As a social media manager, you’re constantly looking for ways to improve the quality of your content, grow your followers, and drive traffic to the company website. However, it’s also important to prepare for rainy days.
One of the biggest problems a marketing team can face is a social media crisis.
These usually occur due to a blunder on social media, a major problem with a product or service, or a global emergency, like a pandemic.
Regardless of the cause or specifics, a social media crisis requires a response and subsequent action.
Without a proper plan or the right tools, one error can have severe consequences for your brand.
In this article, we discuss what a social media crisis is and how to make a social media crisis management plan.
- What is a social media crisis?
- The upside of a social media crisis
- How to manage a social media crisis
- Using technology for social media crisis management
What is a social media crisis?
A social media crisis is an online incident, usually stemming from a social media account, that could harm a brand or stakeholder’s reputation.
It’s important to clarify that a social media crisis doesn’t refer to a scathing complaint from a customer or an expletive-filled comment on a post.
Rather, it’s when you experience a frenzy of negative feedback on your page or damning reports from other outlets.
What causes social media crises?
A social media crisis rarely occurs out of nowhere.
Whether it was caused by a knowingly offensive opinion or a lapse of judgment by the community manager, you can usually identify the problem quickly.
Typical causes of such a crisis include sharing social media content that:
- Makes fun of a certain group of people;
- Discusses false or potentially dangerous information;
- Sladers an individual or group of people;
- Takes advantage of people, groups, or events to promote products or services;
- Is offensive, racist, or prejudiced in any way.
You’ve likely come across a distasteful tweet or a TikTok that rubbed you the wrong way.
When these types of posts spark anger, outrage, or large-scale controversy, they can cause major problems for the brand responsible.
Without a social media crisis plan, these issues can worsen, causing long-term damage to the organisation.
Not all crises stem from off-colour social media remarks.
They may come from marketing communication errors, poorly worded copy, reports of employee misconduct, customer comments, or journalistic “hit pieces”. Even if the comment or post is retracted, the internet never forgets.
No matter how well-managed your PR and social media are, you must have a plan for when things go wrong. This is what we call a social media crisis management plan.
What is social media crisis management?
Social media has become one of the most popular communication channels between brands and consumers.
This has been hugely beneficial for companies, giving them a direct link to communicate and engage with millions of users all day, every day. Plus, it’s a cost-effective advertising medium.
However, there are two sides to every coin.
Social media is often the first place consumers go to complain about experiences, products, services, or brands.
Why? Their opinion takes seconds to share and can travel around the world like wildfire. Social media provides all users with instant validation.
If your brand makes a faux pas online, there’s nowhere to hide.
To prevent a misstep from escalating, you should have a step-by-step emergency plan. In crisis, speed and timing are key, so there’s no use waiting for an incident to happen before you act.
Over one-third of users who complain on social media expect a response from the brand in under a half hour. 94% expect a response within four hours.
Your social media crisis management plan should be ready in case things go south.
Examples of a social media crisis
There have been many high-profile examples of social media crises over the years.
The long-term impacts on the brands have differed, but for the most part, major corporations tend to bounce back.
Why? They respond and engage their crisis management plan effectively. Now, let’s take a look at some examples of crises and how companies have dealt with them.
Balenciaga
Source: The Cut
In 2022, fashion brand, Balenciaga came under fire scrutiny online after releasing adverts featuring children wearing “inappropriate” clothing.
Although the brand’s reputation took a hit initially, its quick social media crisis response helped to stem prolonged controversy.
Burger King
Source: Burger King X
On International Women’s Day (2021), Burger King’s official Twitter (now X) account, posted a seemingly offensive tweet that “Women belong in the kitchen”, sparking uproar.
Although they removed the tweet, apologised, and provided an explanation, they came under fire. Their transparency and openness meant this didn’t damage the brand long term.
The upside of a social media crisis
Here’s the thing, not all crises are net negatives.
They can often be spun in your favour, especially if it’s a genuine error. In many cases, how you deal with a crisis is more important than the issue itself.
Here’s how you turn crisis into opportunity.
#1 Communicate with your wider audience
In times of crisis, communication is essential.
As soon as you detect a problem, you can react or get ahead of it with a well-intentioned, clear, and concise message to your entire customer base.
Even social media users who aren’t aware of the issues you’re facing may see the message and look favourably at the company.
This type of approach is commonplace among service providers, like electricity or internet companies. They can provide immediate critical response messages and updates, keeping customers in the loop.
Learning from Mistakes: The Path to Mastering Social Media Customer Service
#2 Personal responses
Along with communication to a wider audience, social media allows you to send direct messages or respond to specific comments.
