Social Media Crisis Management
Since the business boom on social media, brands have become familiar with initiating and executing their crisis management plans. Consumers have become very vocal when engaging with brands that they follow. Aside from the positive attributes that social brings to brands, there is also a “not-so-great” social side when problems arise. Brands must be prepared to handle customers’ concerns before the issues escalate into a full-blown social sitcom. This preparedness package, the social media crisis management plan, allows brands to get in front of potential problems quickly. Before creating this plan, brands must understand and define the difference between a “problem” and a “crisis.” Issues are generally defined as having a significant impact yet can be solved at the customer service or managerial level. Social media crises, however, are problems that have a higher effect on negative feedback or opinion. At the social media crisis level, issues have a more significant potential of going viral and damaging the brand’s image to include its staff and stakeholders. Brands must have adequate policies established to help their team navigate the torrential hot waters that social media can bring. In today’s social world, consumers feel that it is their right to voice their opinions and issues on social media. Partly to embarrass the brand and partly to get their issues resolved quickly by spotlighting the negative light. To negate the brand’s possible damage, a crisis management plan is essential to handling matters across the social media domain.
Key Elements of a Crisis Management Plan
Several key elements should be included in a social media crisis management plan. A vital component is for brands to define and distribute throughout their guidelines while on social media. Those guidelines include directives on copyright standards, privacy standards, confidentiality standards, and guidance on the brand voice while on social. These policies are essential for staff because it sets the ground rules while working on social media and dismisses any assumptions of what is expected from those that represent the brand. For these social media policies, brands want to ensure a complete understanding to divert from potential issues. Once these policies are in place, brands should focus on the crisis management plan’s contents.
The crisis management plan should serve as an outline for staff to empower them with the tools they need when combatting a crisis. According to Hootsuite, brands need these seven (7) elements incorporated into their plan. The crisis management plan should include, at a minimum, guidelines and flowcharts to identify the type and magnitude of the issues. Also, there should be a departmental breakdown of roles and responsibilities, internal update guidance reports, the current contact information of staff, and a defined chain of command. It is a best practice to determine the approval authorities, scaling through all preapproved content, and to include a link to the brand’s social media policies. These elements will provide a baseline of direction if a social media crisis is evident. Additionally, brands should make sure that passwords are secure across all their social media platforms. It is also imperative that brands ensure that they have a robust social media listening program. Social media listening will be critical during these times. With social listening, brands will pick up on social chatter about their brand and communicate directly with the consumers or complainants. Social media listening provides brands the opportunity to fix the problem before further escalation. Software programs, such as Mention allow brands to track all chatter in the social realm through its “pulse” alerts. Pulse alerts notify brands when specific keywords are used online. Social listening could be one of the most vital elements in the social media crisis plan because of its nature of notification and its direct engagement pathway between brands and consumers.
Lastly, plans should define the roles that team members play during a crisis. Responsible responders should be assigned when these issues arise. I would deem them a “social media rapid response team.” These team members carry out the overall strategy, crisis monitoring, crisis content and identify which brand executive will act as the spokesperson or public relations point of contact. According to Social Media Today, these roles are critical when building the social media crisis management plan. Additionally, brands should practice “response drills” of potential issues that could surface in the future.
Case Studies
Social media crisis has affected many large brands over the years. Some brands handled their crisis with grace, while others fell by the wayside as far as public support. The two (2) brands discussed here are Sophora, a renowned makeup brand, and the H&M clothing retailer. Firstly, Sophora is a popular and loved global force in the makeup industry. Although Sophora has an extreme following, it fell into crisis in 2019 and made national and international headlines with racial profiling. The issue went viral when a music celebrity was racially profiled in one of its department stores. The post went viral almost instantly. Aside from the embarrassment that Sophora was now subjected to, a negative post involving their brand and racial profiling. Once this viral post started to gain momentum, Sephora quickly went into rapid response mode and apologized to the celebrity and the public. Then Sephora closed all its stores to conduct mandatory training on the very subject! Sephora did a great job handling this crisis and would not have done anything any differently. The second brand is H&M. H&M had a vast social media crisis when it released apparel depicting a black child wearing a monkey sweatshirt. The black community was outraged. In efforts to negate the social media post, H&M removed the advertisement and sent out a “blanket” apology. The apology was empty and not genuine. Since then, H&M has lost celebrity collaborators and influencers. In this case, I would have issued a more genuine apology and implemented some type of foundation that uplifted the love and admiration of the black culture (instead of making fun of it). These examples show how brands have reacted when faced with a social media crisis.
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