Are you ready for a social media crisis, should one strike your brand?

What would you do if you woke up one morning to find dozens, hundreds or even thousands of negative tweets and Facebook comments flooding in, all expressing negative sentiment about your brand? How would you feel, and better yet, how would you react?

Would you take the opportunity to strengthen your client relationships and create new and stronger brand advocates? Or would you do, like most brands, and panic, feel overwhelmed and potentially damage your brand even further?

Unfortunately these days, this is not just a hypothetical question, but a reality that more and more companies, from brands-of-one to mega corporations, are finding themselves unexpectedly faced with. And truthfully, the majority of them are failing big time!

Common misconceptions

Many people and companies have this misconception that, should a crisis arise, they’ll simply be able to wing it. After all, they have years of customer experience, and they don’t plan to do anything to anger their customers anyway!

But that’s both the beauty and the beast behind the power of social media. You can make a human error, or you can launch a hopeful campaign, and in either case, you can be woken to a full-blown social media attack.

Let’s take the cases of Timothy’s Coffee and Wotif.

Both companies, one a well-loved cafe, and the other a major online reservation service, decided to build brand awareness and acquire new customers by means of a positive Facebook campaign. Both companies innocently underestimated the magnitude of the response they would receive, and therefore could not fully deliver on their promise – launching them both into a full blown social media attack, and giving them much more nation-wide brand awareness than they had bargained for!

Everybody is susceptible to an attack

In today’s social reality, anything can turn into a social media crisis. From a simple hashtag campaign (remember #McDstories and #QantasLuxury?), to creatively challenged print campaigns (Chapstick, Groupon and The Circuit Factory), right through to human error or a lack of moral or ethical judgement (Susan G. Komen, PayPal and so many others).

The worse part, is that a social media crisis can strike at any time, and usually does so when you’re least expecting it. To top this off, the damaging effects can be brand-threatening and long-term. I’m talking loss of brand credibility, loss of customers, and ultimately, it can have a negative impact on your business’s bottom line.

However, this doesn’t need to be the case. It is possible to turn a negative brand experience into a positive PR opportunity, just as it’s possible for you to come out of a social media crisis with stronger and even more loyal customers then you had going in.

All it takes is the right social media crisis plan

Being prepared with the right social media crisis plan means:

• Being able to detect a crisis in the making – before it spirals out of control.
• Knowing exactly how to respond – and how to optimize that response for maximum reach.
• Positioning yourself as the primary source of credible information, news and updates concerning the crisis.
• Having the ability to leverage the powerful help of your still happy and loyal customers.
• Regaining complete control of the situation, in minimum time.
• Strengthening the valuable relationships you currently share with your customers, while making new ones.

Imagine being able to take such a negative situation and turn it into a positive brand experience, and a positive publicity opportunity!

In fact, the Altimeter Group recently released a report stating that 76% of social media crises could have been averted, had the companies invested in a social media crisis plan before the attack struck. Seventy-six percent! Those brands are surely kicking themselves today!

But that doesn’t need to be you!

You don’t have to follow in their unprepared footsteps.

Start by learning from their mistakes

There are some common (and huge) mistakes that brands tend to make, over and over again, whilst in the midst of a social media attack. These mistakes are simply the result of being caught off guard, overwhelmed and unprepared. They’re also mistakes that can be completely avoided.

These mega mistakes include:

• Deleting negative comments
• Not taking the attack seriously
• Hiding silently, in hopes that it will just go away
• Letting your frustration get the best of you and responding negatively to the comments

Taking any one of these actions will instantly escalate your social media crisis from bad to worse.

Alternative actions

In order to avoid taking part in that seventy-six percent, here are some alternative actions you could – and should – take:

• Give your unhappy customers a voice and allow them to express their discontent with your brand.
• Go a step further and reply to each negative comment with an apology and a personalized message. (Do not write the same generic message to each person.)
• Take responsibility for your actions, and sincerely apologize to your customers.
• Post an official response detailing every single event and detail concerning the crisis.

By acknowledging the crisis, taking responsibility for it and addressing your customers’ concerns, you will begin to regain control of the situation – putting an end to the attacks. Once you fess-up and take responsibility, there’s really nothing left for anybody to say, so the attacks will diminish and you’ll start to see positive comments begin to take shape on your wall. 

Whether you’re a small brand-of-one, a world-wide reputable brand, or a firm who is responsible for the reputation of their clients, social media crises don’t discriminate. They can attack anyone, at any given moment, whether you’re prepared for it or not.

But if being prepared means benefiting from the crisis and strengthening both your brand and your customer relationships, wouldn’t you want to be a part of that select, and very wise few? Especially since all it requires is a little preparation and a clearly defined response strategy and plan-of-action!

So I’ll ask you again. If you woke up to find yourself in the midst of a social media attack, what would you do? Would you take the opportunity to strengthen your client relationships and create new and stronger brand advocates? Or would you do, like most brands, and panic, feel overwhelmed and potentially damage your brand even further?

Are you ready for a social media crisis, should one strike your brand?

I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences in the comments section below! … Melissa

Thanks Meslissa for a fantastic post on what I consider to be a very important topic. Melissa Agnes is a social media crisis specialist, and the creator of the Social Media Crisis Academy. She has a passion for helping brands protect themselves from a crisis – before they find themselves faced with one. The Social Media Crisis Academy is an all-inclusive, 4 module training program that teaches brands, beginning to end, how to properly protect themselves from a crisis, and how to turn a social media crisis into a positive PR opportunity.