As a Digital Marketer, I dream of the day when something I do goes viral. That is one of the reasons why I have improved my marketing skills tremendously with the help of Harvard’s guide to links. Though some times things go viral for the wrong reasons and you have a Social Media crisis on your hands – eek!
It’ll become pretty evident when you need to start worrying about Social Media issues, this post is about when not to worry.
Don’t worry if
- You have had one tweet about something by someone that has a few followers, no one is going to see it
- You have had one tweet from someone who tweets a lot, it will get lost in the other products.
- The tweet your worried about has no retweets and no responses.
- Your customer care team (if you have one) has it under control and hasn’t escalated it
Do worry if
The tweet comes from a celebrity. As frustrating as this is, some people hang on their favourite celebrity’s ever tweet, take their words as gospel and retweet them to propagate it’s spreading. Jump on this, let them know you’ll investigate and get them a resolution quick smart. However, be careful not to treat them (too) preferentially, other customers an potential customers may start to notice and they won’t be impressed.
If the person had a high Klout score (respond as above). Note: If they’re not a celebrity, they’re probably an expert in some field. If that’s a field that directly impacts your business the situation is a little more crucial.
You’ve done something potentially illegal, immoral, offensive, etc. and extraordinary (in a bad way) and it goes viral. PR need to get on this and get an official response out.
What to do in a Social Media crisis?
Don’t panic now. You should have a procedure in order to deal with this. If you don’t, now may be the time to start writing up your crisis management plan. This should include:
- List of key people to contact regarding various topics, and their contact details
- Timescales in which you should respond
- Templated initial responses to acknowledge issue
How will I know if there is a crisis?
While some customer will expect this, no one else genuinely believes you’ll have someone watching your social media channels 24/7. You can set up an alert to let you know when anyone is talking about you. This is possible through most Social Media monitoring tools.
Need more help? You can always tweet me, Facebook me or send a good old fashioned telegramemail.
