SOCIAL MEDIA CRISIS

Van Den Hurk, A. M. (2013). Social Media Crisis Communications: Preparing for, Preventing, and Surviving a Public Relations #Fail. Que Publishing.

7. Integrating Social Media into the Crisis Communications Plan
   Bad things happen to people and organizations. How you respond during a crisis can save and even enhance your reputation. You’ll find that your response often has more impact on your reputation than the event that precipitated the crisis.
   Where does social media fit into a crisis communications plan? Everywhere. It needs to be woven throughout. Social media isn’t a separate entity. It is one channel connected with others. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 65% of all adults who spend time online use social media networking sites.1 And more than 50% of active users on Facebook or Twitter follow a brand, according to a Nielsen report on social media.2
8. www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Social-Networking-Sites/Overview.aspx.
9. http://cn.nielsen.com/documents/Nielsen-Social-Media-Report_FINAL_090911.pdf.
   The Nielsen study also found that 20% of customers use social media to complain about products or services. Social media is making customer interaction more personal and involved. Customers demand to know how and why things are happening. Unfortunately, most businesses aren’t as prepared to interact with their customers as the customers are with them—let alone deal with a social media crisis.
   The Organizational Shift
   Let’s talk about organizational culture and revisit the concept put forth by Grant and Notter3 of humanizing your organization. The “humanize” strategy offers skills to organizations and empowers their employees. Effective management of a social media crisis requires a humanized organization. Trust and transparency are key in any crisis but especially in a social media crisis, where the expectations are increased for interaction and information and where the speed of the crisis can be great. A humanized organization has trust and transparency built in. An organization must take ownership of social media and allow employees to be part of the conversation so that they can be brand champions. An organization needs to have authenticity within its community. That comes with building relationships with the community on social media. It all fits together.
10. Personal interview with Maddie Grant, September 7, 2012.
    An organizational needs to make the shift from “machine” to “human” in order to navigate a crisis successfully in this social world. For many organizations, regardless of their size, it comes down to culture. Everyone in an organization must be educated on social media. It is important to have your frontline staff understand social media and its impact on the organization as whole.
    How does this organizational culture shift happen? Grant and Notter say that being open, trustworthy, generative, and courageous are critical to our growth as human beings (see Figure 7.1).4
11. Jamie Notter and Maddie Grant, Humanize: How People-Centric Organizations Succeed in a Social World, Indianapolis: Que Publishing, 2012.

(Source: Humanize.)
Figure 7.1. A framework for humanizing organizations.
Grant and Notter suggest that the framework for humanizing organizations should be organized around four basic elements:

• Open—Business structures have traditionally been closed, with linear processes and strictly defined responsibility, without any flexibility or employee ownership. A humanized organization understands how to develop true ownership behavior in all its employees by empowering them to take the right action at the right time to solve problems.
• Trustworthy—Grant and Notter say that in traditional organizations, information is rarely shared freely; rather, management controls information, with the intention of delivering the “right” messages. A humanized organization embraces transparency in its culture, allowing for key information to flow freely throughout the company.
• Generative—A humanized organization encourages the ability to create and develop new ideas. Organizations need to build processes that maximize collaboration and make sure their people have core skills in building relationships.
• Courageous—This word is not often seen in business, but it is very important. You often have to be courageous to continue to learn, make changes, and innovate. Grant and Notter say that human organizations have cultures that value learning, and they figure out how to embed experimentation into all their processes. This way, healthy risk taking becomes the rule rather than the exception.
  Human organizations are social organizations, and they can move skillfully through the social media landscape, which enables them to handle crises. Being a human organization may be difficult for most organizations, but it is attainable.
  This section provides only a brief introduction to the humanizing concept. I suggest you read Grant and Notter’s Humanize and visit www.humanizebook.com for worksheets to guide you through this transformation.
  Social Media: Risks and Rewards
  Social media forces organizations to take risks in communicating and makes them go outside their broadcast-out mentality. The principles of being open, trustworthy, generative, and courageous are critical during a crisis. Richard Sambrook, professor of journalism and director of the Centre for Journalism at Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University and former BBC director of news, says that the approach to social media during a crisis feeds back into the open and transparent culture organizations must embrace today.5

1. Personal interview with Richard Sambrook, August 30, 2012.
   Organizations such as FedEx and McDonald’s have social media intertwined into everything they do. Social media fits into their corporate cultures, where the customer experience is central. I could go as far as to say that they are as close to human organizations as we can see today.
   FedEx’s Shea Leordeanu says that it is important to be where your customers are and connect with them there.6 I agree. You have to be aware of where your customers are, and you have to be willing to meet them there, often moving out of your organizational comfort zone. It is a risk; because your organization isn’t going to be loved by all, all of the time.
2. Personal interview with Shea Leordeanu, August 30, 2012.
   Since 2010, FedEx has had customer service staff specialized in social media who monitor conversations. They are empowered to join in conversations and assist with questions and concerns that customers have. They use their names and share their email addresses with customers, establishing relationships with customers (see Figure 7.2).

