When told about social media, most brands only think about using it for business and as a part of their marketing strategy. Though in the recent past, some brands have started using it as an essential tool to reach out to their fans and offer customer service. What’s most important is that in any case of crisis or an emergency, social media can turn out to be a great tool for managing the crisis. When we talk about crisis, it can be anything from a negative comment, outrage or publicity.

Well, it’s for sure that you are reading this before you need it, but life is much better and easier if you are prepared for it, right? A crisis we all know can hit anyone anytime but at the same time it’s a smart step to know how to manage as well as prevent any crisis. Apart from all the tools, using Social Media as a crisis management tool can save and maintain a brand’s reputation in a big way.

Using social media as a crisis management tool will help brands across to reach a wider audience in less time. Today, apart from known brands, even non-profit organizations, corporate industries, government bodies and varied sectors are picking up social media and integrating it as a crisis management tool.

Social media in a crisis helps in evaluating the conversations about the brand, analyzing the threat level, set the priority of taking an action and determine how to respond to a crisis.

Let’s have a look at few examples:

After Hurricane Sandy, Justin Auciello created a Facebook page called Jersey Shore Hurricane News to report updates in real time with 191,000 “likes.”

American Red Cross case: In 2011, a Red Cross employee accidently tweeted something personal about drinking Dogfish Beer to its network of 260,000 followers. The Red Cross deleted the post and turned an incident into a fund raiser with Dogfish Beer asking fans to donate to Red Cross.

Café Coffee Day (CCD) was hit with #CCDSUCKS crisis. CCD’s interaction with its fans began like this,

“We apologize for the goof up. This will not be taken lightly.”
“Thanks for letting us know and we are sorry.”
“Give us a number to call. When resolved, we’ll tell everyone about it on Twitter. Publicly.”

Wherein consumers responded: “Why do you need a number to talk? Use Twitter!”

Brand managers took notice of the complete scenario and began saving the brand with supportive tweets like:

“I think we need to give CCD another chance.”
“Opposite to what others think about @CafeCoffeeDay I love them.”

Such a response from CCD saved them.

Burger King: The Burger King Twitter account was recently hacked and the person who gained access to the account changed the name to McDonald’s and began promoting McDonald’s in their tweets. By the time Burger King had regained control of their account and issued an apology, they had gained 30,000 new followers. This led some to suggest it wasn’t a crisis at all, but actually wielded positive results. Either way, it taught us all a lesson in the importance of password security.

Consumer opinions and views spread far easily and very quickly through social media. This is one reason why brands should use social media for building their brand’s reputation.

A lesson that other brands could learn from this crisis situation and the way it was handled is that even an isolated incident should not be ignored by a brand on social media. If a brand comes to know before that such a one-off crisis has arisen, the brand could point out first too rather than being pointed out by the fans.

In a nutshell, a crisis management has three major stages namely:
– The monitoring before an incident or crisis which helps keep things in place all the time
– The responses garnered during the crisis management and the responses after
– The lessons evolved from the complete crisis management using social media

Image Courtesy: oBizMedia.com

On the other hand, for brands which are already there on Social Media, it would be great if brand managers stay prepared and up to date for handling any crisis situation. Have a look at a few things that they need to keep in mind and consistently consider.

• Monitor: Start with the monitoring first, set up the monitoring tools for reputation management.
• Plan: Always have a plan in advance: In the middle of a crisis, its not a great idea to decide what needs to be done and who is going to do it.
• Responsibility Chain: Have a clear, in fact a very clear chain of responsibility across the teams. Establish a perfectly set chain of command within the teams.
• Crisis Scenario (s): What can be the reason of crisis and what cannot be? Make sure a list of all the factors is made to avoid even a minutest of reasons.
• Fix Issue, Take Action: Now, this completely depends on what the crisis is and who’s wrong. Depending on the same, plan the action of resolving the crisis.
• Don’t suppress the issue: Trying to choke or repress the crisis on Social Media is like extreme gas on fire. So it’s better if it’s left to breathe.
• Track the Source: It’s better to find the actual source and deal with it technically, directly, positively and with subtlety.
• Review in the end: Later, when it’s all done, go back and review. It helps one to analyze the factors responsible for crisis, how the steps or techniques used during the crisis helped and how a future crisis management plan can be planned out.

Source: tatudigital.com

Using social media as a crisis management tool can help you convert the negative influence faced by your brand or business into a positive one. A sincere and consistent customer service would go a long way in building your brand’s reputation and at the same time creating a good impression on fans or customers. These customers then talk positive about your brand which helps you garner potential customers too.

Therefore, brands hit with crisis should never wait for that moment when the crisis goes completely out of hand. A quick response is very important followed by turning the crisis into an opportunity with powerful techniques one can implement through social media. What do you think? Do share your thoughts with us in the comments below.