Social Machinery

Although many companies today are leveraging on the power of social media to build brand value, we’ve already seen several cases where brands have been challenged by the explosive dissemination of negative information.

One of the key things that are keeping marketers up at night is the fear of a social media brand crisis. It can be due to anything ranging from bad product reviews, employee-indiscretions on YouTube to service complaints on Twitter.

Surprisingly, few companies are establishing clear guidelines on how to proceed when social media crisis strikes. Some companies still react to these events just by issuing press releases and using only traditional media channels like TV or radio to handle the situation. The reality is that traditional media can hardly find any common ground with online communities, blogs, micro-blogs and the social graph. Therefore, applying traditional media crisis tecniques will do very little to quiet the growing adverse reaction and damage to the company’s reputation.

Learning from Domino’s Pizza social media crisis
In April, two Domino’s Pizza employees uploaded on YouTube, a video of themselves abusing takeaway food in a Domino’s Pizza store kitchen. The video received more than one million views in only few days before it was pulled down.

A press release by the company but the buzz continued to grow. Domino’s then decided to approach the crisis from a social media perspective. The CEO apologized via a YouTube video and explained the measures taken in reaction to the backlash. They also opened a Twitter account to handle all queries.

As you can see from the Nielsen Buzz graph, the exponential negative buzz spike created initially dropped significantly after Domino’s adopted the unconventional approach of using social media channels.
 

But even do, the company act fast during the first days of the scandal, this type of situation can cause a real brand damage. A study by BrandIndex in the days following the Domino’s crisis found that overall perceptions of the chain’s quality drop from +5 to -2.8 just 48 hours after the the employees uploaded the video on Youtube.

9 Tips for managing a social media crisis
I believe there are 9 lessons we can learn from Domino’s to manage a social media brand crisis.

1. Monitor your brand in the social media always
There is no way to know beforehand when a crisis like this is coming. Even if you are already actively engaged in the social media space, a scandal like this can take you by surprise. Therefore, the most important action that you need to take is to regularly monitor your brand on social media. You don’t want to be the last to know about anything related to your brand.
There several “buzz” tools freely available for this purpose. Be alert on what’s being discussed will only do you good.

2. Prepare Social media crisis guidelines
Companies need to create protocols to manage social media crisis. If something unfortunate happens to your brand, who in your company is going to be in charge? Who do you need to contact and who should be alerted? This will put you in a better position in times of urgency.

3. Assemble a “Tiger Team”
Assemble a cross-functional team that can evaluate the situation and possibly respond during the first few days of the crisis.As in the case of Domino’s, the first 48 hours were critical and decided the evolution of the event. A Tiger team should consist of sales, customer care, IT and communication unit employees to gain a holistic view of the company.

4. Identify key channels and track them constantly
Social media is a mix of many networks that are not necessarily connected. In that sense, responding a blog post may be good for addressing part of the social graph but not for the rest. Identify which channels are creating the buzz measuring the growth of negative or how the buzz is changing over time are critical measurement areas.

5. Act Fast
Information can spread like wildfire especially through channels like Twitter and YouTube. Quick to respond is the key to managing the masses perception. But the challenge is that unlike traditional crisis management, which typically requires procedures for press conferences and written releases, in social media you have to be ready to create multimedia content. In that sense, a company needs to be prepared to make and launch content in a variety of formats through various channels. Defining roles and responsibilities beforehand will help your company quicken response time.

6. Fight fire where it is coming from
Wherever the crisis is coming from, it is advisable to use the same channels to respond. For the record, people who are using social media do not necessarily use traditional media channels. Have you read a press release via Twitter, Facebook or Myspace?
But how do we deliver customized messages across different channels? Take a moment to distinguish the degree of response necessary for each medium.
In the case of Domino’s, some employees from the same chain decided to upload (with the company consent) a video on YouTube expressing how unacceptable the behavior was to all of them.

7. Be honest and transparent
One thing that differentiates social media from traditional media is the proximity it enjoys with real customers. Being close to people with first hand expertise on a given topic will rapidly educate the market. In situations like this, people expect your company to be honest and provide a clear solution to the problem. It is very important not to use too heavy “corporate” tone when speaking in social media. Speak in your audience’s language.

8. Address comments directly
As mentioned many times before, social media is a two way communication channel. People want to be involved in a dialogue.
You don’t need to open a endless discussion, but at least thank people for their comments and let them know you are listening. I have seen multiple times how a tactic like this converts the provocateur to a friend. This approach is a timeless technique for dealing with angry customers.

9. Teach your employees about social media
Organizations need to show employees the proper way to use social media. Employees represent your organization, and if they have a solid, credible personal brand, it will carry over to your company’s image.

For example, besides encouraging employees to own Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin accounts, some companies give additional training to employees on how to use these applications during their induction programs.