Figure 7.2. FedEx has customer service staff specialized in social media who monitor and engage in conversations.
The question of scale comes into play here. Social media is about relationships; but how do you build relationships with millions of followers and fans? That is virtually humanly impossible. To narrow down the field, keep in mind the 90/9/1 rule of social media:

• 90% of fans and followers are lurkers who may read but don’t contribute in any way.
• 9% contribute infrequently.
• 1% participate regularly and create most of the posts.
  One way to address the issue of scale is to identify that 10% of influencers. We’ve talked about influencers throughout the book; remember that it is important to know who these people are, especially in a crisis. McDonald’s knew who the influencers were and successfully reached out to them to help neutralize the Twitter photo hoax. You can go even further than identifying influencers and identify evangelists for your organization or specific causes/issues. Evangelists are people who are passionate about an organization’s products or services or a specific cause or issue. They may be experts. And they aren’t paid by the organization. It’s a good idea to identify evangelists both inside and outside social media, because they may not overlap. Again, there are platforms that can assist in identification, but good old-fashioned research is your best bet. Follow evangelists on social media platforms, listen to what they are talking about, and interact with them.
  FedEx and McDonald’s have separate digital media (social media is incorporated into digital media) crisis communications plans; however, digital media has a prominent role in everything both organizations do. FedEx and McDonald’s understand the importance of social media.
  Staff, Social Media, and Crisis Communications
  Staff is participating in social media as individuals. It is important to assist staff in their social media efforts by developing “rules of engagement,” or suggested ways for every employee to communicate on social media, regardless of whether it is for personal use or as a representative of the organization. While an organization can not ban staff from participating, an organization can provide a framework for employees. It is important that employees understand the appropriate use of social media, and an organization therefore needs to develop guidelines for them. There are a few resources out there to assist with developing such guidelines. There are free services that can help you draft customized social media policies. It’s important to include social media–savvy staff in drafting the guidelines and policies. Many companies are now including social media in their communications and professional conduct policies. Victorio Milian,7 a human resources professional who has worked for Fortune 500 companies and was an early adaptor of social media for human resources, shares that social media guidelines for employees should include the following sentiments:

1. Personal interview with Victorio Milian, August 26, 2012.

• Be professional—Regardless of the medium or forum, you represent the company and should act accordingly. When in doubt, keep silent.
• Be clear—When speaking in a public setting (whether online or offline), make sure people understand when and if you’re acting on behalf of the company.
• Be mindful—People can misinterpret your words. Public sentiment can go against a brand at any time, and it can escalate quickly. When you’re faced with a difficult situation, you need to know who your partners are, so it’s best to know that ahead of time. Also, you need to know what the company’s protocols are in terms of managing and responding to emergency situations.
  This is a good time to talk about staff, social media, and the changing dynamic. In traditional crisis communications, only one person or a core group of people is allowed to speak. Social media is challenging the traditional way. It is still very important to have one person who shares the information officially and stays on message. However, social media has added a new dimension: Staff can help during a crisis or make it worse, especially when it comes to social media. Again, it’s important to humanize the organization.
  With social media, every employee is a public figure for your organization. Working with your employees is key; you need to provide them with guidelines before a crisis happens, and during a crisis, you need to effectively communicate with them as partners, not as underlings. Your employees can be your best brand advocates, says Victorio Milian.8 Often, if employees are disgruntled, a crisis will elicit negative responses from employees. These can hinder responses sent from official channels that would otherwise have been effective. It is good to be aware of and understand what is happening in the ranks before a crisis happens. How well your organization treats its employees can come into play. Unhappy employees may very well damage the recovery from a crisis. The communications and human resources teams can craft perfect messages, but if employees are out there countering those messages, who do you think the media and public are going to believe? Exactly: the employees. The same goes for the flipside—when employees speak in favor of their organization. Think back to the FedEx example, when FedEx employees took to social media to defend their company ardently. It gave you a good impression of the organization, didn’t it?

1. Personal interview with Victorio Milian, August 26, 2012.
   Staff need to be included in the crisis planning process and response. Especially important are social media–savvy staff members, who may have wider audiences and a more influential status online than does the organization itself. As Tonia Ries, founder and CEO of Modern Media and creator of TWTRCON, which is now The Realtime Report, says your employees are on social media, and often they are in the right place at the right time to provide information to their networks, and their networks will then share with their networks, getting the organization’s position out in an authentic way. It comes down to trust.9 Who do people trust? They trust people they have relationships with.
2. Personal interview with Tonia Ries, August 17, 2012.
   Getting the Right People in Place
   I’d be remiss if I didn’t cover the social media staff, because they are important. To use a phrase from the book Good to Great by Jim Collins,10 you need to get the right people on the bus. The skill sets are still developing because social media as a business tool is relativity new, and not a lot of people have those skills.
3. Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2001.
   Many job titles refer to social media; however, for simplicity’s sake, let’s focus for now on of the skills needed to be a community manager. The person’s responsibilities include managing your organization’s social media channels, creating and posting content, participating in conversations, and monitoring the chosen social media platforms. Community managers must be able to handle the demands of a crisis situation because, they will most likely be on the frontlines, handling the avalanche of negativity a crisis may generate. They have to be able to understand the different impact levels. And they must know how to determine whether something is indeed a crisis or whether it’s a headache and whether to elevate a situation and get more people involved in managing it. Community managers must understand that each social media channel will have a different tone because it’s targeting a different audience. While the overall message should be the same, each communication has to be made a bit differently. Remember that social media is fluid and relaxed. It is conversational. What works with a media release, on a website, or in a brochure won’t necessarily work on Twitter or Facebook. Community managers also need to understand the difference between personal and business social media. While your business can be conversational on social media, it should still be professional.
   Social media involves more than creating a Facebook page or a Twitter account; it is about relationship and community building. The following skills are important for a person who is handling an organization’s social media efforts:

• Strong writing and editing skills—The person must be able to write and represent your brand well.
• Customer relations skills—Social media is a conversation between your business and its customers. The person must be customer focused and have an understanding of sales, marketing, and customer service.
• Problem-solving skills—Social media moves quickly, so the person should have sharp problem-solving skills and be able to think on his or her feet.
• Listening skills—Since social media is a two-way conversation, the person needs to be able to listen and then react appropriately.
• Metrics/analytics skills—The person should be able to read, digest, and then distill analytics data in meaningful terms to show the impact that social media activities have on the business.
• Business skills—The person should be able to understand the organization’s business-related goals and how social media fits into them.
  Types of Social Media Crises
  Let’s shift gears now and talk about crises that are specific to social media. There are a few. In the book Social Media Strategist,11 Christopher Barger skillfully outlines six common types of crises in social media. There’s no need for me to re-invent the wheel when Barger has created such a solid list. This list works nicely with the levels of a crisis listed in Chapter 1. The following sections examine Barger’s six common types of crises in social media.

