Another important time to utilize social media is when your company is experiencing a crisis. Getting accurate information disseminated quickly and efficiently is one of the greatest benefits of using social media, and developing a social media strategy to use in the event of a crisis situation is extremely important. Whether or not your company correctly uses social media to deal with a crisis is going to have an effect on its ability to build and maintain relationships in the future. Here, Marketing Profs Daily Fix offers some great advice for companies who use social media to deal with a crisis situation. Here it is:
- Monitor social media channels. Keeping tabs on different social media channels will allow your company to be in the know when and if a crisis situation occurs.
- Use social media to respond. Responding quickly when there is a crisis in your company will help your company maintain credibility. As I stated before, making sure that the information about your company is accurate and up to date will endear customers to you.
- Admit it when you’re in the wrong. Admitting your mistakes is another credibility booster. If your company is at fault in a crisis situation, it should be owned up to.
- Use social media to fix the problem. Post on your company’s blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc. about the problem and how you plan to fix it. Keep your stakeholders in the loop of what your company is doing to overcome the crisis.
- Make sure you have backup before a crisis even occurs. Your company’s loyal fans and followers on social networks are there to back you up. If you have properly utilized social media to do the above steps and made sure to establish strong contacts, you should have no problems finding people to support your company during their time of need.
Here’s an (albeit not so great) example of a company using social media for crisis communication. I’m sure everyone remembers the automaker’s private jet fiasco, wherein the CEOs of the big three automakers flew to Washington DC in private jets to ask for taxpayer’s money in order to bail out their companies. This event was a public relations nightmare for the auto companies, and in the video below Chris Barger, director of social media over at General Motors outlines his social media strategy for dealing with the crisis:
Using social media for crisis public relations can be effective or ineffective, depending on the strategy implemented. Ultimately, the choices that your company makes when using social media to communicate about a crisis is going to have a lasting effect on your stakeholders no matter what the outcome is.
The first step in crisis management is to anticipate the crisis which is not always possible. However, with the use of social media, anticipation of a crisis is feasible. Responding quickly is also important in a crisis situation. Social media tools such as a company blog, Twitter and Facebook allow companies to update and spread the word quickly and often. Posting quickly stops rumors from starting in the public if the correct information is being sent out from a reliable source and posting often allows followers to see changes and updates during the crisis. Chris Barger, the head of social media for General Motors stated that “perception trumps reality every time” and that there was no way to change what the public was thinking about the Big Three automakers’ CEOs flying in private jets to Washington to ask for bail out money. Perhaps GM could have partially restored its damaged reputation if their communications team acted quickly during their crisis.
I feel like in this case, GM really screwed up and did some irreparable damage to its brand image. I agree with you though in saying that perhaps if they had quickly and efficiently utilized social media they could have done something to put them back in people’s good graces. Other companies would do well to learn from GM’s mistakes by keeping on top of their company’s social media during a crisis, no matter how big or small.
One negative comment resonates and impacts the image and reputation of the company far more than a positive one, but social media gives companies an opportunity to handle the issue before it truly becomes a “crisis”- that is, if they are willing to listen when customers are only whispering rather than yelling through a megaphone. We’ve seen several companies face crisis by implementing social media strategy, but not so many great examples of how to do so; most of the examples being due to the company refusing to listen or respond to customers before it was too late. A great example is the infamous “Dell Hell” that Joe Jarvis caused for the computer company just a few years ago. Dell’s slow reaction and seemingly negligent online strategy harmed the company, but they have since gotten their act together and used social media to get back in the game. Without social media, however, this would probably not have been possible.