Replying personally to your customers demonstrates proactivity and care, which reflects positively on your brand and values.
Many companies use social media platforms, usually Twitter or Facebook, to deal with customer service problems.
When problems crop up, they have the infrastructure in place to handle messages and complaints from individuals.
#3 Build trust through transparency
During times of crisis, you’ve probably seen companies or organisations withhold information, drumming up even more attention to the issue.
While this is sometimes necessary, it’s not always best practice. You can use moments like this to garner trust among your followers through clear and transparent messaging.
For example, airlines put positive spins on flight delays by updating customers on their travel itineraries or contingency options via social media.
How to manage a social media crisis
By now, you know what a social media crisis is.
More importantly, you should recognise the importance of having a social media crisis management plan.
That said, when dealing with a high-pressure situation, it can be tough to know where to start. But, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.
Here’s your 9-step crisis social media crisis management game plan.
#1 Identify the problem source and take stock
You may be alerted to a social media crisis in a number of ways.
One of the most common methods of detecting an issue is seeing a sudden influx of social media messages, notifications, emails, or calls.
As soon as something seems up, your team should enter crisis mode and immediately look for the source of the problem. Note that not all crises come from an online post.
Once you’ve identified the source of the problem, take stock of the situation.
Establish whether your brand has already been damaged, determine where the most backlash is coming from, and look for any standout trends from the comments or messaging.
This process lays the foundations for an appropriate response. Having a step-by-step plan reduces the risk of a panicked response that could make things worse.
#2 Define the problem internally
Having taken stock of the problem, your team must then define precisely what you’re dealing with so everyone is on the same page.
This may seem pedantic but it’s critical to ensure all staff fully understand the issue. Not all people will have the same view on the situation so getting a collective narrative is key.
From here, you can start brainstorming solutions and messaging.
#3 Partake in social listening
Social listening means monitoring the activity and responses to your social media accounts.
The process is important for gauging how the audience feels about your brand, a post, or a specific situation. Public sentiment will help you decide how to act next. Make sure to identify the most common opinions and discuss them.
#4 Postpone any scheduled posts
In a social media crisis, your first post is critical.
The last thing you want is for a prescheduled post to go live, making light of the situation or causing further harm. While you don’t want to disrupt your marketing campaign, consider how a scheduled post would land among your audience.
Postpone or cancel any scheduled posts until you make your first response. If future scheduled posts are likely to cause problems, you’ll have to reconsider the campaign entirely.
However, this can wait until you deal with the issues at hand.
Pro tip: having a scheduling tool with a social media calendar makes it quick and easy to restructure your social campaigns or reschedule individual posts.
Source: Sendible
#5 Create a crisis plan outline
If you don’t already have a crisis management plan, take note of how the situation has gone to this point.
The learnings and insights will help when you develop one in the future. Focus on the flaws in your marketing strategy, potential disruptions in the chain of command (e.g. who signs off on marketing materials), and how similar issues might crop up again.
After putting together your crisis plan outline, you can present it to shareholders or management at a later date.
Upon approval, you may then put together your detailed plan. But, this can wait for now.
#6 Make an official response
Making a hasty response without much thought can lead to further problems, but failing to comment quickly enough will also spell trouble.
Don’t sit on the fence amidst a crisis. Be sure to make a calculated decision. After evaluating and coming up with a plan, make an official response to the issue.
If the crisis was caused by a post from one of your accounts, perhaps your first response will be to delete it.
Next, you may comment that your team is investigating the situation and you’ll comment shortly. This won’t always work but it’s an acknowledgement that can buy you time. In some cases, you’ll issue an apology or explanation right away.
Be transparent where possible. It’s important to take responsibility rather than pass the blame elsewhere. This helps with credibility and should repair some trust with your followers.
#7 Engage with followers empathetically
Posting your initial response addresses the situation but it’s not enough.
You must also get boots on the ground and respond to comments and direct messages. This will feel like hard work and you’ll have to deal with nasty comments. However, demonstrating a level of care, in the form of a response is important.
All your responses should be off the same hymn sheet but not identical.
Again, you don’t need to place blame or come up with long-winded excuses. Make your responses short, transparent, and definitive. Avoid opening long comment chains and don’t argue.
It’s difficult to get away with hollow words when they’re displayed in front of millions of social media users, so don’t try to. Although you won’t be able to engage with every comment, connect with as many people as you can.
#8 Continue internal discourse
Throughout a crisis, transparency is paramount externally and internally.
Since your customer service and marketing teams are at maximum output, they need all the help they can to stay on course.