1. Christopher Barger, Social Media Strategist: Building a Successful Program from the Inside Out, New York: McGraw Hill, 2012.
   Crisis Type 1: Individual-Generated Crises
   One type of crisis occurs when an employee does something unflattering, and it reflects on the company. Kenneth Cole, a U.S.-based international clothing company, ran into this in 2011 when the company CEO posted a tweet that made light of the serious situation in Egypt by tying a promotion for its spring line to it (see Figure 7.3). What Kenneth Cole did by attaching its brand to the hashtag #cairo is called “newsjacking.” Egypt was in the midst of a revolution and the tweet trivialized what was happening to millions in Egypt and the rest of the region. The online communities reacted with repulsion regarding this tweet; the company retracted the comment and issued an apology.

Figure 7.3. The insensitive tweet from Kenneth Cole.
NOTE
With newsjacking, an organization attaches itself to a news story although it isn’t directly involved in the situation. Think before your organization uses a disaster- or news-related hashtag. If your organization has something of value to add to the disaster or news story, then it is okay to use the associated hashtag. If not, then don’t do it, or you risk coming across as opportunistic and/or insensitive.
Crisis Type 2: Customer Service #fails
A second type of crisis occurs when a company is not fulfilling its brand promises or a customer is disgruntled with his or her experience. Just think of American filmmaker Kevin Smith, of cult film Clerks fame. When Southwest Airlines removed him from a flight because of his weight in 2010, his complaint online spread quickly because of his more than 1.5 million Twitter followers at time. It swiftly became a news story that caused quite a headache for Southwest Airlines (see Figure 7.4).

Figure 7.4. A social media customer service #fail can cause headaches for your organization.
Crisis Type 3: Campaign Crises
The third type of crisis is an organized effort against a company by an activist group. Think Greenpeace and Nestlé’s Facebook page being hijacked over the company’s use of palm oil in its products. Or the now-infamous Twitter account of @bpglobalpr, which looked legit but was a parody account spoofing BP after the Gulf of Mexico spill in April 2010. In the beginning, many thought that @bpglobalpr was the voice of BP. It has and continues to have more followers on Twitter than the official BP account.
Crisis Type 4: Social Media #fails
The fourth type of crisis involves a social media campaign or tactic missing its mark and being received poorly in the social media sphere. In the fall of 2011, the Australian airline Qantas launched a social media campaign, #QantasLuxury, on Twitter. The company asked people to tweet what would be their best inflight experience. At the time, Qantas was having some flight disruptions. And users on Twitter pushed back, basically hijacking the hashtag with less-than-flattering responses.
Crisis Type 5: Organizational Brain Freezes
The fifth type of crisis is a “What were they thinking?” moment for an organization. Blogger relations can be murky for organizations. The rules in the blogosphere aren’t as clearly defined as in journalism, although a good rule of thumb is to treat bloggers as you would journalists. Media relations 101 applies here: You provide the blogger with information and samples, but you cannot tell him or her how to write the story or what to do. The expectation is that your organization will receive an unbiased story or review, and it will be favorable or at least neutral. That said, there is a practice of paying bloggers to write about products in a positive way. Both the blogger and the organization must disclose the relationship and the fact that it is a paid placement. In recent years, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Britain’s Office of Fair Trade have determined that organizations must disclose their hiring of bloggers and social media contributors; if they don’t, the trust between the blogger and the community will be violated, and consumer laws may be broken. Samsung, a South Korean multinational conglomerate known for electronics, got into hot water in 2012. The company had provided tech bloggers who were part of their outreach program “Samsung Mobiliers” the opportunity to attend a consumer electronics show held in Berlin. Two tech bloggers based in India were invited. In the invitation, the bloggers were given the option to either attend as a reporters or a promoters. They chose the reporter option, because they are independent bloggers and wanted not only to report on Samsung mobile devices, but other brands as well.12 They told Samsung that they weren’t interested in being brand ambassadors. Once in Germany, Samsung representatives informed them that they would be product demonstrators for the brand, and they should pick up their uniforms and report for an orientation. The bloggers reiterated their position as independent bloggers. Representatives threatened to cut them off by canceling their plane tickets and hotel rooms; the reps also told the bloggers that what had happened should not leave Berlin or reach India. One of the bloggers took to the Internet. The blogosphere lit up. Ultimately Samsung sent a statement to The Next Web, an online tech news outlet, which broke the story, stating it was a “misunderstanding” between the two bloggers and the coordinators on the ground. Samsung damaged its reputation with the tech blogging community, making it harder in the future to secure coverage for its products. The company could have avoided this mess if it had simply handled the electronics show as a straight press junket to cover a launch of their new products at a trade show or used a written contractual agreement for services.

