4 Steps to Dealing with a Social Media Crisis
While a social media crisis isn’t something you will deal with every day, you need to be prepared so your business can come out on top. What do you need to do to ensure everything runs smoothly? How do you handle an overwhelming situation? The information below will help guide you through a crisis. Need help? LRT is here to help with all your social media needs.
1. Create a Plan
Before a crisis actually occurs, you have to develop a plan so there will be no room for confusion or mistakes. Come up with a list of possible scenarios. What if one of your products is recalled? What if an important figure or celebrity makes a negative comment about your business? What if one of your employees posts an insensitive image on one of your social media pages? Write down a list of the actions you will take and assign tasks to certain people. Knowing the right social media platforms, key media contacts, and having a trained spokesperson is key. Never ignore a crisis, even if you think the subject is no big deal. It’s a big deal to your customers, and that is what matters.
2. Acknowledge Your Mistakes and Learn From Them
The worst thing you can do is deny you made a mistake – this will only anger the public and greatly damage your reputation. Apologize for your actions and reassure everyone that you will work hard to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Once the crisis has subsided, copy the comments, tweets, etc. you received and put them somewhere prominent. Figure out how long it took you to respond to the crisis and if your website was able to handle the traffic. Improve, learn, craft.
3. Stay On Top Of the Crisis
Monitor the crisis as it develops so you won’t end up feeling anxious, scared, or overwhelmed. Use monitoring software or simply leave some tabs open on your browser. If you get emails, label them to make it easier to track what you still need to respond to. It’s imperative to make sure that you’re responding and engaging on social media platforms so that the situation doesn’t escalate.
4. Put Together a Crisis Page That People Can Visit
Give people a place where they can go to get updates about a situation [ if it’s more than just a social media crisis and relates back to your product ] . Add a FAQ and some information about what people can do next. It’s a great way to to give people the information they need to know. It’s always important to have information as easily available as possible.
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