Is your business ready to handle a social media crisis?

Reputation, reputation, reputation – hard won and the life blood of a brand it is easily tarnished (even destroyed) during a social media crisis.

Yet in a recent poll conducted by the DMA almost 60% of businesses were not confident that they were equipped to handle a social media crisis.

This means that for many brands the test of that reputation and their ability to handle consumer unrest will be played out in the real world and in real time with no certainty of success.

Today I attended the DMA’s social media crisis workshop. I and a team of social media experts played out a crisis scenario with crushingly disappointing results. As the adrenaline increased our decision-making abilities declined and it became increasingly clear that we were not equipped to handle the crisis that ensued.

Thankfully it was not a real situation – we didn’t tarnish a real brand’s reputation. What we learnt was a salutary lesson in preparation and planning summarised by Tamara Littleton’s (CEO of polpeo) 8 golden rules of crisis management:

1. Speed – be ready to react to an event. As a rule of thumb you have less than half an hour to respond on Facebook and 15 minutes on twitter to stay in control.

2. Strategy – have a signed-off approach to typical scenarios with an understanding of the implication of typical actions.

3. Know your roles – ensure the response team is known across the business and a leader has been identified.

4. Take control – it’s your brand and your reputation, don’t become paralysed by bureaucracy.

5. Stay calm – don’t be goaded. Spot the signs that individuals need a break.

6. Remember your tone of voice and flex it to suit the channel you are using – corporate speak on Facebook just won’t work.

7. Choose your battles wisely – be confident to decide when to respond and when to ignore.

8. Collaborate – you will make better decisions as a team and can share the effort across every platform.

No brand is exempt from a potential crisis – who would have thought that Greenpeace would target Waitrose or pink pens could be so inflammatory for Bic? The challenge is to be ready and rehearsed – only then can you turn a crisis into a success.

By DMA guest blogger Julie Atherton, Chief Strategy Officer, Indicia and DMA Social Media Council member

The DMA’s Social media crisis workshop was facilitated by Polpeo and supported by expert advice from: Tamara Littleton – polpeo, Keith Ashby and John Haggis (Sheridans Solicitors), George Ioannou (Digital &Wise)

For more information on preparing for a social media crisis, download the DMA white paper here.