Continue to update them and keep them up to date with the latest updates and progress on the situation.
To avoid accidental slip-ups from your team, provide them with the information they need, the details they should share, and how to deliver their messages. This makes life easier for your employees and helps keep messages consistent.
#9 Learn from your mistakes
At this point, the peak of the crisis may be over.
Or, you may need to put out several more posts for a week or two before moving on. Each situation is unique and so, you’ll have to act accordingly.
Either way, don’t expect everything to cool down overnight. Be patient and ride the waves as they come.
The most important thing to do once the crisis has concluded is to learn from your mistakes. It’s generally a good idea to create a report or case study so all the information can be accessed quickly in the future.
It may take a while for your business to bounce back. Customers typically appreciate it if you involve them.
For example, you could share that you’re changing your policies to prevent misinformation from coming out again. Alternatively, you might publish a poll to involve your followers in certain decisions.
Using technology for social media crisis management
Navigating a social media crisis isn't easy but with a management plan, you can minimise the damage.
That said, getting through a tough situation when time is of the essence means you’ll need every tool available at your disposal.
The reality is that no matter how effective your team is, social media management programs will help.
The technology used in a management tool, like Sendible’s, benefits virtually every element of your crisis management plan.
Your crisis action strategy will be more efficient, faster, and collaborative, which could make all the difference.
With that, let’s take a closer look at how Sendible’s core features help in a social media crisis. You’ll also learn how the technology may reduce the risk of encountering a crisis in the first place.
Single dashboard access
Sendible gives social media managers access to a single dashboard to manage direct messages and monitor comments.
Managers can also delegate specific messages to team members, offering speedier customer service. These features allow seamless communication and management in a crisis.
With the single dashboard, you may also view social profiles on a variety of platforms.
You’re a click away from plug-ins like Canva and WordPress.
This means you can put together a graphic and update your website information quickly and easily.
Without this type of technology, you would have to log into individual profiles to access each of these features, eating into your valuable time.
Team collaboration
The Sendible management tool is designed for collaboration among teams.
Multiple members log into the program and share access to content libraries (with brand assets, hashtag lists, evergreen content, etc.).
Managers set access tiers, giving certain staff exclusive access to projects or documents.
Sendible includes a handy feature that allows users to assign tasks to specific colleagues which helps everyone stay up to date on who is in charge of what.
In a social media crisis, one of the most important features is the approval workflow.
This essentially creates a chain of command where posts cannot go live until they’re signed off by the relevant team member. This also helps prevent major crises from occurring from the get-go.
Since many modern media teams work remotely, collaboration features are key during a crisis.
Social media scheduling tool
As you can imagine, Sendible’s scheduling tool is a huge time-saver, allowing you to create content ahead of time and plug it into the calendar.
During a crisis, it’s even more valuable. With Sendible, the calendar allows you to visualise the entire schedule, displaying each post for every platform.
From a glance, you can see what posts are coming up. So, if a crisis hits, you can quickly postpone, pause, or cancel upcoming content, without having to log into individual accounts. To boot, you can schedule new posts easily and everyone on the team can preview them.
One-click analytics
One of the first steps in your crisis management plan is to identify the problem post. Next, you need to take stock of the situation and pay attention to what people are saying.
With Sendible’s one-click analytics, you can generate in-depth reports for your social channels in seconds.
This will give you instant insight into your audience and post engagements, helping you with your analysis.
Sendible also allows you to produce Google Analytics reports to determine the impact of social media on your website. This can help you decide whether you need to communicate throughout the crisis through your website as well as your social profiles.
Priority inbox
Sendible’s Priority Inbox feature allows you to prioritise profiles you want to view engagement for, so you won’t miss an important notification.
You can interact with users from different social platforms all in one place. This makes it much easier to manage high volumes of messages during a crisis.
The Priority Inbox has a built-in filter so you can sort messages according to a variety of tags, such as profile, date, or archived status.
Get through a social media crisis with Sendible
Speed is king during a social media crisis. However, rushing a panicked response inevitably leads to more trouble.
It’s important to strike the right balance. Once you get to the root of the issue, take responsibility and come up with a way to win your audience back. This is a process with several key steps.
Your crisis management plan will help you get out of the stickiest of situations. Even so, it’s not easy.
To make each step more efficient and to ensure all team members are on the same page, get your hands on a social media management tool.
As we discussed, Sendible’s tool is just what you need in a crisis. Plus, it will help you avoid one in the first place.
If you like what you’ve read, sign up for Sendible’s free 14-day trial today. We don’t need a credit card and you can cancel at any time.
