoring social media during a crisis without a robust tool such as it. It allowed me to create a view with multiple streams to monitor multiple social media platforms and search terms. Without it I would have been scrambling between different websites throughout the entire incident which would have been exhausting.

When talking about having the right tools during a crisis I don’t just mean for managing social media conversations. Having the right tools includes being on various social media platforms. Over the summer I launched The Concordia University Irvine Blog. No doubt we are late to the game on this front but I am a BIG believer in having the right social media platform with the right content at the right time. If a platform can’t be supported or sustained then I’m not wasting my energy on it. Fortunately, the University Blog initiative was my top priority this past summer! It was launches with several posts and working out well. The blog came to the rescue in a huge way during this crisis when our website went down (an issue being discussed in our post-mortem of the event). We were able to direct visitors to the blog where I posted the latest updates of the power outage. This also allowed me to share each blog post across all of CUI’s social media channels at one time (again thanks to Hootsuite) which reinforced its message. Of course we sent email blasts and voicemail messages with updates to all our students but the only place they could converse about the incident was on social media.

4. When it comes to managing social media for an organization nothing is more important than having authority over it. Authority as a Social Media Manager is crucial because "you are responsible for speaking in real-ime with millions of customers and potential customers” (Pope). If you have to have every message scrutinized then you are going to be severally disabled during a crisis. Having authority also comes with responsibility. I am well aware that I am speaking on behalf of the university at all times and any and all information I send out can impact the entire community. This is where having a crisis communication plan comes back into play. Working within the Emergency Management Team I know what I can and cannot post at any given time. In this situation, I knew it was likely that we would close but I also knew it wasn’t my place to announce that to the campus community until the word came (in writing) from the Provost. Authority = Responsibility.

One thing I did have complete authority over was the hashtag used during the incident. Had it been an elevated campus emergency such as a shooting or severe earthquake the hashtag would have been more serious. In the case of a power outage I decided to use the hashtag #CUIinthedark. It conveyed the main message that we were out of power but also had some lightheartedness to it. Students caught on quickly and began using the hashtag to converse about events that were cancelled or changed due to the lack of power. I also noticed a theme appearing. Students began sharing what they were doing during the power outage. On Friday, September 12, with the power still out and classes cancelled for the day, I decided to name the day #CUIinthedark Day and launch a contest. Students were asked to submit photos or videos of how they were spending their #CUIinthedark Day with a chance to win a $50 Amazon gift card. It was a hit! Sure students weren’t on campus but we still engaged with them (and them with each other) from all over California. Students went to the beach, Disneyland, brought friends home, and some even took road trips up the coast! It was fun for me to see what everyone was up to even though they weren’t physically on campus.

With Shea’s help, we were able to speak one-on-one with prospective students. These prospects were going to our website to get answers to their college search inquiries but with the website being down they turned to Twitter. We responded quickly and when necessary took the conversations off-line (e-mail) to give more detailed answers. It is never ideal to have your organizations website down but it would have been worse had we ignored prospective inquires all together. As my boss quipped, “I may have a future in admissions”. (Note: I worked in UG Admissions for 3+ years).

5. For your own sanity, have a system of organization. Take notes of things that are successful and things that need improvement . If you wait until after everything is over you will have forgotten half of what happened. I like to keep a crisis note in Evernote accessible to me at all times. Using Evernote allows me to share my notes with others and allows them to view updates in real time.

The other important information to capture during a crisis are the conversations during it. For this, I use Storify A quick note, if you have a Storify VIP account you are able to make your stories private. If you handle sensitive crises I HIGHLY recommend you go this route. Capturing tweets, Facebook, and Instagram posts in real time put my mind at ease knowing that I can go back and assess things later without sifting through hundreds of posts across channels. After this crisis, I organized the story by category to help my executives have a better understanding of what took place online.

6. No event goes as smoothly as planned. There will always be hiccups along the way. The most important part of these hiccups is to account for them, take accountability for them, and to address them. This can only be done if proper crisis assessment is conducted soon after the event. My recommendation is to have each area of the Emergency Management Team conduct their own assessment. You can see my social media crisis assessment questions in my Evernote crisis template. You may find that some areas have their plans together while others do not. But, you are all on one team representing one organization, therefore, their failures are your failures. When working on a team I love referring to Amazon’s Leadership Principles. I highly suggest including them in your Emergency Management Team documentation to avoid finger pointing and team disintegration during or after an event.

Remember that sometimes the most important role social media can play in a crisis is during the aftermath of the event. Don’t leave any loose ends; continue communicating and engaging with your audience until they are ready to move on.