Tomorrow (Thursday, October 25), I will be joining the Social Media Strategies Summit hosted by the good folks at GSMI, in Boston, MA (go Bo-Sox!).
Here’s the overview:
Social media – When to Respond to a Negative Post and How to Triage/ Escalate in your OrgANIZATION
You’ve got tools to monitor social media, a 20-something spiked-hair communities manager, and even a CEO who knows how to use Twitter. But then it happens: someone, somewhere says something negative about your company online and suddenly the world around you comes to a screeching halt. I will walk the session attendees through real case studies of how to monitor for, triage, and address negative buzz.
But you no longer own your brand. Ownership is split between what your customers say and how accessible that content is on Google. So your processes and how you interact with customers will affect future business opportunities more than marketing collateral or paid search ads.
You’ll come away with:
How to monitor
Tools (free and paid) for monitoring
Processes for monitoring, triage and escalation
Review of a case study
If you cannot make it; or if you are attending; and you would like a copy of the presentation materials, including a sample case study and a great flow chart for triage and escalation of social media issues, please send me a Tweet!
I just returned from the Social Media Strategies Summit in Las Vegas, NV hosted by GSMI where I presented on measuring social media for the SMB. One of my leave behind handouts was this flow chart I adapted from the US Air Force.
You can use this flow chart to evaluate whether or not should respond to a post you find on the web, be it positive, negative or neutral. It will help you understand what you should consider when responding, escalating, and addressing negative posts, in particular.
Social Media Assessment Flow Chart
If you’d like to understand how to respond to a negative post, please read my related posts:
Ever wonder how your team will handle a negative issue that hits the media? Maybe you feel you have your bases covered because you are monitoring social media and believe you”know what you are doing”. But what happens when the pooh hits the fan while you are flying from Washington, DC to Sydney, Australia and you are (a) unaware of the issue; (b) unable to respond; and (c) by the time you land if you haven’t acted, it’s too late?
Well, maybe that specific scenario won’t happen to you, but being naive enough to think you’ll be able to fully control a negative media issue alone, or by someone else in your absence is not all too common in businesses today. One of the primary reasons most businesses are unprepared is because their social communities manager or team is typically comprised of younger employees who lack the mature, experienced business know-how needed to respond swiftly, consistently and accurately in a crisis.
So what to do?
Don’t fret… there are many resources on the net for devising a great crisis management plan. The basic steps include:
Monitoring
Triage
Escalation
Notification
Coordination
Responding
Heidi Cohen writes a great article referencing Rick Perry’s recent debate gaffe and his team’s slow response. Her article is a great place to get started.
Additionally, once you have all these great plans in place, you should practice. On the surface, this may sound silly. But here’s what you should do:
Gather up your social media team in a conference room
Inform executives of the drill
Surprise your social media team with an issue that could actually happen. They should not know about it before hand. Try to make it as realistic as possible.
Have to team run through the crisis management plan, including each step…
Draft up responses, notify the proper channels and get all the approvals for your documents and responses as needed.
Assess how well your team performed, how quickly executives replied and identify any issues.
Once you’ve done a couple drills, I suggest doing one off-hours and seeing how the response time changes. This may help you identify further weaknesses in your plans. Can you handle a disgruntled employee spilling a secret on Twitter for Christmas? Well, it could happen, right?
A couple months back, I had the privilege of participating in a live webinar panel discussion entitled, “Doing to Delivering: Five Considerations for Making Social Media Strategic”.
I was joined by:
Chase Bowers – Internet Communications Specialist, U of Alabama
Melissa Richards – Director of Marketing & Publications, Va Tech
The webcast was hosted by John Mohr of Systems Alliance and was geared towards helping marketing teams in higher education learn how to make social media an effective component of a school’s integrated, strategic communications program.
And, you can check out our social media response flow chart, adapted from the US Airforce Public Affairs office’s own plan. It’s a fantastic logistic blue print to for managing social media response.
