I'm going to tell you how... Plus, to help you deal with a crisis, download two free crisis management templates. The roadmap you navigate if a crisis strikes, and a checklist in case of emergency.
DOWNLOAD FREE CRISIS MANAGEMENT TEMPLATES
Large or small, businesses need a crisis management plan. Because, let’s be honest, it’s not IF it happens, it’s WHEN.
It might be a teeny-weeny blip on Facebook that can be resolved with a painless quick fix. Or, it could be a code red on your suite of social media accounts that needs the full crash team. Both detrimental to your reputation, both requiring crisis management.
Not sure you need to read a crisis management guide? Think you've got everything under control? Don't believe me...
"You know my interest in Digital PR crisis management by now. I’ve written extensively on it and it’s a chapter in my new book for the public sector, but here is a great guide from Talkwalker." @tweetsbyJSB
Social media listening tools can save your life, tuning into chatter about your brand, your industry, your competitors. Enabling you to catch a potential crisis early and be proactive. You’ll have the tools to stop a crisis becoming the kind of social media disaster that’s included in a top ten blog post about PR Disasters.
When you find a potential crisis emerging, you need to work through your crisis management checklist. This should include:
BEFORE THE CRISIS
1. Choose your crisis management team
2. Who has keys to your social media accounts?
3. Choosing the right tools
4. Practice makes perfect
DURING THE CRISIS
5. What should you be monitoring?
6. Warning signals
7. Be transparent, be upfront
8. How to identify the type of crisis
9. How to escalate and respond to a crisis
AFTER THE CRISIS
10. What does best practice crisis management look like?
11. Conclusion
Crisis management - prevention/reputation/risk management - includes prepared scenarios meant to help an organization tackle a sudden and powerful negative situation. While an increasing number of brands appreciate the importance of having a crisis management plan, according to communications services company Burson-Marsteller, only 51% have one. With only one-third of those companies having faith in their plan working.
Regardless the type of crisis you’re heading towards, your reaction time must be fast to minimize potential damage to your brand. Your crisis (A.K.A. risk) management plan has to include more than just a scheduled press conference - that just won’t wash in the online world we now live in. A thorough crisis plan must include social media, internal comms, supply chains, vendors, and the press. Best practices include:
An effective response model includes a system for categorizing and prioritizing issues, and details the appropriate response for each type. Here’s a sample response model:
When you see signs of a major crisis heading your way, it’s all hands on deck. Your crisis management plan should have a list of team members that you may need to call upon before, during, and after a crisis. Include all their contact details: email, phone number, mobile - during the working day, and out of hours.
For instance, depending on the crisis, include HR, PR, legal, support, account managers, marketing. It’s important to establish who the decision maker is. This person will be accountable for managing the team, the crisis, and working with the CEO for resolution.
Scenario #1
Sophie had a great weekend. She had a few cocktails, went dancing with her mates, took some selfies. How do I know? She forgot to switch from her personal account and tweeted from the company one.
In 2017, Francoise Nyssen - the French Culture Minister - had her Twitter account hacked by the son of her community manager. The 13-year old tweeted insulting and inappropriate messages that when found, caused many red faces and were swiftly deleted.
J'imagine la tête des premiers du @MinistereCC qui vont s'apercevoir des dégâts causés cette nuit... pic.twitter.com/pWidHclW0X
— Thomas Jarrion (@thomas_jarrion) July 18, 2017
Scenario #2
Harsh but true, Sophie was fired. She didn’t bother to switch from the company account to her personal one, and let everyone know how she felt about losing her job.
In 2013, entertainment retailer, HMV, laid off 190 members of staff. The company - other things on its mind, presumably - lost control of its Twitter account and during an angry revolt, seven tweets were posted.
No surprise, all the original tweets were deleted.
Limit access to carefully chosen community managers who can be trusted to avoid these kind of mistakes.
Yes, having a code red team is vital. Taking responsibility and being transparent, should be the norm. Apologizing like a human rather than a bot, c’mon, that’s obvious. But, none of this matters if you don’t have the best tools for the job.
Choose your tool wisely, preferably one that provides the following features - and more - under one roof:
Reuters published an article covering Oprah’s speech at the Golden Globes. Talkwalker was referenced as tracking the social media mentions surrounding her speech. Our social listening platform monitored the virality - in this instance, positive.
If you can find a tool that has monitoring, listening, and analyzing all in one place, your response time will be accelerated. Detecting and managing crises will be painless.
You’re in a code red crisis situation. Good time to test the validity of your crisis plan?
