Dealing with a Social Media Crisis

If you use social media for your business, you most likely got used to the speed that it affords you and your business. Additionally, it must be obvious to you by now that any communications that you have with your chosen social media channels reach a large number of people very quickly and very easily.

 The positive and negative of social media

There are certainly a lot of wonderful things that can be said about social media and how it turned businesses on their heads. However, there are also some issues that come up that must be handled appropriately in order to minimize the effects that may occur. If you are handling your own social media interactions, you will need to consider your approach very carefully. If you are allowing someone else to handle your social media interactions, you should work with that person to ensure that he or she manages your online reputation properly so that nothing negative happens.

Just in case you are not sure about what to do, here are some tips that might help you.

• Pay close attention to your social media accounts: If something comes up in your social media experience that needs to be handled, you should nip it in the bud right away. The sooner you take steps to fix whatever needs fixing, the less difficult the situation will be to contain. What you are paying attention to the activities that are going on with your social media accounts, you should also monitor what is being said about your products and/or services. If you see that there are any negative comments being posted, you should take care of them as soon as possible. If you don’t address what is being written, your lack of response may be regarded as apathy or guilt.

• Determine the cause of the issue: You should try to get to the heart of the issue, no matter what it is. If possible, you should uncover exactly what the circumstances were that caused the issue to occur. It is also important to find out why it occurred. Your next step after that is to take measures so that it never happens again. If you work with other people, you need to make sure that everyone is on the same page. That will go a long way to ensuring that you are permanently on top of the problem.

• Stick to your guiding principles: It is important to remember as you are addressing whatever the issue is that came up that you should appear sorry to the other person and you should be as forthcoming with information as possible. Address the situation right away, be genuinely sorry, and give the other person as much information as they really deserve to have from you. 

• Personally respond to the other person: After you have had a chance to formulate your response, make it public after you have responded to the person privately who actually brought up the issue. Once you have posted  your response publicly, you should be ready to react to other potential responses. In that situation, it may help you to have a content management system available. That way, you can have some control over the communications that occur.

Conclusion

The truth is that there will always be the potential for a crisis that needs handling. That is not the issues. The important thing is that you are prepared and that you know how to handle it when it does happen in the most effective way possible and that you are able to diffuse and resolve it quickly. Having a plan in place for just such an occasion can really help a great deal. In fact, the more solid your crisis plan is, the better off you will be.

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