How to avoid a social media disaster

CONFIDENTIAL

First... a cautionary tale

Drawing out the battleplan

Crisi

s m

onitor

ing

Cri

sis

resp

onse

Crisis m

anagement

Potential issues

Battleplan

• Crisis monitoring• Crisis response• Crisis management

Oversees the overall crisis response

Monitors for mentions and issues

Defines strategy and works with CM to deliver message

Works with all teams and leads communication style

A social media war room is a state of mind.Not necessarily a physical place.

Tactics

• Identify the issue• Start the crisis management workflow• Deploy the team• Set goals• Define the strategy• Implementation

Spotting the Crisis

Crisis monitoring

• In order to avert a crisis you must be able to see it coming

• By the time you have journalists or members of your PR team

contacting you, it’s probably already too late

Crisis monitoring

• Social media monitoring tools provide

the raw data

• But its not only the raw data that

matters, you need to know what you are monitoring and why

Crisis monitoring

• Following who is saying what and where is vital

• Don’t start defending yourself on platforms where there are no issues

• Don’t create your own firestorm.

Monitoring isn’t just for when your battleship is sinking.

Crisis monitoring

• Monitoring isn’t only necessary when things are going wrong

• Used properly, it can help prevent disasters ever occurring

Crisis monitoring

• Use monitoring tools to identify key individuals. Build strong relationships in the good times to help protect you in the bad

• Monitoring also allows you to view what is being said on your “official channels”

Crisis monitoring

• Yomego’s Social Media Reputation monitoring service launches today– Real-time tracking of mentions around relevant

keywords– Real-time sentiment analysis– Periodic reports analyse data in tune with

competitors, sector and specific marketing objectives

Crisis monitoring

Real world examples

Crisis monitoring

In summary

• Know what you are monitoring and why

• Monitor on an ongoing basis

• Analysis is the key

A social media crisis can look very like a ‘real world’ crisis.

Crisis response: preparation

• During a crisis, you can’t change the reputation you had before the crisis hit. Make sure it’s a good one

• Real world crises play out over social media. In these cases, social media are part of the mix

• Plan for a crisis: have people and processes ready at the push of a button

• Have a social media policy in place for employees• Understand what your crisis could look like

Lesson one: You can’t control how a crisis unfolds any more.

During the crisis• Involve your most senior people – you may need

to make some quick decisions• Do you need to take action? (Even the best

communications can’t solve everything)• Agree your response, and get it right first time

"The information provided by the BBC [on child labour being used by one of Primark’s subcontracted factories in India] enabled us to identify that illegal sub-contracting had been taking place and to take action accordingly"

During the crisis

• Involve everyone that might get a phone call – employees, agencies, stakeholders

• Treat all social media – including Twitter - as though you were talking to customers, investors, stakeholders and media. (You are.)

• If you wouldn’t put the interns in charge of investor relations, don’t put them in charge of your Twitter account)

During the crisis

• Communications should make it better, not worse!

• Be honest and open (lies get found out)

• Don’t censor concerns, address them

• Authorise communicators to take action

During the crisisThe devil’s in the detail. Consider how everything looks publicly.

Asda: getting the response right

Asda: getting the response right

During the crisis

• Information is power. Monitor what is being said about you

• Act on this information: respond to everyone appropriately

After the crisis is over

• Review effectiveness of response, honestly

• Learn from any mistakes • Feed back learning into crisis

planning, including whether you could avoid a crisis completely in the future

Summary• Preparation:

– Manage your reputation– Know your weak spots: be objective about the

business– Have a crisis plan ready

• Action plan– Act quickly, but get it right– Involve senior management– Take it seriously

• Review once it’s all over

Fail to prepare? Prepare to fail.

Crisis management

• Preparation, people, plan, process• Contact details kept easily to hand and key

documents shared online with easy access• Clear defined escalation paths including any

3rd party contacts (PR, Community etc.)• Test all processes including full scale

rehearsals• Access to relevant social media accounts

(Twitter etc.)

Be in the conversation already so you can react.You don’t have a voice unless you’re in the social space.

Crisis management

• Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums – good channels for engagement

• Continue to use the social media manager or community manager so the voice is consistent and true

• Regular feedback from monitoring team• Sometimes doing nothing is the best

approach

Tactics

• Key roles in place with good people • Workflow, process and documentation (stored

where you can access it – even at 3am)• Be in the social media space already• Test the process and carry out simulations

using examples to keep the team focused• Share the results internally and learn from

them• Review other disasters and learn from them

Back to you.... Q & A

Real world examples

• Brandjacking• Rogue employees• Product safety issue• Consumer protest wave, activists• Copyright infringement• Trade secrets out• Criminal activity on your site

Twitter contacts

@eModeration@Yomegosocial@Carrotcomms

Keep calm and carry onhttp://breakfastbunkerbriefing.blogspot.com

Yomego• Yomego is a specialist social media

agency. It offers brands a mixture of strategic insight, creative design and expert implementation to help them create (and monetise) entertaining and engaging digital communities across web, TV and mobile platforms.

• For more details about SMR go to MySocialMediaReputation.com

• Contact us for a demo• Recent SMR scores for 20+ brands

available in Social Media Trump cards in BBB pack

eModeration• Founded in 2002, eModeration Limited is an international, specialist

user-generated content moderation company. It provides multilingual community management and content moderation to clients in the entertainment and digital publishing industry and major corporate clients hosting online communities and consumer-driven ad campaigns.

• eModeration's team of moderators and staff are the key to eModeration's success and excellent client list. eModeration draws on the expertise of carefully recruited and trained moderators located mainly in the US and Europe with specialist editorial and community moderation skills, which are matched uniquely to the client. The company can moderate 24/7 and provides cover for over 40 languages. All its moderators are managed online from eModeration's headquarters in London, United Kingdom.

Carrot Communications• Carrot is a content, communications and PR agency that focuses on

creating conversations between a business and its audience.

• Carrot develops content – including news, opinions, white papers, research, case studies and product or service information – that supports your business objectives, and helps position your company at the top of its game.

• The content then gets communicated to your customers, prospects and stakeholders, both directly (via social media, events and newsletters) and indirectly (through digital and offline media, third party blogs, industry influences and analysts).

• We believe that great business relationships start with interesting conversations.