By now, everyone has seen the viral video of a passenger being taken off a United Airlines flight. What happened next is a text book example of how to do PR wrong. The United Airlines CEO’s inadequate response sparked even more outcry on social media. Now, I am not going to get into what they did wrong, but I am going to talk about why everyone organization, whether your a small business, tourism organization, or a large company, you need to have a social media crisis communication plan in place. It doesn’t matter how big your brand is anymore, social media gives us all the same opportunities to be creative, stretch our reach and engage with consumers from all over the world. if you’re prepared with the right crisis plan, a social media crisis can be transformed from a negative situation into yet another positive brand opportunity. Remember it takes 20 years to build a reputation and less than 5 minutes to destroy it. Your brand should be prepared for when a potential crisis occurs.
A social media crisis plan is a crisis communication strategy. Brands crises have not changed, but with the power of social media, how we respond to them have. With social media, everything is public now. When a customer complains, both your brands’ and their followers may see the compliant. When a crisis starts to form, many customers complaining at once, the entire world could see it unfold. Having your brand prepared with a social media crisis plan means, you will know exactly how to respond to a crisis, and how to resolve the situation as quickly as possible.
Tips for Social Media Crisis Communication Management in Today’s Digital World
Listen and Be Present
Many companies have been accused of not responding to their customers on social media. This can be easily solved if the company is set-up properly to handle customer service problems through their social media channels. In today’s digital age, not listening to what your customers are saying online can reflect poorly on your brand. By responding to the simplest of issues or concerns, your brand will appear as helpful and shows your customers that they matter. By listening to the chatter on social media, you may pick up on a potential issue and have time to address it before it blows up. Most brand disasters could be prevented just by listening and being prepared to address it before it escalates.
Be Transparent
By removing negative comments, brands can appears as if they are ignoring the problem or don’t care about their customers. It is crucial to the brands online success and reputation to be honest and upfront about any issues your organization may be facing. If you made a mistake, admit it, apologize and do everything you can to correct it. All humans make mistakes. Your customers don’t expect you to be perfect, they just expect you to be transparent and honest with them. They are following you on your social channels for a reason, you want to be part of something bigger than themselves, they want to feel part of your online tribe / community, and that means not betraying their trust with back-peddling.
Thoughtful Responses
Take some time to put the effort into writing a thoughtful reply to address your customers’ concerns. This will show your consumers that you care about their experience and are willing to address their problems. This is actually a great way of actually turning critics into fans. It is known that consumers who receive a reply in response to their negative review, have turned around and posted a positive review, with some even deleting their negative one. Caring about your customers will benefit your brand. It will build trust and allows you to further nurture the relationships with your customers. Grants word-of-mouth recommendations from current customers are much more influential than your own messaging, plus it will attract new customers.
Turn a Negative Into A Positive
The way your brand handles a social media crisis can also help you rebuild trust with your audience. Being honest and transparent, putting your customers before your brand, owning up to a mistake, can help you create opportunities to redeem yourself. Even though your brand is getting all of this bad media, it’s still attention and a chance for you to get your brand recognized and allows you the chance to turn a negative situation into a positive one. By managing social media effectively, you can actually use it as an opportunity to show current and potential customers the good things you do and how much you actually care about them.
Stay calm through out the entire crisis. A crisis situation is not easy but by having a plan and being prepared for a social media crisis can make it a lot less stressful. Everybody makes mistakes, it’s about how you handle that situation and following your plan. By addressing the negative complaints in a timely manner an being transparent, will help you preserve your brands reputation, and show your customers you care about them.
