Social media crisis management, a presentation by Amer Massimi, the managing partner of Hashtag Social Media Agency at Arab Net 2012

1. Social Media Crisis Management

2. Why Social Media Crisis?
Came along way from 2011
Brands are participating in social platforms
Rapidly.
Executing campaigns, building bigger fan bases
They are all having fun, but does it end here?
Social media offers great stuff to brands and there
is the other side too, social Media Crises.
No brand is TOO BIG or TOO LOVABLE to suffer a
Social media crisis.

3. A Classic social media crisis case
A small band with no recognition, led by the artist Dave Carol.
They earn their living by playing in different venues.
Traveling through 2 cities on United Airlines, the luggage handlers
broke his guitar.
United Airlines repeatedly declined to reimburse Dave after 9 months of trying.

4. One song, too much damage!
Dave Carol did what he does best, wrote a song, shot it, and uploaded on YouTube.
.

5. A Social media Crisis at its BEST!
12 Million views on YouTube.
The song became a hit on YouTube.
Main Stream Media jumped in, covered in newspapers, radio, TV channels and
newspapers: CNN, CBS, FOX USA Today, LA Times & NY Times covered the story.
More than 150,000 posts on United Airlines incident .

6. United’s reaction

7. Social Media Crises are on the Rise
Altimeter research 2012

8. Brands in our region and in Saudi are not an exception!

9. A local case: Marai
Marai faced an online crisis in 2011 when it increased the price of its products.
They had zero presence on social networks.
They had to go back to the original price.
Last month, Marai increased the price of some of the products again.
The campaign against them online was ten-fold.
Marai have great presence by now:
What were the results?

10. A local case: Marai- The numbers

11. Stats

12. The Reaction
Website: zero communication regarding the crisis.
Facebook page, not one post regarding the crisis.
Twitter account: only 4 posts, explaining the high
Commodities prices.

13. The Only Reaction found- twitter

14. Who won???

15. Marai Proper reaction
Marai is a great brand. This is a mere case study, and the incident can happen to any
brand.
Marai increased the price, because of the rising commodity prices and not at all from a
greedy point of view
Marai Slogan is “Quality you Trust” and their main priority to to sustain the quality and
the price hikes are the last resort .
Marai should have done 2 things:
- Arm your Army: Capitalize on the huge following and educate them BEFORE the price
hikes.
- Respond when the crisis happened and show customers that they listened to them
and try to educate them about WHY this price increase has to happen.

16. Three-Fourth of social media crises could have been
averted or at least diminished.

17. What is social media crisis
One negative tweet on your brand is not a crisis.
You will always face difficulty with some customers.

18. What is social media crisis
3 characteristics of a social media crisis:
Lack of Information
A big change in the negative online conversations
baseline
A highly undesirable outcome on your business

19. 7 Steps to Manage to a Social Media Crisis
Listening & Acknowledgment,
“We know, and we are working
on it”

20. Steps to Manage to a Social Media Crisis
Respond on the same social platform WHEREVER the crisis is
happening. Then post it on all other platforms.
Have an internal alert protocol
(contact flow chart) who to call
when the crisis is happening.

21. Steps to Manage to a Social Media Crisis
Be Genuinely Sorry. This is where most companies fail.

22. Steps to Manage to a Social Media Crisis
Build a pressure relief valve: where people can vent, this is best
done on a platform you can control (Facebook page or on your blog)

23. Steps to Manage to a Social Media Crisis
Know when to take it offline. Crisis management isn’t about
being right, its about damage control, you can never win
an online battle with your customers.

24. Steps to Manage to a Social Media Crisis
Learn your lesson.
Make copies of all the tweets, posts…etc
Where did the traffic came from? Twitter, Facebook, YouTube?
How was the team response the crisis, where to adjust?

25. Local Case Study: Itechia social media crisis management
Number one Apple retail distributor in Saudi Arabia
More than 17 branches around the kingdom
One day, an employee asked a customer (mom with her child on a wheel chair) to be
careful or leave the branch because he is worried about the flooring.
By chance, the uncle ( a well known IT figure in Saudi) tweeted about the incident and
mentioned that he will never visit the store again.
Massive storm, retweets, mentions, blogs, which resulted in a boycott campaign because
the brand does not support people with special needs.

26. The Story in Tweets
Offline World:
One happy customer will tell 10 people, and
one dissatisfied customer will tell 50
Online world:
One happy customer will tell 100
And one dissatisfied customer
reach is Infinite.

27. Itechia- social media crisis management
We knew about the crisis in the same night
5 main decisions were taken next day:
1. Twitter announcement: We know, we are investigating.
2. Personal apology, The chairman went personally to the house of the
customer, apologized
3. Public apology: itechia chose one branch, and invited customers to witness a
public apology for the child
4. Issued a PR release that was distributed on the social platforms.
5. Launched a partnership with a special needs association in Saudi, made the
branches special need friendly (parking, flooring…etc)

28. After Math

29. After Math