Preparing and Dealing with Social Media Negativity and Activism
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Transcript of Preparing and Dealing with Social Media Negativity and Activism
PREPARING AND DEALING WITH SOCIAL MEDIA NEGATIVITY AND ACTIVISM
JOEL TURNER – HEAD OF CONTENT STRATEGY
• Lead Blueclaw’s Development/Design & Online PR/Social Media teams
• Have worked in PR and Comms for nine years – the last five of which have had a strong digital dimension
• Co-owned a boutique Online PR and Social Media agency for three years
• Have worked on a range of communications projects and campaigns, including dealing with Crisis PR and Reputation Management.
SOCIAL MEDIA ACTIVISM
• At its best can bring about significant political and social change
• Social media has changed the ability of consumers to highlight poor corporate practice
• Self-publishing via social media and a liberal society lead to a plurality of opinions and viewpoints
• Important to separate principled opinion (Protest), self-interested agitation (Complaint), and planned and targeted communication (Campaign)
• Need to take into account social, political and consumer motivations
• PR earns its stripes and gains new skill badges.
THE RISE OF ‘SLACKTIVISM’
• ‘Slacktivism’: a trickle can quickly become a flood
• Activism can be as simple as a ‘Like’ or ‘Retweet’
• Opinion or cause may not be strongly supported
• Self-interest can be painted as consumer/social/political activism
• Hard to distinguish if some opinions or viewpoints are really widespread.
WHO ARE SOCIAL MEDIA ACTIVISTS
Complainer
• Feel frustrated at a lack of response via conventional channels
• Savvy enough to know that complaining on social media will gain attention.
Protester
• Strongly held political views brought to bear on brand
• Well-organised, but unlikely to have considerable mainstream support.
Campaigner
• Consumer-focused
• Interested in rectifying wrongs and helping others to do so.
PROTEST V COMPLAINT V CAMPAIGN
Protest: Link to petition with 190,000 signatures
Complaint: Concerns about customer service
Campaign: Helping others with a common customer service issue
COMPLAINT > CAMPAIGN
• Complaints can snowball into campaigns, particularly if they go unanswered, or are unsatisfactorily resolved
• The issue can easily be spotted by a Campaigner and latched upon
• Typically this role was assumed by consumer rights media outlets (e.g. Which?) but now anyone with a blog, social media accounts and a little time can be just as powerful.
Complaint
Campaign
PROTEST > CAMPAIGN
• Protests can turn into consumer activism Campaigns
• Consumers conflate issues and make ‘ethical’ purchasing decisions
• Recent examples include Nestle and Amazon boycotts.
Protest
Campaign
WHY WOULD THEY TARGET YOUR BRAND
• Trust in Energy sector among consumers is at 59% (Edelman Trustbarometer 2014), by comparison 70% have trust in the Technology sector, and 51% of respondents expressed trust in the Media and Banking sectors
• Ofgem said it found that 43% of customers did not trust energy companies to be clear and honest about prices
• Poor publicity:
• Energy prices and price collusion• Energy sources (e.g. Fracking and
Nuclear)• Scare stories regarding energy
security.
WHAT IS THE IMPACT?
• Reputational damage on social media
• Negative media publicity if activism is covered by mainstream media
• Negative search result listings can damage consumer perceptions of the brand
• Brands can fall into a spiral of negativity – every piece of communication is negatively portrayed.
PREPARING FOR A CRISIS
• Delineate who is dealing with different types of activism – Complaints/Protests/Campaigns at the earliest stages
• Consider the impact across channels
• Search – increase your search footprint, take up more real estate for key search terms. New site sections, new web properties, social media profiles etc
• Develop reactive responses – social media updates, press statements.
HOW TO SPOT ACTIVISTS
• Active monitoring (Brandwatch, Radian 6)
• Across social media• Across the internet at large• Keywords – not just brand, keep expanding.
• Cross-channel identification
• Something happening off-line could become a problem on social
• Keep an eye on reaction to company news and announcements
• Use CRM data from call centres.
• Track sentiment
• Imperfect, but can alert you to problems• Try to trace the source of negative
sentiment.
HOW TO INTERCEPT
• Research context and customer
• Fully understand the issue and context.
• Coordinate across teams
• Integrate media relations, social media and digital marketing functions – sharing intelligence via briefings.
• Prepare your response
• Can this be handled via engagement? Or do you need to pursue a different approach?
HOW TO ENGAGE
• Carefully consider when and how to engage
• Preparation is key – 15 minutes on Twitter and 60 minutes on Facebook
• While it seems counter-intuitive, it could pay to monitor the situation and do nothing
• Don’t start an argument, just deal with the facts at hand – armed with some strong collateral
• Don’t ‘counter-broadcast’
• Do seek to move the debate away from the channel if possible – is this the right forum? Will you be successful?
HOW DO WE SET THE AGENDA?
“If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.”
CONTENT AND DATA PLAY A ROLE• Payday and short-term loans sector has
been pilloried in recent years
• Media, government, charities and campaign groups have all attacked the sector
• Wonga leads the industry and has opted to be open about certain aspects of its business
• OpenWonga provides stats on customers and its business, as well as offering case studies and testimonials
• Questions of openness, honesty and a lack of responsiveness are often core issues for activists
• Creating a resource that goes some way to counteracting these perceptions.
CONTROL FEEDBACK
• First Direct Lab gives the brand an opportunity to control feedback on products and services
• Similar to feature requests and road maps for applications
• Comments are taken and then features are considered and implemented as appropriate
• Not been a huge success – but the concept is sound.
BRING FAQs TO LIFE
• ‘Ask & Answer’ resource developed by Thomas Cook to deal with customer Q&A
• Every new question adds to a searchable archive
• Produces a resource that is far more comprehensive than a regular FAQ section
• Reduces customer services load and creates a great ‘crawlable’ asset for search engines - also provides solid content ideas to improve services and marketing
• Internal search is always a great way of understanding customer frustrations – both on-site and in general terms.
BUILDING ADVOCATES
• Events: make individuals feel special via briefings, visits and other real-world activities
• No person is too insignificant: anyone can cause a real problem for your brand, don’t forget that
• Be entertaining and fun: how can we encourage consumers to positively experience the brand and understand the issues
• Content should not be one size or shape: think about how you can adapt your content to various audiences.
QUESTIONS
@joelturner [email protected]