Key takeaways:
- Timely response to crises is essential: With social media as a primary news source for many, swift responses to crises are crucial to mitigate brand damage.
- Analyzing impact and trends guides response: Social media leaders assess the influence of crises on their communities and analyze trends to determine if and how to respond effectively.
- Collaboration across teams is key: Effective crisis management requires collaboration across business units, with social media teams playing a pivotal role in delivering messages and influencing response strategies.
When disaster strikes, many social media leaders are responsible for crisis management and coordinating a response on how their companies address any threats to their brand. They also help address civil unrest that may impact their employees and business.
Silence can damage a company with risks seemingly arising more frequently. And as Hootsuite reported, with 53% of Americans using social media as their primary source of breaking news, the response time to crises is vital for social media leaders and their brands.
During SocialMedia.org’s leadership panel on brand reputation and activating your social media crisis playbook, senior leaders at Walmart, Intel, and the United States Postal Service shared the strategies they have in place to respond to crises on social media.
We’ll look at how SocialMedia.org members escalate and coordinate a response to threats to their organizations and what processes they say help with social media crisis management.
When to Respond to a Crisis on Social Media
Many risks can damage a brand’s reputation. However, not every threat has the same priority, as some can be more damaging than others. Deciding when to respond to a crisis on social media requires senior leaders to know if what they’ll say will positively impact how people view their brands.
Does Your Brand Have Influence on the Issue?
Reinaldo Parreiras, Global Head of Community at Intel, shared how his team analyzes if their response on social media will address the impact on the communities they serve.
“I think the important thing is to make sure we have the right folks in the room, and then we usually ask ourselves, ‘Do we have a public [point of view] on this issue?’ If not, do we have to write what’s the impact if we stand up and say something?” Reinaldo asked.
But addressing crises can also result in consequences, as Reinaldo explained.
“Sometimes, there’s no place to run. If you say something, you get some backlash. Depending on the case, social media is not the right place to do it,” he said.
How Can Trends Help You Stay Ahead of Risks?
Mary Beth Levin, Manager of Social Media Strategy and Analytics at USPS, said one of the best tactics to help decide if your company should respond to a threat is looking at the trends people are saying about your brand on social media. She shared how data helps her team escalate and coordinate a response.
“We ask, ‘If it’s trending, does it warrant a response? What should the response be?’ If it is trending, that tells us that maybe a response is warranted,” Mary Beth said. “We also look at the numbers and what platforms it appears on, because that will inform where and how we respond.”
Mary Beth explained how they’ve learned from past experiences about risks to their brand and responding to events.
For example, when USPS was questioned in an article about their participation in a high-profile conference and if it’s appropriate to use federal dollars for conferences, she said the traditional route to respond would be to explain how their spending is funded through the sales of products and services.
When we respond, because we’re a federal agency, it’s not like we’re taking a stand. But if we have something to contribute, like during times of natural disaster, we can say this is what we’re doing to help you.
Mary Beth Levin, Manager of Social Media Strategy and Analytics at USPS
Instead, she said her team leveraged social listening tools to not respond in a condescending or patronizing tone. They analyzed the responses to the article questioning their ethics and found that people supported their brand.
“We don’t need to jump in. It wouldn’t be helpful,” Mary Beth said. “When we respond, because we’re a federal agency, it’s not like we’re taking a stand. But if we have something to contribute, like during times of natural disaster, we can say this is what we’re doing to help you. We’ll get involved that way. But because of our nature as a federal agency, we’re not going to take a stand on a particular issue.”
Who Should be Involved in Escalating and Coordinating a Response?
Escalating and coordinating a response to crises does not fall solely on social media teams. Instead, it requires collaboration between various business units and executive leadership.
While social media teams are responsible for delivering the message, aligning all teams on your organization’s mission and the steps to take enterprise-wide to help mitigate risks is critical.
What’s the Social Media Team’s Role in Crisis Responses?
Andrew Nestor, Senior Manager of Digital Strategy and Brand Engagement at Walmart, shared his social media team’s role in addressing social issues.
We are in that position, but we’re not the ones who are going to decide if it’s going to be responded to or not.
Andrew Nestor, Senior Manager of Digital Strategy and Brand Engagement at Walmart
“Our social team, we’re not the ones deciding we’re going to respond as a company to this issue,” Andrew Nestor said. “We’re going to be the output for the social piece, and we are going to be able to decide if we are going to respond to this on social media or if this is going to be a traditional wire release only. We are in that position, but we’re not the ones who are going to decide if it’s going to be responded to or not.”
Although Walmart’s social media team does not have executive decisions on which crises to respond to, Andrew explained how they influence how to address any concerns to their brand.
He explained how Walmart’s social media team influences their senior leadership team about the best social channels to respond to crises. Their social team also influences executives on when they should and shouldn’t react to specific events.
Can Media Relations Help Navigate Crisis Management?
It also helps to leverage relationships with the media, as Reinaldo explained helps his team at Intel.
“We might have the PR team addressing that directly with some journalists or press outlets, or eventually we’ll make the recommendation that our CEO or any other senior exec stand out and then make a statement about the topic,” Reinaldo said.
Along with positive media relationships, Mary Beth said the social customer response team plays a critical role in identifying risks to their brand and coordinating a response.
“I think a lot of risk mitigation is through social customer response. And people will tend to give us the first bite of the apple, asking for assistance. If they don’t get the assistance they need, they’ll escalate it,” she said. “We have folks from HR who are embedded on our team to address those issues.”
Strategize with Your Peers for Crisis Responses
The insights from SocialMedia.org’s panel discussion on brand reputation and activating your social media crisis playbook gave MaryBeth Levin, Andrew Nestor, and Reinaldo Parreiras an opportunity to benchmark strategies to escalate and coordinate a response to threats to their brands.
While this leadership panel discussion gave great insight, there’s much more that happens behind the scenes in SocialMedia.org. Members meet daily for real-time expert-led, confidential conversations with their peers to help make strategic decisions to advance their initiatives.
Senior social media leaders have the opportunity to join SocialMedia.org and learn directly from their peers how to create strategies to address emerging topics.
Make sure your company’s response plan reflects evolving societal changes here.