The hope is that you won’t encounter a major crisis during your time at the helm of a social media account. But by preparing for one in case, you could save a considerable amount of stress, time and possibly money.

Last month’s United Airlines debacle (where a customer was filmed being forcibly removed from his seat and dragged down an aisle) was a pretty dire episode made 100 times worse thanks to the speed and hunger of social media.

For a start, the video went viral. Several passengers happily took pictures and video footage. Then the CEO’s lack of apology, in which he referred to the passenger as “belligerent”, also went viral. It was one disaster after another, aided and abetted by eager social media users who got busy creating memes (the bane of any commercial social media manager). The airline’s stock price dropped and the company had a battle on its hands.
The fact is that crises can no longer be easily contained or hushed up. Research from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer suggests that 28% of crises spread globally in 24 hours. The days of Jack’s Lumber Yard doing over its customers and the consequences being enacted two decades later are long gone.

Yet it takes on average 21 hours for companies to issue meaningful external communications to defend themselves. More worryingly, 50% of communications advisers surveyed believe their organisations are not adequately prepared to handle a crisis.

So what's the best way to make sure you’re prepared?

Monitor everything

Monitor, monitor and monitor a bit more again. Monitor mentions of your company, misspellings of your company’s name, your competitors’ names, your staff. Monitor the mainstream and industry press and watch for all your industry’s related keywords, using Twitter's Advanced Search and List functions.
Stay on top of any interviews your chief executives do to make sure nothing gets taken out of context or misconstrued and be ready for if they do.

Streamline your approvals process

Yes, it’s important to make sure nothing goes out without approval but to do this you absolutely must have a watertight, speedy and efficient approvals system in place.

Make sure everyone has a copy of (and reads) the social media policy

Everyone in the company should be on top of what they can and can’t reasonably (and legally!) say on social media. It’s a good idea to run social media training for everyone in the company and ensure they fully know the consequences of “bad practise” in this area.

Plan

And, of course, you need a disaster plan outlining what you will do in the event of a PR crisis.

The plan should identify key roles and responsibilities and potentially contain different strategies for different levels of crisis.

In the event of a major crisis, 24/7 monitoring might be necessary. Make sure you know who’s doing what at every stage. Crucial to your plan is that everyone involved knows how to react, including the client, and nobody deviates from this. It’s worth running a couple of test-case scenarios to make sure everyone’s on the same page should a crisis occur. Consider also having a bank of pre-written support content available and pre-written statements that can be tweaked according to the severity or nature of the crisis.

Remember that speed matters a lot in situations like this so the more prepared you can be in advance, the better you can respond and easier the whole thing will be.

Things to avoid at all costs include knee-jerk reactions, arguing or providing a personal opinion, blocking people who disagree, deleting critical comments, responding too hastily without spellchecking and stepping outside the brand’s tone of voice. If a discussion needs to be had, encourage the poster or commenter to have it away from social media. Speed and reactivity are crucial, but so too is preparation and moderation.

Press the pause button

Check your automated posts. Nobody wants you to be sharing jokes and #WednesdayMotivation quotes when you’re being hauled across the coals for an employment issue. Do this across all channels and remember to halt things like email newsletters too until your recovery plan has kicked in.

 

By Gavin Hammar, founder of Sendible

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