I almost don’t know where to begin with this one… so first, I’ll show Chapstick’s most recent ad:
Did Chapstick make an ass out of itself in its recent campaign, or did the social media team fall on its butt?
Okay, now that you’ve seen the advertisement, AdWeek writes a great article summing up all the shenanigans that ensued upon the advertisement’s release. Mainly, the ad encourages people to go to Facebook, and they do. They speak their mind (some politely and constructively, and most likely some not so friendly). Chapstick proceeds to delete many comments and flounders a bit as it tries to issue explanations for the deletions as well as the advertisement itself.
Whew.
So what’s my take?
First, I’m a male in my 30’s and probably one of the targets of this ad which most likely appeals to women just as much as men. And creating brand awareness is what advertising is all about – and now we (people who write long winded blog posts on the internet who have a combine readership of about 5 people), are talking about it – generating a MASSIVE amount of earned media for Chapstick. Is it all good? They say any press is good press… and in this case, I would agree. The negative press is more related to Chapstick’s handling of the feedback versus the ad itself. Sure, some people are going to be offended by sexually-suggestive advertising, especially in the US which tends to be more conservative in this area. But we’re not seeing even a boob in this ad… just a clothed derriere. So I think people need to be a little less sensitive.
In my opinion the ad is creative and fun… and those of us who use Chapstick (myself included, though I tend to be brand agnostic when it comes to my lip protectors), I don’t think I have ever used up a whole tube of Chapstick before either throwing it out because it has a date from the prior decade, or losing it. And, based upon the number of tubes I purchase annually for my beautiful and intelligent wife, she either uses it once a minute, or suffers from the same problem the woman in this ad does; frequent-loss-of-chapstick-syndrome. I tend to find tubes in the bottom of backpacks, purses, suitcases; in glove boxes, junk drawers; in couch cushions and medicine cabinets, and of course winter jacket pockets.
But let’s get to the heart of the matter, what Chapstick really screwed up – its social media team/response. As the team started observing a larger number of comments coming in to its Facebook page, they should have had a better triage and response procedure. Criticism is a part of any business, and you should be willing to accept it. And via social media, your policy should be to acknowledge, empathize and if necessary, address. In this case, Chapstick should have delete any posts that were clear violations – over posting/spam, foul language or harassing in nature. If it saw a large number of these, it should have posted a notice on its page very quickly explaining its policy. “Please understand that do want to hear from customers about this advertisement and anything else related to their use of Chapstick, but please be respectful of others and the community. If your comments are deemed disrespectful or foul, we will remove them.”
And you usually do not want to be defensive in social media, as the community and really tear you apart… so on that issue, be particularly careful. Let the community have its debate. Your supports will defend you if you have a solid customer base and product.
If you really did screw up in your advertisement, or in a related area, it is extremely important that you have a rock-solid escalation policy so that issues can bubble up the chain of command efficiently and consistently. The last thing you want to happen is to issue a statement that isn’t convincing or credible – the community will see right through it. (Take the New England Patriots for instance, in response to QB Tom Brady’s “drinking comments“). Don’t think your customers, especially the ones on Facebook are dumb. That strategy will not be successful.
So, if you need to issue a clarify statement, or even the dreaded “mea culpa” then you only want to do this once. And, be prepared for comments about your admission. You will receive feedback.
Chapstick has a legacy of quirky, cutesy, and slightly-suggestive advertising. It works. And this latest ad worked too, but the social media team got in the way.
Symantec last week released the findings of its latest survey regarding social media entitled, “2011 Social Media Protection Flash Poll“. It sought to identify the most common social media mishaps among large corporations and to assign them a monetary value.
Of course the report focuses on ‘big enterprise’ more so than small business, because the values are quite large. However, it underscores how social media is still a wild west and that those companies pioneering these waters should tread carefully.
Another good point is that Symantec is pushing its archiving and e-discovery software, which should be a good reminder to document social media issues well for legal purposes and have a well-defined triage, escalation and crises plan for handling issues in real-time.
Dan Soschin 