Your brand reputation is integral to how people perceive your business, so you need to ensure that it’s optimised correctly. Social media can be an amazing platform for enhancing the reputation of your brand and boosting engagement, but it’s detrimental to make sure that your crisis management is in good stead as it can easily go wrong. It’s very easy for a social media crisis to get out of hand and cause uncontrollable damage to your brand.
Whether you’re on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X or YouTube, every content you post will be viewed and scrutinised by hundreds and thousands, if not millions, of people. You need to make sure that your brand is protected by everything you post and the best way to do this is by creating a crisis management plan.
This guide will delve into how you can protect your brand on social media from a potential crisis in straightforward steps that should be easy to follow. Continue reading for more information.
Social Media Crisis Management Plan
Step 1: Assessment of the crisis
Before you take any immediate action, you need to complete a full assessment of the situation so that you can identify what went wrong and how big the circumstances are. You should document the event’s details and not down every aspect of the crisis, which will allow you to visualise the issue and notify your team.
Step 2: Create a crisis response team
Having everyone within your business deal with the crisis, you should instead create a crisis response team to handle the situation. Establishing roles and responsibilities for each team member will allow for the most streamlined solution. Your previously created assessment document will help decide the roles.
Step 3: Focus on a response strategy
After you have established the roles of your team, you need to focus on your strategy. There are several strategies you can use, such as triage, key messaging, channels, training and monitoring. The more effective your strategy is, the faster you will move to the next steps.
Step 4: Select the right communication channels
Putting out messages in response to the crisis on communication channels that aren’t effective will not help your brand’s reputation. You need to reach the most relevant audience to your brand, as during a crisis you need the right type of people to see your next actions. For example, a digital marketing agency in Dubai would want those in the city to see their communication rather than those across the globe.
Step 5: Delay future posts
Once your brand is in a social media crisis, you need to ensure that all scheduled posts are either stopped or delayed. This is to avoid any further backlash if your next scheduled post makes it seem like you are ignoring the issue.
Step 6: Empathetic audience communication
While it’s crucial to communicate with your audience as quickly as possible, it’s much better to take the time to consider what you say as you will need to be empathetic. If your audience feels like you are being sincere and considering their feelings, they are more likely to forgive you which can save your brand’s online reputation.
Step 7: Audience feedback response
The initial message you give your audience after the crisis is very important, but the follow up is arguably even more important. Your audience will have feedback for your response, which you need to take on board and then form the best replies in order to save your brand reputation. You should acknowledge their concerns and frustrations rather than defending yourself or getting pulled into a confrontation.
Step 8: Effective team communication
The communication shouldn’t just be with your audience, as your team communication also needs to be effective to streamline the crisis management process. It’s important to be clear about your intended actions to make sure everyone in your business knows exactly what they should.
Step 9: Plan improvements
Once you’re past the crisis, you should plan improvements for your brand so that you can avoid a future crisis. Showing the important role of social media in crisis management with your leadership team can help you with these future brand improvements.