Building and Maintaining a Social Standing

Written by Trinity Duong

If you desire to build a reputable brand it's important to manage your social media to fit according to your values. Many brands can spend years slowly cultivating and crafting their reputation only to have a poorly mismanaged crisis that throws them into the deep end of cancel culture. 

With over 4 billion global social media users, there are endless opportunities for viral content creation and oftentimes because of the current and constantly changing economic, social, and political landscape, it is difficult to know your audience's sensitivity. 

When your brand or company enters a crisis it often leads to the potential damage to your reputation or ability to comply with consumer’s values. Situations that may constitute a crisis within your control are a product of service criticism, negative staff reviews, and insensitive comments that may lead to severe public backlash. Many small incidents can easily escalate and turn into a toxic boycott and/or cancel culture.

The damage can muddy a brand’s reputation and ruin a hard-earned customer base which drives sales downwards. This is why good crisis management practices on social media are a must for this new generation of technology. 

1) Don’t Panic

The first step is to remain calm. In reading these articles you can better educate yourself about the problem from a reliable source. You should reach out to your community manager to also see the scope of the issue. If it is just at the beginning stages it's better to take the conversation of social media by requesting a user’s contact details through direct messages so you can better diffuse the situation away from your social media market. 

2) Don’t Post Scheduled Content

Posting content right away that doesn’t address the situation will cause even more issues for your brand. Not only does it come off as insensitive but you should also review your existing content to see if it follows the same “offensive” narrative. The last thing your consumers want to see is a post showing up at an inappropriate time. 

3) Acknowledge

Taking responsibility for what is going on and verbalizing that you are working on a response will communicate to your audience that you care about their complaints. By communicating without hysteria you will avoid cancel culture and negativity. If you are undecided on what to say, be honest and record the user’s contact details so you can respond later. 

4) Plan

By reviewing your business and how this crisis affects you, you can internally outline your priorities and put them into action aligning with your responsibilities and deadlines. 

5) Crisis Team

Don’t hesitate to bring in an external crisis management team or consultant. By appointing a spokesperson you quickly develop a key message and have someone to assist with inquiries. When developing a ket message lead with empathy and share it with your team.

6) Execute and Learn

After releasing a statement take time to continue monitoring the crisis and reflecting on the responses received from the public. Ensure to also be educating yourself on the topics you are being held accountable for. By asking questions such as “What could you have done better?”, you are actively seeking out a better brand and management.

If you want to read more about how to better represent your brand in the marketing world read “Social Media VS Digital Media Marketing”.