What is Social Media Crisis Management? [A Complete Guide]
Nov 14
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Imagine you are scrolling through your favourite social media platform, catching up on the latest trends and updates from friends, when suddenly, BAM! A company's reputation is under attack, tweets go viral for all the wrong reasons, and chaos reigns supreme.
Welcome to the captivating world of social media crisis management!
Even a single tweet can make or break a brand, it's essential to understand the power and perils of social media. Businesses, organisations, and even individuals must have a strategic plan to weather any storm that may arise.
Wait, what exactly is crisis management in social media? Why is it so important for your brand?
Well, you are at the right place to find out!
From unsatisfied customers to viral misinformation, crisis can emerge from the most unexpected corners of the internet. And trust us, when it happens, things can escalate faster than you can sound the alerts.
That’s where crisis management comes in! It’s the process of handling and mitigating negative events or controversies that may arise on your brand’s social media platforms.
And with careful planning, proactive communication, and a dash of creativity, it's possible to turn a potential catastrophe into an opportunity for growth and a positive brand reputation.
In this blog, we will delve deep into social media crisis management, its benefits, how to build a crisis plan, and some tips to tackle crises, specifically social media crisis, head-on!
What is a Social Media Crisis?
It basically refers to any activity on social media that may impact your brand’s reputation in a negative way. This will include more than a rude comment or a complaint from a customer. Like when your social media activity spurs with a flurry of negative responses or calls for a boycott.
In simple words, a social media crisis is when there is a major change in the online conversation about your brand: an action that has sparked anger, disappointment or distrust on a wide scale.
Tip: Never leave any concern unaddressed. It could have major long-term consequences for your brand.
What is Social Media Crisis Management?
Social media has become a powerful tool for individuals and organisations to voice their opinions, share experiences, and engage with others. So, all the news and information spreads rapidly.
However, this accessibility also poses risks, as a single negative incident or viral post can quickly escalate into a full-blown crisis that can damage a brand's reputation and impact its
bottom line.
Navigating through a social media challenge is merely the initial phase; you must constantly monitor, identify, and promptly respond to potential issues in real-time to safeguard a brand's reputation, image, and relationships with stakeholders.
That being said, why do you actually need crisis management for your brand's social media?
Benefits of Social Media Crisis Management
The good news is that social media is so powerful that it can be used as a tool to manage business crises seamlessly and expertly.
To help you better understand, here are a few benefits of social media crisis management:
Mass Distribution
One of the best ways to snuff out a crisis is by quickly sending a broadcast message to avoid further chaos. This will not only help to reduce the magnitude and impact of the crisis but will also help to build trust with your audience.
Personalised Messaging + Problem-Solving
Social media lets you speak directly with your customers via direct messaging or commenting. If one customer has an issue, your support team can instantly respond through private messaging or by commenting on the shared post.
If the customer has posted something publicly on your timeline, an effective and promising response from the team can help to build customer trust and credibility.
Did you know that many brands use Facebook and Twitter messaging to handle problems in addition to traditional channels?
Create Transparency
Agree with us or not, social media is the first stop for consumers when news breaks. And brands that make the most out of social media capitalise on the opportunity to build trust by delivering transparency to their audience.
Social Media Crisis Management Plan
Whatever the challenge, having a crisis management plan can help you answer the age-old question - “how to handle a social media crisis?”
If you're not sure where to start, take a look at the outline below. Each item is a detailed step for creating your plan for a social media crisis.
Assessing Potential Risks -
Before a crisis strikes, it's important to identify and evaluate the potential risks specific to your brand or industry.
Conduct a comprehensive risk assessment with these factors in mind:
Previous incidents: Analyse past crises, both within your organisation and your competitors, to identify common patterns and areas of vulnerability.
Industry trends: Stay informed about the latest developments and issues in your industry that could potentially trigger a crisis.
Social media listening: Monitor all social media platforms to identify conversations and sentiments that are potential crisis triggers relevant to your brand.
Assembling Your Crisis Response Team -
Behind every successful crisis management plan is a capable and agile crisis response team.
Assemble a team comprising key stakeholders from various departments, including marketing, communications, legal, and customer support.
Designate specific roles and responsibilities to ensure clear lines of communication and a swift response.
Consider establishing a social media command centre to centralise monitoring and response efforts.
Establishing Monitoring and Alert Systems -
Real-time monitoring is the lifeline of effective social media crisis management!
Here are a few steps you can take to monitor effectively:
Identify the escalation thresholds and establish protocols for issuing alerts to the crisis response team when necessary.
Utilise social media listening tools like Brand 24 to track brand mentions, keywords, hashtags, and trending topics to stay ahead of potential crises.
