I recently discussed with a small business owner the lack of social media presence his business had and one of the points that came up was the possibility and fear of a negative event occurring. So I thought maybe an article on this very topic could help other SME business owners break through some of their fears also! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Social\nmedia is a very powerful promotional tool for business. To quote the famous superhero,\nSpiderman, \u201cWith great power comes great responsibility\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\nsame is true for social media. With access to an information network that is\ndirectly connected to your target audiences, it is your responsibility to\nensure that every tweet, post, picture and \u2018like\u2019 doesn\u2019t open up your company\nto a social media disaster. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\nseems like there is always a story in the news about a business suffering a\npublic relations meltdown on social media. One ill-thought out tweet or post quickly\nand suddenly spirals out of control and suddenly a whole raft of negative\nfeelings and emotion is poured into the social media channels that causes a\ngreat deal of damage to their public image. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So\nwhat are the main types of social media crises? They tend to come in two main\nvarieties: those caused within an organisation, and those that are external. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\nmost destructive and long lasting tend to come from mistakes publicised by\ninternal sources, so it is within your power to prevent any damage to your\nbrand by stopping them before they even happen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
WHAT CAN YOU DO TO AVOID A SOCIAL MEDIA\nCRISIS?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prevention is better than cure.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nfirst thing you can do is to prevent a crisis occurring in the first place. It\nsounds simple, but the following steps will help to substantially reduce the\nrisk of a social media meltdown. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Make sure your accounts and passwords\nare safe<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Keeping\nyour accounts safe is a big priority. It might seem like common sense but it is\neasy to forget or get complacent about securing accounts. Even large companies\nhave fallen victim to account security issues. For example in 2013, hackers\ntook control of Burger Kings Twitter profile. They changed its picture to the\nMcDonald\u2019s logo, and then sent messages claiming the company had been taken\nover and that it would adopt McDonald\u2019s branding. As hacking goes, it could\nhave been a lot more sinister. This was pure mischief making but it caused a\nlot of embarrassment for Burger King and caused havoc with the companies 5,000,000\nfollowers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Monitor what is being said about you<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Generally\nbefore a social media crisis develops there is an upwelling of negative\ncommentary first. There are lots of monitoring tools out there that can help\nyou access what is being said about your company. By setting up some simple filters,\nyou can track when something is said about your business and brand even if it\nis across multiple social media platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Handle negative comments quickly and\ncorrectly<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As\nany good customer service manual will tell you, you need to limit the initial\ndamage before it spirals out of hand. For social media, this means dealing with\nthe aggrieved party in private messages, but you also need to post a public\nresponse to show you are dealing with the problem and care about your\ncustomers. A lesson can be learnt from UK retail giant, Tesco, who according to\nSocialBakers, the highly respected social media analytics\nand publishing company, has a great customer care reputation on social media.\nThe report said that it answers the majority of queries within 81 seconds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Be\nclear about who has access to your accounts<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It is crucial to have a staff social\nmedia plan in place for your business. You need to think carefully about how\nyou want your employees to use social media. The music retail giant, HMV\nrecently discovered this to their cost when a disgruntled employee used the\nofficial HMV Twitter account to chronicle the firing of 50 of its employees. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This doesn\u2019t mean simply blocking their\naccess to social media at work, but you need to make your company policies very\nclear as to what is allowed to be discussed, where and when. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You also need to establish who \u2018owns\u2019\nyour accounts. For example, Phonedog, the phone review network, got a shock\nwhen an employee and Twitter handler left the company taking 14,000 followers\nwith him. They are not the only ones. Many other businesses have fallen foul of\nkey members of staff leaving, taking what is seen to be a personal account with\nthem and having direct access to clients as a result. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ensure\nthat your social media users are trained<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It may sound obvious, but do you really\nknow your hashtags from your direct messages? Make sure that whoever is\noperating your social media channels is fully trained and understands the\nsubtleties of each social media channel. They are not all the same and they\neach come with their own set of rules and etiquette. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The effectiveness of responses to\nunfolding crises depends a lot on how appropriate the messages are. An example\nof a big Twitter fail came in 2013 from Michael O\u2019Leary, the controversial\nowner of budget airline Ryanair. He decided to host an online question and\nanswer session but forgot to include the #GrillMOL tag which caused a lot of\nconfusion among the audience who wanted to take part. All of the questions were\nbeing directed to the wrong place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Check\nthe facts on every post you make<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Anything that you put on social media\nplatforms, or anywhere else online, is subject to opinions and fact – checking.