Seriously, put it to the test before it’s needed. Identify gaps in your process and confirm or modify roles and responsibilities. Test under normal and unusual circumstances. During working hours, out of hours, and another when a key player in your crisis team is out of office. Unfortunately, issues don’t always happen when you’re sat in front of Twitter with your support team leader sat beside you.
Social media is your life, your job.
Constantly watching, it's probably you that sees the early warning signals of an impending crisis. A social listening tool is your best friend - the eyes in the back of your head, your second set of ears. It will monitor specific keywords, mentions, hashtags, sentiment.
To protect your brand, create queries to monitor your company, brand, products, competitors, etc. Ensure you include common variations, spelling errors, slang - I've included queries that Coca-Cola could use:
DOWNLOAD CRISIS MANAGEMENT FLOWCHART
There are always telltale signs when a crisis is heading your way, and in our always on world, social media is where they tend to strike first. As a human, you’ll recognize many of the signs. But, you won’t see them all.
Setting up smart alerts in your social listening tool, will detect the warning signs you miss. You’ll go beyond the limitations of human ears and eyes and find:
January 3, 2018 - Tesla received the usual amount of negativity, nothing to worry about.
Relax, snooze time. WTF! A spike in negative sentiment.
Drilling down, the source of negativity becomes clear. It sprung from an article in Reuters, highlighting a delayed production target - the second delay - of the new Model 3 sedan.
With Tesla falling short of Wall Street expectations and letting down its investors, finding and addressing this negative mention, meant that Tesla dodged a larger crisis.
Example - “We ask that when contributing your views to our social media pages, you ensure that they do not abuse, threaten, discriminate, or offend others - otherwise they will be deleted. Please protect the personal privacy of your own and others by not publicly posting personal information.”
69% of customers check out reviews before contacting a business, with 72% trusting reviews. Keep this in mind, when you consider ignoring or hiding bad reviews. You'll be missing out on an easy way to engage with your audience.
Identifying a crisis at an early stage can play heavily on the final outcome and your ability to solve it successfully.
Just out according to @CNN: "Utah officials report voting machine problems across entire country"
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 8, 2016
A little known Republican nominee tweeted that Utah officials had reported problems with voting machines across the country. CNN later corrected this misinformation - the problem was across the county NOT country - (facepalm).
Level four - outside force
Some problems come from outside the company. For instance, when third parties hacked into Equifax portals - a consumer credit reporting agency that collects data from 800M+ consumers and 88M businesses worldwide. Blamed on a failure to patch a software vulnerability, the data of over 145 million consumers was compromised. Data that included social security numbers, birth dates, and driver’s license numbers.
IN CASE OF EMERGENCY - DOWNLOAD THE 13-STEP CRISIS PLAN CHECKLIST
It’s all about how fast you can respond with a clear, honest, transparent answer. And, the solution. Do this well and you can turn online complaints into a boosted online reputation, with positive publicity.
Greggs, a UK bakery chain, suffered as the result of an online prank. When searching for Greggs, the Google results page displayed a fake logo with an offensive slogan - “providing s*** to scum for over 70 years.” Gregg’s social media team was flooded with comments. Naturally, the team alerted Google to the issue.
Hey @GoogleUK, fix it and they're yours!!! #FixGreggs pic.twitter.com/d5Ub7qtrLG
— Greggs (@GreggsOfficial) August 19, 2014
Gregg’s social media team’s response demonstrated sheer brilliance.
With Google playing along.
In November 2017, team collaboration tool Slack, went down. Not a crisis caused by the social media team, but they were responsible for dealing with the fall-out. They kept it light, playful, and updated constantly.
We're sincerely sorry for the service disruption you're seeing at the moment. We're working on it with top priority: https://t.co/hlhV4ZiG7E
— Slack (@SlackHQ) October 31, 2017
In 2013, Lululemon Athletica - sports attire brand - suffered Pants-Gate. Black yoga pants had to be recalled because they were - unintentionally and unexpectedly - see-through. The brand, while suffering a drop in stock prices, demonstrated a strong crisis management plan. The brand:
Lululemon's see-through pants problem causes stock to drop, also severe disappointment in guys who always take back row in yoga class.
— Lauren (@LaurenGoode) March 19, 2013
Even the negative comments, saw the funny (back)side.
Let’s recap…
BEFORE THE CRISIS
DURING THE CRISIS
AFTER THE CRISIS
DONE
We all make mistakes.
If you have a thorough crisis management plan in place, you’ll be ready to tackle reputational risks to your brand, quickly, honestly, and effectively. You’ll protect trust in your brand and prove that you care about your customers. Play it right, and you’ll turn that frown upside down :)
To help you deal with a PR crisis strategy, download two free crisis management templates. The roadmap you navigate if a crisis strikes, and a checklist in case of emergency.