Tips to manage crisis on social media

STRATEGY 3: ENGAGE

            There are many type of crisis that may happen in the life of an organisation or business. Here are some examples of the more common ones that may occur:

• Natural crises
• Technological crisis (downtime or breakdown on network)
• Confrontational crisis
• Crisis of malevolence
• Crisis of organizational misdeeds
• Crisis of skewed management values
• Crisis of deception
• Crisis of management misconduct
• Workplace violence
• Workplace accidents which resulted in death/injury
• Rumors

In reality, of course there a lot more types of crisis that may occur. So, generally how does one know if a crisis has occurred? Essentially, crisis management is the process by which an organisation deals with a major event that threatens to harm the organisation, its stakeholders, or the general public.

Three elements are common to most definitions of crisis: (a) a threat to the organization, (b) the element of surprise, and (c) a short decision time.

Crisis is a process of transformation where the old/existing system can no longer be maintained. Therefore the fourth defining quality is the need for change. If change is not needed, the event could more accurately be described as a failure or incident.

Ultimately, crisis management involves dealing with threats before, during, and after they have occurred.

If managed or done properly, there are many benefits to a good crisis management initiative. Crisis management is the art of overcoming negative comments/rumours by actively shaping positive public perception towards a brand during crisis.

Good crisis management contributes to build and develop fruitful relationships with the widest array of stakeholders (clients, partners, talents, shareholders, etc). Properly handling a crisis in the social-media space is where you separate the men from the boys or women from the girls. It also hastens trust building with your key stakeholders, increases your visibility, differentiates yourself from your competition and maintains high credibility of the brand.

Ultimately, being unprepared is no excuse. If you know the threats or potential threats, get ready for them. For the spokesperson/s, you are the major actor, take your role seriously. There is no space to flounder when providing facts. You must know what you want to say before they ask. If a genuine mistake has been done, admit it.

However, if the negativity is derived from someone you know is doing it on purpose or with bad intentions to bring your organisation or company down, then you will have to use the third strategy – ENGAGE instead of DROWNING or NEUTRALISATION strategy that I have shared earlier.

Engage means to take on or approach the person who causes the crisis directly and deal with him or her by chatting or engaging with him or her offline in the hope of understanding his/her point of view and to provide either facts/evidence and/or solutions directly to persuade him/her to stop his/her rant or negative comments while explaining to him/her the true picture at hand.

This strategy is effective, especially when we have the evidence to prove that the person is trying to cheat his or her way out of something, or trying to sabotage a company’s image. Usually when these people know you have the evidence to go against them, they will automatically get out of the page and stop doing what meant to influence and shape negative public opinions or perception towards your company or your organisation.

            For example, the online contests on FB are rampant and a tool to draw eyeballs to your FB page. An issue can occur when one contestant created fake accounts in order to share her post to win the contest, but ended up not winning. She was not happy because despite having a high number of shares and likes, she did not win. She took it to the client page and post complains to express her frustration of unfairness. That post received attention from the public.

She gets sympathy votes and comments. However, your FB page administrator found out that she created fake accounts, and hence, disqualified her. The affected company approached her directly by getting the FB admin to PM (engage) her directly and explain to her the reason with evidence why she was disqualified which is due to the fake accounts she used to share in the contest. At the end, she understood and taken down that post on client page to avoid further misunderstanding and issue. The social media ‘crisis’ ended after she removed the post and posted an apology post on the contest page.

            Engage is a good strategy to use when you are confident with the evidence you have in hand and when you know who the person is as you need to only deal with that particular person or group but not to the public at large. In a crisis, time is everything. It is best to solve a crisis in the shortest time frame possible to avoid the heavy damage it may cause to a company’s image and reputation.

In this new world order, social media has substantially reduced the window organizations have to respond in moments of crisis. For instance, Facebook has cut down crisis response times to around 12 hours while a crisis on Twitter can take only minutes to spread.

As a summary, we must bear in mind that the crisis must be solved immediately. Properly handling a social media crisis is where you can hastens trust building and maintain high credibility of the brand.

Always beware of the court of public opinion and take it seriously. You have only about 12 hours (in the new digital world to respond) and it is countdown the moment the crisis strikes. Learn to divide responsibilities and roles to get the facts and statements out and conquer the negativity with finesse.

At the end of the day, everyone is given a chance to make things right and if one firmly believes that in every crisis there is an opportunity, instead of being overwhelmed or bitter about it, then the company or organisation  is on the right track for quick recovery.

This article is contributed by Ivlynn Yap Cheng Theng, Managing Partner/ Crisis Communications Lead Counsel.