12. http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/09/02/heres-samsung-flew-bloggers-halfway-around-world-threatened-leave/.
    CAUTION
    Many organizations preschedule tweets and Facebook posts using social management tools such as HootSuite. This can be really convenient for organizations, allowing them to share information 24/7, even when staff aren’t available. However, prescheduling tweets and posts can create a social media disaster. The National Rifle Association had such a moment in the summer of 2012, when a tweet went out after the horrific mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, where 12 people were killed and 58 were injured when a gunman shot into an audience watching a midnight screening of The Dark Knight. The tweet from the @NRA_Rifleman account (whose profile has been since deleted) was “Good morning, shooters. Happy Friday! Weekend plans?”13 People were outraged by this tweet as news spread about the mass shooting in Aurora. The tweet had been prescheduled via HootSuite, before the scheduler knew about the shooting.
13. www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/20/nra-tweet_n_1689862.html.
    Crisis Type 6: Three Mile Island Crises
    This type of crisis is a major organizational meltdown where all heck breaks loose. Such a crisis doesn’t have to be generated by social media, but it must be major news for an organization, such as a large multinational entity going bankrupt or a major misstep. Susan G. Komen for the Cure, whose mission is to find a cure for breast cancer, faced this type of crisis. In 2012, it had a major organizational meltdown from which it is still trying to recover. Komen for the Cure provides funding for breast cancer research and preventive care such as breast cancer screening. Komen for the Cure decided to defund Planned Parenthood, and a very public firestorm against Komen for the Cure ensued. In the United States, anything to do with Planned Parenthood is inflammatory. In addition, supporters of Planned Parenthood are as passionate as breast cancer survivors about their mission and are highly organized. Komen reinstated funding for Planned Parenthood a short time after the crisis began. Reasons for the defunding were unclear, but it was speculated to be politically motivated, and Komen for the Cure was gutted via social media platforms. Key members of the executive team resigned. One of Komen for the Cure’s major fundraising vehicle, Race for the Cure, has since seen participation decline by as much as 30%.14
14. www.tcpalm.com/news/2012/aug/09/komen-leaders-stepping-down-fallout-over-planned-p/.
    Managing a Social Media Crisis
    Now that you’ve seen many examples of social media crises, let’s talk about ways to manage these crises. Notice I didn’t say control a crisis but manage. The command-and-control no longer works. The one-way side street with a 35 mph speed limit is gone. We now live on a two-way highway with an unlimited speed limit. Your organization will get offensive and/or negative comments in social media, just like it does in comment boxes and surveys. That is just what happens in business. You can’t control what is being said about your organization. However, you can control how you respond to it. As Christopher Barger says, “The best defense is a good offense.” He is spot on with that phrase. If an organization’s first experience in social media is during a crisis, it will set up the organization for failure and damage its reputation further. Remember that the response to a crisis often has more impact on your reputation than the event that triggered the crisis.
    Your organization should participate in social media long before a crisis occurs. You have to have a presence. Think again about the “humanizing” value of being open and transparent. This builds trust. If your organization has a presence on social media and listens to conversations that are important to your customers and actually interacts with them outside the canned marketing messages, then you’ve built an online reputation and relationships. During a crisis, those relationships are key. Barger provides an example in his book. Say that your neighbor is accused of a crime. If you know this neighbor and have had positive interactions with him, then you are most likely going to give him the benefit of the doubt since you have an established relationship.15 But what if he is the neighbor nobody sees or interacts with and takes forever to bring in trash bins after trash collection? In this case, you’re more likely to believe he could have been involved in wrongdoing. This isn’t necessarily logical, but it is human nature, and it can be applied to organizations. People are more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt during a crisis if they have a relationship with you than if they don’t.
15. Christopher Barger, Social Media Strategist: Building a Successful Program from the Inside Out, New York: McGraw Hill, 2012.
    Being present and listening in social media is key. In Chapter 6, we talked about PepsiCo’s Gatorade mission control center, which tracks, analyzes, and drives conversations that are important to the brand, based on online exchanges. Having a mission control center or a decent monitoring program can be your first line of defense in heading off a crisis. Remember that in Chapter 1 we talked about how most crises aren’t surprises to businesses. In a 2011 interview with Business Insider, Bonin Bough, who at the time was PepsiCo’s head of digital media, shared how the company built its control center.16 It is based in the marketing group and is a cross-functional team that monitors and tracks real-time data visualization of what customers are saying. The goal of this center is to deliver real-time marketing and at the same time deliver real-time insights and participation. Within this mission control center, it isn’t about who owns social media but about leadership.
16. http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-04/tech/30358544_1_pepsico-gatorade-bonin-bough#ixzz26x0izCTk.
    Bough talks about how a cultural shift is happening. The Gatorade mission control center is a glass room, so people can see that it is constantly changing. Everyone is reminded that digital media is at the center of customers’ lives. The mission control center has been a silo breaker, bringing people and functions together. This mission control center monitors every trackable consumer conversation. Gatorade had to be really smart about who it was listening to in order to separate important feedback from chatter. At the end of the day, Gatorade is learning about the health of its brand by listening to those consumer conversations. Based on conversations, Gatorade was able to identify myths and mistruths about the brand and go about educating consumers. It is doing this by actually bringing experts into the mission control center and having them speak with the various communities about topics that are important to those communities. Starting such a conversation with consumers can be daunting for brands. Most brands are used to pushing out messaging, but that isn’t going to cause meaningful interactions with customers because it is one sided. Starting a conversation could involve providing additional information, answering a question, connecting customers with a resource or person, or inviting them to a scheduled chat. It’s important to open conversations where people are asking for conversations to begin and build those relationships. That is the start of your good offense.
    Part of building those relationships is identifying communities of people who are important to your organization. You should be monitoring those individuals because they are involved in your industry and/or have said good or bad things about your organization or industry in the past.