Developing a Crisis Communication Plan -
The 3 important key points you need to keep in mind before formulating your crisis communication plan are:
Key messaging: Craft clear, concise, and consistent messages addressing potential crisis scenarios that anticipate different perspectives and align with your brand values.
Response guidelines: Establish guidelines for responding to different types of crisis and define the tone, language, and appropriate channels for communication.
Social media protocols: Lay out the procedures, determine who has access to official accounts, establish response timeframes, and define the approval process for posting content.
Learning and Evolving-
Like the social media landscape, your crisis management plan should also be flexible. Here are some ways you can do exactly that:
Diligently assess the effectiveness of your strategies
Learn from past experiences
Stay informed about emerging social media trends and platforms
Integrate the insights gained into your plan to enhance its relevance and resilience.
Social Media Crisis Examples
Before having a social media crisis management plan in place, you need to know what it looks like. In this section, we’ve brought you some notable social media crises that affected real-life businesses to analyse and learn.
Undermining Customers
Ticketmaster, a US-based event management company, manages a significant percentage of ticket sales in the country.
When Taylor Swift, one of the biggest stars, put pre-sale tickets for her Eras 2023 Tour, it led to a disaster.
Fans could not finalise their purchases due to the company’s interface crashing during checkout. Since Ticketmaster managed the pre-sale codes, they projected how many people would be buying tickets, and they still ultimately failed to accommodate the demand.
Naturally, the results were a huge public outcry, an antitrust probe and an angry Instagram post from Taylor Swift.
Inappropriate Marketing Messages
Balenciaga, a high-profile fashion brand, came under fire for its ads featuring children holding teddy bears in highly sexualised attire. Since this came on the heels of a scandal with Kayne West, it heavily damaged the brand image.
The brand pulled down the ad and apologised to the audience. The brand admitted to the severe miscalculation and agreed that the campaign was offensive. However, they were hesitant about taking action and filing a lawsuit against the photographer.
Social Media Crisis Response Examples
Successful management of social media crises starts with a proactive strategy that prepares for potential problems. Here in this section, we have given some of the social media crisis management case studies.
Slack’s Outage Response
Slack, a popular online messaging platform, experienced a huge outage in February 2022. During this time, they published frequent updates to keep people informed and in loop.
The brand also took to Twitter and shared a deeply sincere apology:
Why did this work?
During the outage, Slack was transparent to its users and acknowledged what was happening, kept their audience informed and followed through until the issue was resolved.
What won people's hearts is that they followed up publicly after the fact with a sincere apology.
Burger King — Who belongs in the kitchen?
On the occasion of International Women’s Day, Burger King UK posted a cringe worthy tweet - “Women belong in the kitchen.” This led to a huge uproar on social media when people questioned who authorised this post.
However, the brand immediately took action, deleted the post and published the below apology -
Image source- https://twitter.com/BurgerKing
Why did this work?
While the statement was offensive for many people, by taking ownership of the mistake, Burger King avoided the PR nightmare that it could have been.
People miscommunicate all the time and their commitment to learning from their mistakes is what sets them apart.
5 Social Media Crisis Management Tips
Here are some of the social media crisis management best practices -
Create a Strong Social Media Policy
Apart from connecting with customers, building brand awareness, and driving sales, social media can also be a liability if it is not used properly.
A social media policy is a document that outlines the rules and guidelines for how your company uses social media. It should cover everything from what types of content you can post to how you should interact with customers.
Here are some tips for creating a strong social media policy:
Be clear and concise: Your social media policy should be easy to understand and follow.
Be specific: The policy should specify what types of content are allowed and not allowed.
Be up-to-date: The policy should be reviewed and updated regularly to reflect changes in social media and your company's policies.
Get employee buy-in: Ensure employees understand the policy and agree to abide by it.
By following these tips, you can create a strong social media policy that will help you protect your company's interests.
Listen to Issues Early
Make use of social media listening tools to get ahead of potential issues. Once this is done well and consistently, you can prevent issues from turning into full-blown crisis.
By listening intently, you can know how people are feeling about your brand and over time, you will understand the difference between grumblings and a significant change in sentiment towards your business.
As a bonus, you will notice If your brand is suddenly seeing a sharp increase in positive mentions as well!
Have a Crisis Communication Plan
Having a crisis communication plan help to respond quickly before anything gets out of hand. Your goal should be to respond within an hour of the crisis being spread.
Here are some of the things your social media communication plan should include:
The process to internally communicating the crisis.
Differentiating what is actually a crisis and a disgruntled consumer.
Approval process for what will be posted on social media.
Pre-approved external messaging.
A link to your social media policy.
Responsibilities of each department.
Tip: No matter how well your crisis plan is, do not expect to resolve the issues with a few well-timed posts. You need to know that your target audience is looking to you for your response and you need to be quick.
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