Good news travels fast... bad news is an express train
Taco Bell underestimated the power of social media when a video was posted of an employee calling the police when a deaf man tried to order food at a drive-thru. At time of publication, the post had over 1.5M views, and 15K+ comments. Needless to say, the majority are negative. It’s been shared 27K+ times, with the number still rising.
The video was posted by the mother of the victim.
The employee has since been fired and staff are being retrained.
Let’s take a look at the sentiment for the weeks following the posting of the video...
Quick Search sentiment analysis. Ouch!
Social media crisis vs social media issue
Is there a difference?
Lordy, yes. Many a crisis could have been avoided, if it had been addressed and dealt with while it was merely an issue. Some brands clam up when crisis hits, this is a perilous approach. A problem doesn’t go away if it’s ignored, it escalates. Establishing a social media crisis plan is crucial.
Effective social media listening starts with Talkwalker Alerts, but alerts on their own won’t give you a full understanding of what’s happening online. An analytics tool - such as Talkwalker - monitors and identifies critical information regarding your prospects, influencers, customers, and your competitors. How they’re reacting to and talking about your brand. Sentiment analysis helps you amplify messaging that’s receiving positive engagement, likewise, respond appropriately to negative comments. Trends will be identified to feed future marketing campaigns and product development. Customer pain points are revealed and you’ll identify actionable insights so you can better engage with customers and respond to online conversations about your brand and your industry.
Your plan should include how you’ll:
- Listen.
- Quickly assess the situation - you can only prep so much, sometimes it has to be off the cuff.
- Acknowledge the comment.
- Take the conversation offline, if possible.
- Respond quickly, and update.
- Solve.
Social media is a raw medium. It’s not a flashy billboard, a carefully planned event, a polished marketing campaign. It’s a spontaneous, unpredictable, mischievous, exhilarating child. It has to be watched at all times.
There are always telltale signs when an impending social media crisis is on the way, such as - mentions going through the roof, negative comments outweighing positive, general quirkiness.
A social media crisis can be a bad review of your product, an unpleasant comment about your customer service, a product recall, a major PR disaster.
— BlackGirlMagic (@blackgalsmagic) October 8, 2017
Yikes Dove, what were you thinking?!!
Dove has experienced more than its fair share of online virality, good and bad. October 2017, saw it hit the skids with the above ad. Harping back to truly offensive ads of old that portrayed black skin as something dirty, something that should be washed clean - social media users quickly spread the ad and their comments. Dove responded with an explanation and a ‘missed the mark’ apology.
Large or small issue, it’s going to bruise the reputation of your brand, if not totally wipe it out. Talkwalker Alerts hunts down mentions online and on Twitter, so you’re alerted immediately to what’s being said.
Introducing new & improved Talkwalker Alerts
Talkwalker Alerts - that’s FREE Talkwalker Alerts - is the essential tool for marketing and PR professionals. It’ll help you find a negative situation so you can stop it going viral and damaging your brand’s reputation. Sign up and you’ll receive alerts of all mentions about you online - news feeds, blogs, forums - and Twitter, that’ll warn of an oncoming social media crisis.
When I say you’ll receive alerts, I mean it - big time! We currently deliver 700,000+ alerts to 450,000+ inboxes every day - and those numbers are growing daily.
What will Talkwalker Alerts do for me?
Talkwalker Alerts is a free tool that monitors online mentions of your brand, your company, your content, your competitors, your services, your chosen keywords. It will pull out mentions from blogs, forums, websites, and… Twitter.
Yes, I said Twitter. Our latest awesome revamp means that Talkwalker Alerts is the only free tool that will follow brands on the Internet, and… social media.
How you can use Talkwalker Alerts to avoid a social media crisis
Never, ever leave social media unwatched. Have a contingency plan to cover in the event of vacations and sickness. Set up ways to monitor what’s being said about your company - good and bad.
To protect and promote your brand, your business, your reputation, yourself, set up Talkwalker Alerts to track what’s being talked about online. Watching in particular, for negative mentions of your brand so you can react quickly.
Set up an alert in 10 seconds - enter your keyword, language, frequency, and result type.
- Start with your own company, products, services.
- Add your industry competitors. Discussions about the competition could easily grow to include your company.
- Include relevant search terms for your company. For instance, Talkwalker would include - social listening, social media monitoring, social analytics. This will also alert you to changes and trends within your industry.
- Track the name of high profile people in your organization; for example, CEO, CTO.
Direct to your inbox, mentions from news sites, Twitter, blogs & forums.
It’s gone belly-up on social media - what you gonna do?
Awareness is crucial, but what next?
I cannot over emphasize how important it is to identify and respond to comments and social media mentions. If you ignore or delete negative mentions you’ll make the person not only more angry, but more likely to spread negativity. You’ve dismissed them, how would you feel? Be aware of what people want during a crisis.
- To be heard.
- Feeling as though their opinions matter.
- Knowing that someone is listening and will take action.
You can expect to find three different kinds of comments - positive, neutral, and the big hairy one - negative. Each needs a reaction from you…
- Positive - at the very least, say thank you.
- Neutral - acknowledge them, to show you’re listening.
- Negative - don’t take it personally, be nice, be calm, diffuse!
Talkwalker Alerts is the only free service delivering Web and Twitter mentions to your inbox. 50,000+ marketers are already using it to track their brand online. What are you waiting for? Create an alert - it's free!