    This maybe a good place to talk about engaging prominent online influencers, also known as the “Internet famous.” While I’m not a fan of singling out people, because I believe every customer is important and should be treated with care, we need to broach this topic. Someone who has 100,000 followers on Twitter has a bigger megaphone than someone who has 100 followers. When the person with 100,000 followers has an issue, more people will hear that person’s voice through retweets and blog posts. Just think about Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines. You should provide frontline staff, especially in customer service, with a list of your prominent online influencers so when they are talking about the brand, appropriate response can take place to head off potential social media crises. Social media can quickly create or escalate a crisis, so you have to be monitoring and ready to respond.
    Integrating Social Media into the Plan
    It is time to integrate social media into your crisis communications plan. In Chapter 6 we talked about the steps you need to take to create a crisis communications plan. The principles are the same when you’re integrating social media as a channel in your crisis communications plan. However, you need to be aware of some things that are specifically geared toward social media:
    Don’t Censor Criticism
    Don’t censor criticism on your blog, Facebook page, or YouTube channel. This is a very difficult concept for an organization to wrap its mind around. Removing an offending comment subjects you to criticism, as evidenced by Chapstick’s deletion of comments on its Facebook page.
    NOTE
    Let’s stop here to talk about acceptable community behavior before we go on. Every community has expectations for civil behavior within that community. And this goes for online communities. You should post on your online platforms terms and guidelines for acceptable community behavior. Social media has given many the ability to share their voices publicly and anonymously. If a person or group is behaving against those community guidelines, you can remove the offending comments. However, if comments are within those guidelines but you just don’t like what is being said, you shouldn’t delete.
    When your organization is in a crisis—social media generated or otherwise—or there are coordinated attacks against you on social media, you have options. In the case of an attack on your organization’s blog, it is within your rights to disable comments and post a note explaining why you’ve done that. As on Twitter or Facebook, if you are allowing comments on your blog, it is important to respond to them. With your blog, you can disable comments on just one post; however, on Facebook, you have to disable commenting for the whole page. It would be a good idea to post a reminder informing users about your community guidelines and reinforcing your desire for constructive conversations. Then you can contact a person if necessary to let him or her know about the community guidelines and work to resolve the issue.
    It is important to be truly present on social media. That means interaction. It is good to post to your Facebook page or blog regularly to demonstrate that your organization is paying attention to the channel. It is good to respond to @’s on Twitter. Think back to the Progressive Insurance blog example in Chapter 5.
    Be Mindful of Your Tone
    Social media is individual, so when responding, be personal, polite, and professional while not using the “corporate” tone. Never respond in a dismissive or impolite manner, or you will only add fuel to the fire. Remember that you rarely hear about how well a company responds in news stories or blog posts; the media and bloggers latch on to the negatives and run with them.
    Bring Order to Your Online Space
    Don’t be afraid to bring order into your organization’s online space. Once that has taken place, you can start addressing the concerns. Acknowledge the situation quickly if it is a Level 2 or higher crisis. Gone are the days for shuttering the windows and saying nothing. You need to respond quickly and be forthright. If your organization has mishandled a situation, then admit you blundered, especially if it is in regard to a social media campaign or an individual-generated situation. If it is a more serious situation, then this is where the holding statements specifically written for social media come into play, providing the time you need to research the situation.
    Listen and Understand
    Listen to and understand what the negative commenters want. Do they want an apology? Acknowledgment? Do they demand change? Respond directly to a person, when possible. You can respond publicly and have an open conversation or acknowledge the concern and then take it offline. How you handle a particular situation depends on the factors involved. If it is a complaint and others chime in with the same complaint, then it would be a good idea to keep the response public and provide everyone with the same information.
    Different Channel, Different Tone
    Understand that different social media channels have different tones because they target different audiences. Each channel needs to say the same thing, but they can each say it differently. Keep in mind that social media is fluid and relaxed, and it is conversational. What works in a media release, on a website, or in a brochure won’t necessarily work on Twitter or Facebook. You should monitor and remain silent with a Level 1 crisis. This is where those relationships built with communities will pay off. Often, your champions will respond for you, righting the situation.
    Create a Crisis-Specific Twitter Account
    It is a good idea to create a crisis-specific Twitter account for a Level 2 or higher crisis. This will allow for the media and community to get efficient updates during a crisis. Remember that your website is your digital home, and all social media paths should lead there. Information on a crisis shouldn’t be hidden; it needs to be front and center on your website landing page.
    Keep Website and Social Platforms Updated
    You should keep your website and social platforms updated, with people available to interact. All this needs to happen 24/7. Crises rarely happen on Monday morning at 9 a.m. They usually happen on Friday afternoon at 4:58 p.m. or on the Saturday morning of a long holiday weekend. And when a crisis happens, it doesn’t stop for the weekend or holidays.
    Social media is a two-way conversation. You can’t completely prevent negative conversations or attacks, but you can ensure that effective interactions take place. You can manage the conversations by directing people to pages or sites your organization controls.
    Social media is like an onion: It has many layers, is diverse, can make you tear up, and can be sweet and mellow. It depends on how you prepare it.
17. When a Crisis Hits
    It has happened: A crisis has erupted. Your organization’s crisis response team has been activated. There is no panic or chaos. Why? The organization is prepared to manage it. A solid crisis communications plan is in place. This plan is regularly updated with new information and scenarios to meet the changing landscape. Your crisis response team is sharp, and the members know their roles from the drills.
    Your organization needs to take steps to immediately respond during a crisis. That means:
18. Taking charge of the situation
19. Understanding the circumstances
20. Defining the problem
21. Ranking the options
22. Communicating.
    Think of how FedEx, McDonald’s, and the American Red Cross handled their situations.
    The challenge for any organization is to complete these steps as quickly as possible—within the first two hours of when a crisis begins, if feasible. In this age of information being provided instantly on social media, the window for crisis reaction has gotten smaller. An organization does not have the luxury of time when a crisis hits—especially when it is a social media crisis. Having a well-thought-out plan and a trained team will make a difference in this time crunch.
    When an organization activates its crisis response team, it officially begins the process of responding to the crisis. If your team is well trained, you can jump right into working on crisis. The goal of your crisis communications plan is to put in place such a well-trained team.
    Steps to Take Once a Crisis Is Happening
    You are now in information-gathering mode. You need to find out the facts of the situation at hand. The following questions need to be addressed as the team comes together:

