The Digital Marketing World Forum is a global expo that explores social, influencer and content marketing by industry leaders. As part of the 2017 expo our Social Media Manager Camille Ainsworth was invited to do a solo presentation to a room of top marketers to share the principles and approaches behind effectively managing your online presence and community in highly stressful situations – and coming out on top!
Below are the seven tips she shared with the DMWF to help identify, manage and avoid a social media crisis.
- Know the pressure points for your brand and company online. This includes being mindful of intense fans and your clients (for example, the artists for your event) who want to see you doing a great job. Also be aware of whether your activity could generate press interest. All of this will help you prepare better communications.
- Know every part of your business. Don’t just leave it to customer services – know your teams and what their processes are. This will help you recognise and clearly communicate ahead of problems arising. You’ll also know who to speak to when there’s a problem you need help with.
- Know your customer UX. Put yourselves in their shoes, find out what can be confusing to the customer or the fan, and then breakdown comms to address these sorts of issues.
- Know your social media audience. This is different from your overarching audience. Broadly speaking, different demographics use different channels. Pitch your content and comms to the specific audience relevant to you on that channel.
- Plan. Get your wider team together, work out every possible problem that could arise and prepare a response for them. Do this to address issues on your website, issues at your event and even in your flagship campaign copy to make sure when that difficult person online takes a pop, you’ve got it covered and on brand.
- Don’t panic. A knee-jerk reaction is a bad reaction. Don’t dwell on what people are saying – instead focus on how your channels are responding.
- Finally, be realistic. You won’t please everyone, but 99 percent of people really appreciate it when you are seen to be trying.
