A Brand's Guide To Managing Social Media Crises

From tasteless tweets, to images shared on Facebook that never should have never even been created, much less posted on our favourite pages, social media crisis management has never been more important.

- Charles Tidswell

BY ITS VERY nature, what makes social media such a powerful tool also makes it a very dangerous place, where the smallest of mistakes can bring about negative repercussions for a brand. Prevention is better than cure but in today’s age where it is seems more like a “when” instead of an “if”, it is paramount that brands establish a robust social media crisis strategy, taking pre-emptive action to prevent a crisis turning into a full on disaster.

What Can I Do Before and During a Social Media Crisis? You can improvise some of the measures on the list below — but having a welltrained social media team that knows what to do at any moment is key. But crises will happen at the worst times ever, even exactly when you don’t want it to. Here are tips that help protect your online presence and brand identity.

1. Be prepared You should have a communication process that connects everyone in your business. Such processes should be stored on a document and trainings should be implemented around those procedures. If you run crisis trainings at your company, include your social media team and their work into it. Put formal steps into a crisis manual, define types of crisis, roles that employees will play, and make decision-making processes as short as possible. A well-oiled community management solution can help save valuable time before the crisis reaches unmanageable levels.