Crisis Communications and Social Media

 Oops.  Something went wrong and people are starting to find out about it.  Your organization is at risk.  Certainly, the Brand and Reputation are at risk.  What can you do to salvage the situation?  Rumors and speculation run quickly out of control.  Even if you have a press conference to address the issues, there is no certainty that your message will prevail.

 

The first and most urgent part of the solution is to acknowledge the problem and state the facts of it as cleanly and clearly as you can from your perspective.  A press release can do this, but reporters don’t go to press conferences anymore, they use Twitter as their news feed.  You have to put your press release on social media.  Which platforms will you use?  To answer that question, you should know which platforms you already use.  If you already have followers of your organization then they might be your best advocates to spread your perspective of the problem to their friends and the rest of the world.

 

There may still be value in having a press conference if your organization is large and influential.  A successful conference might influence the national newspapers and the evening news but you might get embarrassing questions asked of you and then that becomes the new viral social media image or video.  If your organization is not large or influential then you should stick with social media.

 

The response to a crisis that is reported on social media needs to include direct postings through the same social media being used to spread the crisis.  Day (2020) provides eight basic principles to follow within social media, which are pretty good rules for a Public Relations person to use with all media: 1) take responsibility for the portions of the crisis which you had any control over, 2) direct your response toward the general public rather than employees or board members – don’t use words that remove human emotional qualities, 3) be careful and well thought out in the response – don’t make it worse by slinging accusations, 4) control other scheduled press releases which might be misunderstood as ignoring the current crisis, 5) Review your organizations positive history, 6) allow for negative responses – don’t delete them and 7) provide updates as they are known until the issue is resolved.

 

Forbes (2021) provides additional guidelines to consider before any crisis emerges.  The prevention and planning category would include things like reviewing your organization’s mission and vision statements and reviewing the public image of the decision makers (board members, CEO, COO, etc.).  Lawyer-up before anything happens so that you have immediate advice and pre-existing non-disclosure agreements to help ensure that communication comes through the authorized channels.  Identify an information management team, its leader and which people will serve as spokespeople to the media.  Ensure clear and complete communication with those team members from the beginning of the crisis through to the end.

 

Regular use of social media can help to establish an organization as an insider or outsider to the social media world.  Use of social media only for advertising purposes can make the organization seem cold and less human (we hope that there are humans in the organization) but at the same time, providing social commentary that is unrelated to the business can alienate potential customers who disagree.  Having something positive to express which falls in line with the organization’s mission and vision would be more neutral ways of participating in the social media world with reduced risk of creating controversy.  Another way to reduce the controversy would be to ensure that a variety of people review the commentary and consider how different groups would interpret / understand it before anything is released.  Hager (2020) identified that the better times to post on social media have shifted largely to the work hours before noon.  True news items would have a priority for being earlier releases.  Responses to the day’s news would come later in the morning.  Crisis responses should not wait.

 

Walton, et. al. (2012) suggest that social media platforms can be used to a strategic advantage for crisis control.  Each platform provides multiple layers of how information is released (text, video, graphic) and if an organization already has a presence in multiple platforms that allows for a history of use prior to any crisis.  In this way, any crisis can appear as a chapter in a continuous narrative and all posts should be considered as tomorrow’s old news.  In other words, consider how the future will look at today’s responses to the crisis – will it appear as a continuous representation of the organization as compared to previous posts or will the response appear to be an interruption in the social media flow of information.  If it is part of the normal flow, it should be better accepted as normal.  If it is jarringly different (crafted by different people, suddenly technical or jargon-filled) then it will probably be viewed as coming from a different source in the organization – one that is unknown and therefore less trusted.

 

Let’s think about a process for reducing the use of social media to spread the news of your crisis and enhancing the use of social media to remedy the problem and restore, if not improve, your reputation and brand.

 

First, have a presence on social media.  Start to win allies ahead of any crisis.  Build a solid reputation of community service and use social media to spread the word.  This means that you must have some form of community service and you will need to designate at least one person to be your liaison between organizational activities and public awareness of them.  You will need photos and videos.  You need to engage members of the local community and members of your targeted consumer base.  Events such as fund-raisers for charity events (a 5-K run to support cancer research, for example) or donations made (such as allowing 10% of an employees’ paid time doing volunteer work for a non-profit organization – provide regular highlights of different employees’ volunteer time).  Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are currently the most used social media platforms – you can post the same information in slightly different variations on each of these.

 

Second, have a designated Liasson to the social media platforms you use.  Either a single dedicated person who authors each post or a team that rotates their contributions.  The public needs to be able to associate a person to the information they consume.  That same person needs to be the one posting the damage repair.

 

Third, at the point that you experience a crisis, determine what kind of crisis it is.  If it is a defect in your product or service, then you need to have an attorney review your announcements to reduce legal consequences later.  But a short one or two-sentence acknowledgement of the problem should go out immediately to prevent speculation that the organization remains ignorant of the problem.  If the company is indeed at fault, then the solution needs to be made public.                                                                              

If it is an employee problem – someone has documented their bad behavior either while representing the company or not – then the same steps above would apply.  Legal consequences rely on following proper protocol, especially if customer safety was compromised, so an attorney should review information about any actions being taken before that information is released.  Again, a short acknowledgement of the problem should be posted as soon as possible.

 

What about the public misreading a comment or a misstatement from an employee?  Perhaps the very Liasson you are relying upon to use social media to strengthen your reputation and brand has messed up by posting an insensitive comment.  The first step is to have a non-offending representative acknowledge the problem.  Then to have the offender apologize if they choose to do so.  Do not rush to a decision to censor or fire the employee but rather indicate that the situation is under review and that an update can be expected by a specific date in the future – perhaps one week later.  Before that deadline is achieved, a new update should be posted, even if it is simply announcing a need for more time.  In short, treat your social medial consumers like adults who deserve the truth, but do not succumb to mob rule or demands for specific actions, no matter how many people appear to support the comment/suggestion.

 

In short, keep a cool and calm approach to every crisis, but at the very least, acknowledge the crisis as soon as possible.

 

References

 

Amaresan, S. (2022, March 21). 10 Crisis Plan Communication Examples (and How to Write Your Own). HubSpot Blog. Retrieved May 7, 2022, from https://blog.hubspot.com/service/crisis-communication-plan

 

Day, C. (2020, January 29). How to Handle Bad PR on Social Media. Revive Social. Retrieved May 7, 2022, from https://revive.social/handle-bad-pr-on-social-media/

 

Forbes. (2021, March 23). 13 Tactics To Counter Negative Publicity When Internal Issues Become PR Crises: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2021/03/23/13-tactics-to-counter-negative-publicity-when-internal-issues-become-pr-crises/?sh=7e2895335dba.

 

Hager, C. (2020, October 28). Refocus Your Social Media Efforts During The Pandemic. Forbes. Retrieved May 7, 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2020/10/29/refocus-your-social-media-efforts-during-the-pandemic/?sh=26a71e261507

Walton, L. R., Seitz, H. H., & Ragsdale, K. (2012). Strategic use of YouTube during a national public health crisis: The CDC’s response to the 2009 H1N1 flu epidemic. Case Studies in Strategic Communication, 1, 25-37. http://cssc.uscannenberg.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/vlart3.pdf