• What is the crisis?
• When did the situation begin?
• Where did it happen?
• Why has it occurred?
• Who is affected?
• What are our options?
  Once your crisis response team has answered these questions, you can move on to determining the key audiences affected, communications goals, and the appropriate communication timing and channels.
  At this point, you should start to draft the key message points moving away from the holding statement and get the necessary background information and supporting documentation. Realize that as you write the same message for each channel, you will need to use a different tone for the specific audience you’re targeting. You want to convey the same message on each platform, but you do have to say it in different ways. Remember that social media is more fluid and relaxed than traditional media. It is conversational. What works in a media release won’t necessarily work on Twitter or Facebook. Remember that McDonald’s proactively translated its key message points into 140 characters each so they were ready to go at the speed of social media; the company did not go into a crisis having to draft the messages and then go through all the layers of approval.
  You need to get the designated spokesperson and content experts in place so they can be the official sources for all information during the crisis. Brief them on the situation and talking points. Prepare them for media interviews, Google+ Hangouts, AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit, or Twitter chats, and any other venues they will use to share information. You need to also respond to @’s on Twitter and to comments on Facebook.
  It is now time to begin communicating the key messages. You should provide regular updates, including written releases and appropriate interviews. Updates to social media such as Twitter and Facebook need to be happening at the same time. It is wise to start the communications process where the situation developed and then move to other platforms. Think back to the cases of FedEx, KitchenAid, and the American Red Cross successfully handling their crises. They tailored their responses to the specific platforms where the crisis had occurred.
  Taking Action Online
  The Dark Site
  Depending the magnitude of the crisis, your organization may want to create a crisis-specific URL that directs users to the organizational website, where official information is disseminated. This will make it easier for people searching for information to find your information. Depending on your industry, you may need to consider having a dark site ready to go. A dark site is a prebuilt website specifically designed for a crisis situation that can be turned on at a moment’s notice. Normally an organization’s website is there to promote the company and its services/products, and a dark site is to there to provide factual, timely information. As in the iconic TV show Dragnet, a dark site provides “just the facts, ma’am.” A dark site should contain available and confirmed facts about the situation, special instructions for those affected, what is being done, pertinent background information, contact information for public and media, and digital content such as photos and video. It can be customized based on the specific crisis. Typically, a dark site is specific to a brand; however, it is recommended to keep the design simple. Utility companies often use a dark site during major outages or natural disasters and have prepaid advertising ready to go when a situation happens.
  Sponsored Links/Posts
  Your organization might also use sponsored links in search engines or sponsored stories/posts on social media sites to get your message out to the public during a crisis. You don’t want to overuse this tactic, however, nor should you be dependent on it. And under no circumstances should you use black-hat SEO to get higher search results. Black-hat SEO is using misleading tactics to drive traffic to unintended targets that usually violate the target’s site’s terms of service and/or the law. Earn those results by being smart. People want and expect information.
  Organizational Blog
  If your company has a robust blog, then you should post updates to the blog in addition to the digital media center on your website. As discussed in Chapter 7, you should have guidelines for acceptable community behavior, and you shouldn’t censor your blog. If user comments are within the guidelines, then you shouldn’t delete them, even if you don’t like what they say. If a person or a group is behaving against those community guidelines, then you can remove their comments or you can respond to them by correcting any misinformation.
  It is within your rights to disable comments on the blog if it really makes sense to do so. It is also within your purview to not allow comments in the first place. While doing so to some extent defeats the purpose of social media to include interaction, you may not want commenting, depending on your specific situation. You need to think about what your organization wants to achieve with social media and the organizational culture. Insurance company Progressive could have saved itself a major headache if it had turned off commenting on its blog.
  It is a good idea to have available on your site RSS and sharing options, such as to post to Twitter, Facebook, email, Reddit, and so on. You want people to be able to share your content easily and help you get your message out.
  You should create a crisis-specific Twitter account as soon as a crisis happens to share information. There should be interaction between this crisis-specific Twitter account and the organization’s primary account. This may not prevent any activist or parody accounts from popping up, but it will make it harder for others to grab a “creditable” Twitter account and use it against you. You should also consider producing a response video, especially if the crisis is YouTube related.
  Remember that your website is your digital home, and all your social media paths should lead to it. Information about the crisis shouldn’t be hidden. It needs to be front and center on your website’s homepage, with a link to the page that is specifically focused on the situation. Links from social media channels should point to that specific page. People will be looking for information about the crisis, and they shouldn’t have to search around your site to find important information, especially if it is a crisis that involves public safety.
  You should keep the crisis-specific website as well as social platforms updated, and you should ensure that staff are available to interact with the public. That means 24/7 and on weekends. Trust me, crises rarely happen on Monday morning at 9 a.m.
  People will be searching the Internet for a trusted source of information. You can be that trusted source on all channels.
  Monitoring
  While all this is happening, your mission control center should be providing the crisis response team with valuable information and insights in real time about the sentiment on all channels. The mission control center should be tracking media reports as well as social media. Tools such as Bootcamp can help you gather and oversee the communications and put them into a structured format.
  Understanding the Basics of Handling a Crisis
  Some simple do’s and don’ts apply across the board, regardless of the crisis situation or the channel, including social media.
  Do
  The following do’s apply in all crisis situations:
• Tell the truth. This may sound like an oversimplification, but it really isn’t. It is important to tell the truth and be as transparent as you legally can. You can’t hide from a crisis today. Mobile technology and social media pretty much guarantee that.
• Release only confirmed facts. Period. Do not speculate or even give an educated guess. Stick to your holding statements. It is okay not to be able to answer a question or address a concern. It is also okay to let people know that you don’t have an answer but will get one. Then find the answers you need and follow up.
• Show concern and put the public first. Display empathy and caring by acknowledging people’s concerns and/or fears. It is important to be authentic here. Corporate speak will not work. Organizations need to be real and human. Robot-like behavior doesn’t fly in today’s social media culture.
• Defuse negatives. Once you’ve acknowledged that there is a situation happening, move quickly into dispelling any misinformation and/or rumors. Misinformation and rumors spread like wildfire over social media. Using insights from your mission control center, you will be able to see trends developing based on the number of mentions and the scale of the crisis. This will allow you to tailor your responses.
• Listen and understand what the negative commenters want. Do they want an apology? Do they want acknowledgment? Do they demand change? Respond directly to each negative commenter. As discussed earlier, you need to remember that each social media channel will have a different tone because different channels target different audiences. Monitor and remain silent if it is a Level 1 crisis. This is where the relationships you’ve built with communities will pay off. Often, your champions will respond for you and help fix the situation.
• Provide newsworthy updates. Keep releasing updates on various channels. Being proactive in getting information out is important. If you leave people in the dark, they will speculate and start rumors because darkness gives the impression that there is something to hide. Because social media moves very quickly, it is okay to repeat your updates. And keep using the insights you’re getting from your mission control center to gauge the effectiveness of your key messages. You may want to explore promoted Tweets on Twitter or promoted posts on Facebook to keep your information at the forefront.
• Remain calm. A crisis is an inflammatory situation. Emotions run high. Hostility may exist toward the organization. The slogan from a 1980s TV commercial for an antiperspirant applies here: “Never let them see you sweat.” If you remain calm, then others will, too. Keep the organization’s and your team’s responses steady and focused. It is okay to show emotion—as in concern and empathy for the situation at hand. Humans are wired for emotion. If you remain calm, then others will, too. If you show emotion and that the organization is more human than machine, the response from the public will be more positive. This is where your crisis communications drilling comes to play. If you’ve been through this before, you’ll be able to stay focused.
  Let’s return the example of the #seriouslymcdonalds hashtag mentioned in Chapter 4. McDonald’s handled this situation well. The restaurant giant’s social media team responded to the situation quickly, releasing only the facts that it was a hoax, and the company did not know who had started it. McDonald’s then transitioned into defusing negatives by reconfirming its commitment to diversity on both sides of the counter. The company kept its cool in a highly charged environment. This happened over a weekend, and the story was dead by midweek. The same thing happened with KitchenAid’s mis-tweet. The company handled it quickly and well, and the outrage was short-lived.
  Don’t
  The following don’ts apply in all crisis situations:
• Don’t say “No comment.” These two words together are the kiss of death to a company’s reputation during a crisis. When people hear this phrase, they associate it with guilt and assume that the company is hiding something or that wrongdoing has occurred. And when it comes to social media, a “no comment” can also be expressed through an inactive Twitter stream or Facebook Wall—again, this is the kiss of death. It is far more productive to use to your holding statements.
• Don’t speculate. Never, ever do this. If you don’t know the facts, say that. Use a holding statement that says something like this: “We don’t know all of the facts right now. We are currently investigating. Once we have more information, we will share it.” Speculation fuels misinformation and rumors, and you don’t want either.
• Don’t overstate or understate. Don’t obscure facts and try to mislead. Tell it like it is. Be transparent and authentic.
• Don’t talk “off the record.” There is no “off the record” today. Anyone, not just the media, can publish what you say. Anyone who has access to a smart phone or a computer with an Internet connection can now publish content.
• Don’t be thrown by hostile questions or actions. Stay calm and focused on the key message points. Use the bridge technique: Acknowledge the problem and transition to your key message points. Your preparation with the anticipated scenarios and drills will help here. Don’t allow yourself to give knee-jerk responses when responding on social media.
• Don’t place blame on someone or somewhere else. Only discuss what is going on specifically to your organization. Placing blame is a shortsighted, temporary deflection and will reflect poorly on your organization in the long run.
  The Weinergate sexting scandal offers evidence of more than one don’t in handling a social media crisis. Representative Weiner’s first response was to place the blame elsewhere, and he followed up with stalling tactics, speculation, and overstatement of the facts in his case. He eventually resigned his position in Congress in a cloud of embarrassment and became the butt of many jokes. He will forever be associated with the hashtag #weinergate.
  Understanding the Organizational Reponses to Crisis
  There is not necessarily one most appropriate organizational response to a crisis. What response is best depends on your specific situation and your organizational culture. What does apply across the board, however, is that organizations should strive to be more human, not machinelike, in their responses. Dr. W. Timothy Coombs of the University of Central Florida said that an organization’s response may vary on a continuum from being defensive to accommodative (see Table 8.1).
  Table 8.1. The Coombs Continuum of Crisis Responses

