1. 5 Tips to Manage a Social
Media Crisis
Photo Credit: Flickr star5112
2. What do disgruntled
employees, hackers, and
misguided social media
managers all have in
common?
The ability to tarnish your
company’s reputation with
a single erroneous, ill-
timed, or malicious status
update on one of your
social channels .
Whether a PR crisis stems from an honest mistake or a deliberate attempt to
draw negative attention to your brand, here’s what to do when a social media
update draws the wrong kind of attention from your fans and followers.
3. 1. Address the situation immediately.
It’s tempting to spend a lots of time consulting team members,
management, and perhaps even attorneys before tackling the problem, so
you don’t make it worse.
However, it only takes minutes for social media missteps to go
viral so don’t wait too long before acknowledging the issue.
Immediately
post a message
letting followers
know you’re
looking into the
issue and will
have an update
shortly.
Follow
Through
Simply delete
the offending
message, issue
a brief apology
on the platform
where it ran,
and leave it at
that.
For Minor
infractions
For major
infractions
Issues may
require a formal
press release or
more detailed
media response.
Photo Credit: Pixbay.com/open credits
4. 2. Apologize, don’t make excuses.
Customers expect companies to
own up to their mistakes, not
point fingers or dodge blame.
Now is not the time to talk
about how your IT team didn’t
set up strong passwords or that
your HR department didn’t
revoke account access before
terminating someone’s
employment.
Photo Credit: Pixbay.com/geralt
It doesn’t matter why your
account was compromised;
most followers will hold you
accountable at any cost.
Apologize
Accept blame
Let customers know you’re
taking care of the issue.
5. 3. Just the facts, ma’am.
When mitigating a reputation crisis it’s best to say
only as much as necessary.
• Leave out any frivolous information.
It’s fine to share basic facts like, “Our account was hacked by someone
outside the organization.”
• Do not share your opinion on whether you think the
criticism you’re receiving is warranted.
If you’ve offended your customer base, you need to make it right or be
prepared to have no customers at all.
• More details aren’t always necessary.
Photo Credit: Flickr.com/franko_44
6. 4. Deleted but not forgotten.
Speaking of deleting messages, you can erase updates from your social
media timelines but don’t assume someone hasn’t already taken a
screenshot or that it’s not still lingering somewhere in a third-party
application like Hootsuite waiting to be discovered by one of your
followers.
Remember this if you’re tempted to
fudge facts when crafting damage
control messages.
The only thing worse than
accidentally posting an offensive
message is lying about it later.
7. 5. Don’t hide from critics.
After suffering an embarrassing social
media blunder it’s tempting to issue an
apology and pretend it never happened.
While you don’t want to continually revisit the
unpleasantness for weeks, do take the time to answer
at least some of the individual fans and followers who
take you to task online.
Personal and heartfelt responses go a long way
toward smoothing ruffled feathers.
Don’t simply cut and paste the same response to each person!
Photo Credit: Pixbay.com/irohner
Shortcuts make you look like inauthentic.
8. In a perfect world, social media engagement would be a
flawless task where nothing ever goes wrong.
People do make mistakes though, so it’s important to
have a plan in place to quickly deal with a worst case
scenario before it gets out of hand.