\nTherefore, it is vital that whatever you post is correct, as any inaccuracies\nwill inevitably be flagged and cause damage to your company image and brand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It isn\u2019t just accuracy that you need to\nbe aware of. For example during a heavy snowstorm in 2013, Luton Airport in\nLondon tweeted a picture of a crashed plane along with the message. \u201cBecause we\nare such a super airport\u2026this is what we protect you from when it snows\u2026Weeee\n\ud83d\ude42 \u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n The image that the airport had used in\nthe tweet was of an incident in which a child had died. A lot of people were\nunderstandably very offended and it led to a swathe of negative comments and\ncoverage by the national press. If only they had done a bit more research\nbefore posting the picture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n HOW\nDO YOU MANAGE THE MELTDOWN IF THE WORST HAPPENS?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Be\npolite or it will come back to haunt you<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It might seem fairly simple to anyone\nwho has ever worked directly with customers, but you need to be polite. You are\nstill communicating to your audience, albeit, through a computer, so there are\nno excuses for being rude. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Once you have published a post, people\nwill see it, and even if you remove it, it is likely someone will have made an\nundeniable record of it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Listen\nto your audience and deal with their issues<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n DKNY was able to minimize what could\nhave been a complete meltdown. After it was caught using Brand Stanton\u2019s\nimagery in a storefront without his permission, he found out and publicly declared\nthat they should pay $100,000 towards a New York children\u2019s charity in\ncompensation. DKNY listened to the negative commentary and promptly made a\ndonation of $25,000 with an apology. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Don\u2019t\ndelete comments unless absolutely necessary <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Deleting what you see as the worst\nnegative comments might seem like a good idea at the time, but people tend to\nget even angrier if they feel that their messages are being removed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the worst examples was from\nrestaurant chain Applebee\u2019s. It publicly fired a waitress for leaking a receipt,\nwhich showed a pastor writing a sarcastic comment, \u201cI give God 10% why do you\nget 18?\u201d The shoddy handling of the situation caused an uproar and after around\n60,000 mishandled comments, it was forced to publicly apologize. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Have\na crisis plan in place to identify who is involved and what they need to do. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Having a plan in place should a public\nrelations meltdown occur is a must. It doesn\u2019t have to be exhaustive, but it\nshould identify key people to deal with the problem, set a timeframe which a\nresolution needs to be found, and have the backing of key decision makers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One Internet marketer, who has a lot of\nexperience in social media, managed a number of social crises. The most notable\none was when the B2B service provider he worked for had its servers affected by\na fire. With service lost, clients were unable to contact technical support,\nview the website or access any online portal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He moved the support teams over to their\nsocial media channels and answered users questions directly through Facebook\nand Twitter. Whilst the situation wasn\u2019t ideal, they were able to quickly\naddress the concerns of clients and make sure people understood what was\nhappening and how they were able to rectify it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Summing\nit all up<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Being prepared for a social media crisis\nmight seem complicated at first glance, but it doesn\u2019t have to be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You need to make sure that you listen to\npeople and that you are sensitive to current issues. If you prevent a crisis\nthrough responsible use of your social channels, you shouldn\u2019t need to worry.\nBut if the worst does happen, take control with a plan, give feedback, be\npolite and most importantly, listen to your audience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To Your Success! I recently discussed with a small business owner the lack of social media presence his business had and one of the points that came up was the possibility and fear of a negative event occurring. So I thought maybe an article on this very topic could help other SME business owners break through some of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peakperformancebusiness.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peakperformancebusiness.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peakperformancebusiness.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peakperformancebusiness.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peakperformancebusiness.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/peakperformancebusiness.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":168,"href":"https:\/\/peakperformancebusiness.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions\/168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peakperformancebusiness.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peakperformancebusiness.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peakperformancebusiness.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Brendan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"