I bet that when you look at the list in Table 8.1, you can link organizations to each of the strategies shown. Keep in mind that an organization’s response could be a mixture of both defensive and accommodative. Again, it depends on the specific situation. Taking a defensive position is not always negative. For example, in a case of product tampering, it may be necessary to be defensive in the beginning and then move into a more accommodative stand.
Organizations need to move away from defensive responses and toward more accommodative responses. The interactive nature of social media is often at odds with the traditional business culture where crisis responses with defensive strategies may be a first response. Accommodative strategies emphasize reputation repair, however, defensive tactics do nothing to strengthen organizational reputation in the public’s view. Responding to a social media crisis requires accommodative strategies. Compassion, caring, connection, and truth rule on social media. Accommodative strategies allow for interaction and engagement, building relationships and dialogue outside the organization.
When to Get Outside Help
Asking for help is a sensitive subject for many professionals. There are times when outside help is needed to manage a crisis. And that is okay. It is important to put an organization’s well-being above ego in a crisis.
So when do you need to call in outside assistance? You should call in help when:

• The impact level has started at or moved to Level 2 or above. This means you need start managing the crisis.
• You are out of your comfort zone as a professional. Not every professional has experienced a crisis, and it is even possible to get through a career without one.
• Your job function is to sell or manage a product. Managing a crisis requires a totally different skill set than the one you’ve developed. You need to get the right person in to help.
• Management may not be listening to you. When this happens, it doesn’t reflect poorly on you as a professional. You may be saying and doing the right things, but upper management just may not be listening.
  An outside professional brings in a specific skill set and, more importantly, is an outsider who provides an unbiased viewpoint on the situation. This person can look at the big picture. You can visit the Public Relations Society of America’s website (www.prsa.org) to find firms in the United States that focus on crisis communications. The International Public Relations Association (www.irpa.org) has a good list of public relations associations worldwide.
  Wrapping Up
  When a crisis hits, your organization can be prepared to manage it by having a crisis communications plan and a prepared crisis response team in place. By keeping in the forefront the simple do’s and don’ts of crisis communications, your organization can manage a social media crisis to a positive outcome.

