Making the Most Out of a Social Media Crisis
If you are experiencing a social media crisis with your business, it can either devastate you or you can turn it around and deal with it in a way that doesn’t ruin all of the effort made so far.
If you approach it correctly, you have the potential to get closer to your clients and to your market as a result of dealing with a crisis that you could not prevent from happening. It is up to you to deal with it in a way that will turn the tables and allow you to achieve extremely positive results rather than negative ones. There are many ways in which you can make lemonade from lemons.
- Meet the crisis head on: If you ignore the crisis and assume that it will disappear on its own, unfortunately, you are sadly mistaken. The best way to constructively deal with the crisis is to go into the situation with your eyes wide open and to methodically and sensibly dissect the crisis until it no longer poses a threat to you and your business.
- Deal with negative comments diplomatically: In all businesses, you will come across people online who will be dissatisfied with some aspect of your business (either your products and/or services, your content, etc) and will happily share their opinion with you. The best way to deal with and diffuse the situation is to have an honest dialogue with the other person. You will want to communicate the idea that you are happy to learn what they think and reassure them that you will try your best to improve upon your offerings so that their needs are met. If the other person feels that you are truly trying to accommodate them, you will actually have a chance at turning them into a loyal client eventually. However, it is important to understand that developing that relationship will take time and nurturing. It won’t happen overnight.
- It is important to post negative as well as positive feedback from your online connections: In many cases, you will learn more from negative feedback than you will from positive feedback, even though positive feedback is easier to receive (on an emotional level). Not only will it prove to be a learning experience for you but it will most likely benefit your online connections as well.
- Let your staff in: It is not a smart idea to keep your staff in the dark when dealing with a crisis for your business. If you are in it together, you are in it together. You need to be able to trust them and to delegate responsibilities to them so that they can help you to manage the crisis in the best possible way. Not only will that approach help to manage the crisis but it will also help to build loyalty in your staff.
- Speak with people as equals: It is extremely important that you give your clients (and other online connections) the respect and consideration that they deserve, which means that you speak with them as equals. You need to make them understand that you consider their opinions very important.
- Always acknowledge other people’s comments: The worst thing that you can do when someone sends you a comment online is not acknowledge it (not respond at all). In the situation where they ask a question, even if you don’t know the answer right at that moment, you should acknowledge that they asked the question and let them know that you will do some research and get back to them shortly with an answer.
- Sincerity is always best: Always be sincere because people will be able to tell if you are not being sincere and they won’t appreciate it. Generally, people understand that everyone makes mistakes and they will definitely respect you more if you apologize and move on.
- Pay close attention to what people think about your business brand and offerings: It is important to really listen to what people are saying about your business. If you keep yourself in the dark, you are not giving yourself any opportunity to improve upon what you have already established, which leaves you with no possibility of gaining more success. Success, of course, is your ultimate goal.
Conclusion
Although “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade” is a cliché, there is a great deal of wisdom in the concept. If you are dealing with a crisis in your business, it doesn’t mean that you have to accept it and close up shop. You can consider it a learning experience and turn the negative into positive. Everyone has to deal with crises as some point in their career. It isn’t a matter of the crisis existing. It is a matter of how you react when you are in the middle of it. If you deal with it constructively and gracefully, your business connections will respect you and will want to continue to be associated with you and your business. Remember to listen to what other people are saying and glean ways to improve your approach whenever possible. That is one of the important ways in which you will grow your business.
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Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: ASBPE
Discussion: Making the Most Out of a Social Media Crisis
Wise comments. And one of our editors took gold in an editorial competition for his management of a social media crisis.
For the publisher, it was a crisis: An unhappy advertiser (whose fractional was placed near content that did not adhere to his philosopy) used social media to rant and build support for an advertiser 'strike.' It got pretty ugly–only from the unhappy one person–but it ended well.
Posted by Charlene Marietti
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Professional Bloggers
Discussion: Making the Most Out of a Social Media Crisis
Do you have experience with FB banning for 15 days at a time? How/why do they do it? I posted an innocuous video comparing 2 great blenders…the newest one advertised to be more quiet than older models…which it was, and I said so after demonstrating it. I don't work for the blender company & paid heftily for both blenders out of pocket. Totally within the scope of what I do on YouTube…to post a link on my large FB pages (I pay for posts!) and a few other pages. Never got a warning, just a message when I tried to post later that I was banned with a link to guidelines. All that said was "don't spam." Anyone can mark a post as spam…is there a magic number for FB? Do they say anywhere exactly how they define it? So annoying when it's this close to the holidays. Hard to walk away from 18,000 fans, but I'm already starting to upload more to YouTube and play here. I've heard from other large page admins that this is not unusual. Thanks!
Posted by Ellen Jaffe Jones
This is a great article. Honesty and transparency are great assets for a brand. In my experience, just the act of replying to negative comments helps the situation. People want to be heard. Even if you do not have an immediate answer, acknowledging the problem can diffuse a frustrated consumer.
Qnary wrote via Business2Community:
If you find yourself in a negative social media situation be sure to handle it quickly and appropriately. If you handle the situation correctly, it can help you gain more fans and followers because they will see that you know how to conduct business correctly.
Colin Gilchrist wrote via Business2Community:
An interesting approach – another element that we've adopted for a number of clients successfully is the provision of a resilience or dark web page where we host the latest updates of the incident and then point everyone to it (funnel) to better manage the process – which includes advertising it (i.e. buying Adwords for searchers). But of course this is the tip of the iceberg when managing a CRISIS on social media but great pointers.
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Corporate SNOBS University
Discussion: Making the Most Out of a Social Media Crisis
Everyone has an opinion. And with social networking and social media marketing top ways to market today, it takes only seconds to add an opinion. Whether or not the person adding it has used a product or service remains a question. This reminds us of the importance of monitoring social networks for comments. Once you discover negative comments, and deal with them, next it's essential to make changes – if required – so this doesn't happen again. Change site wording, fill a gap with a better suited product, remove offending product description benefits or info. Whatever changes you make, be sure to post them.
Posted by Jean L. Serio