Managing A Social Media Crisis Successfully
When talking about social media, things can come out of nowhere. A post could go viral overnight, but something can also turn sour in a click of a finger. Unfortunately, with everything being online, it is more difficult to quickly clear up the things that reflect badly on your business as everyone could potentially get involved. Obviously, it is better to prevent a crisis, but we understand that it might not be that simple. If you want to know the top methods for solving social media crisis’, then carry on reading this article.
Social Media Policy
Don’t be surprised if you find a social media crisis occurring from a post one of your employees has published. We understand everyone makes mistakes, but it is good to be prepared so you can avoid problems for your company. A good way to be prepared is to have a social media policy for your business. This will include a clear set of guidelines for all employees when using the company’s social media accounts or posting about the company on personal accounts. Things to consider within this policy is copyright laws, privacy, confidentiality and branding. Making sure you have a set of rules is key.
Educating Employees
If a crisis does happen, you want to make sure everyone in your company is on the same page. The first thing to do is to inform all members of staff what has happened and what the next steps are to control this issue. If everyone is educated on the matter, then it will be easier for you to work together as a team. It also means preventing employees from taking on the crisis into their own hands and potentially making the situation worse.
Engage not Argue
A good step forward to resulting a crisis is to make a statement on behalf of the company. However, making a lot of statements won’t necessarily be enough as engaging with people one to one might resolve the issue quicker. Keeping it short and professional is the key in this situation as you don’t want to argue with people and make matters worse. You can either reply publicly on the social media platform or requested to speak to them in a private message, on email or via phone call. Getting involved in a fight online is the last thing you want for your company.
Learn from your experience
If you resolve a social media crisis successfully, then it will soon turn into old news. Now it’s time to reflect on the situation and record it so you can figure out what went wrong and how to avoid this in the future. Sit down as a company with the different departments and take opinions and thoughts from each view to work out maybe a new set of guidelines or a new approach from your social media team.
Hire A Digital Agency
If you have already been through a social media crisis then you’ll know how stressful it can be. If you haven’t experienced this then you might be worried about getting your posts right for social media. Either way, you might want to think about hiring a digital agency that has the experts in place to create content that sticks by your brand, follow your guidelines and can also be on hand when things start going wrong. Find out more about our social media management services online or call us on 01925 552050.