1. Recovering from a Crisis
   Once a crisis has been successfully managed, how does an organization move into recovery from the crisis situation? Not much has been written on recovery from a crisis. While this is a very short chapter, I wanted it to stand on its own because the recovery stage is very important but often forgotten. Once an organization manages a crisis, it may try to quickly resume normal business operations, skipping the recovery stage completely. But managing a crisis successfully deserves a pat on the back; the recovery stage is needed. This stage is very important in restoring the organization’s reputation for the long term. It is important to move into this last phase of a crisis.
   The goal of the recovery phase is to move an organization from a crisis to resuming normal business operations while continuing to rebuild confidence and trust in the organization. During this phase, the organization learns from the experience. Taking time to debrief after a crisis is vital.
   As the last phase in managing a crisis, an organization can take some steps to close out the crisis situation. One of the first steps is to recognize the people who were involved in managing the crisis situation and its response. Those involved will appreciate the compliments. Recognizing people does a couple things. It helps them feel appreciated for their efforts, which in turn makes them more likely to interact positively in the future when another crisis happens. There will be another crisis, so it’s important to build those positive relationships with everyone. Also, saying thank you boosts the morale of the organization. People like to see their co-workers get recognition.
   After staff have been recognized, the crisis response team needs to come together to review the crisis communications plan and assess its strengths and weaknesses. At this point, the team debriefs about the situation, going through the time line of events and actions taken. Throughout this process, the team asks what worked, what didn’t, and why. As with the SWOT analysis in the crisis plan development stage, team members need to be very honest and frank. No sugar coating.
   The next step is to do a final check of the opinions that the key audiences and the general public continue to hold after the crisis and its aftermath. This will assist you in developing a recovery plan.
   Then you can move on to actually developing a recovery plan. A recovery plan needs to include three things: situational analysis, audience identification, and key messages. To create the plan, you need to answer the following questions:

• What are the organization’s objectives, and what is its plan to resume normal business operations? It is smart to include a time line here.
• What communications activities and support are needed to mend the organization’s reputation in the long term?
• What key audience(s) does the organization need to reach with its messages in order to implement its recovery plan? Make a list of them. They may be the same audience as in the crisis, but it is important to identify them in order to not forget them in the process.
• What are the key messages that the organization must communicate to its audience(s)?
• Who will deliver these messages?
• How will the messages be delivered both internally and externally?
• What media opportunities will be used? What advertising will be done?
• What is the time line for recovery communications?
• Are the community relations activities that are being done appropriate? If so, what are they, and how will they be coordinated? What is the time line?
• If it was utilized during the crisis, will outside public relations counsel be retained?
• How will the success of the recovery communications plan be measured?
• What are the milestones against which progress can be measured?
  The last two questions are important. You know you need to measure the success of the handling of a crisis, but you may not know that it is also important to measure the recovery to ensure that the organization actually has recovered.
  The last stage of the recovery process is to determine the opportunities that might result from the crisis and then work to make them happen. Out of every crisis come opportunities for an organization to strengthen its reputation. While we still live in a world where outrage or the cause of a crisis is often still suppressed, a crisis provides an opportunity to make positive changes within the organization. A social media crisis gives an organization an opportunity to develop a more nimble structure in preparing for and then managing such a situation. It gives an organization permission to listen and actually hear what is being said before, during, and after a crisis. A crisis allows staff to rise to the occasion and show leadership on various levels.
  There is one last piece of the recovery process. It may be a mundane task in the recovery process, but it is a needed one. You need to file paperwork that documents the crisis and its subsequent handling. You need to document the whole process for the report. Having it all written down will help in refreshing the crisis communications plan as well as guide the organization if a similar situation happens again. It also helps document the value of the public relations function. And that is a good thing in these days of shrinking departments and budgets. Show the value of the public relations department to the organization.
  Examples of the Recovery Process
  Let’s look at how some of the organizations mentioned in this book handled their recovery. First let’s return to the Tylenol example in Chapter 1. Johnson & Johnson moved into recovery to ensure that it would never again face a crisis like the one it had just faced. The company took action. It developed the “triple”-seal packaging we see today on most over-the-counter medicines. Johnson & Johnson was one the first companies to comply with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration mandate for tamper-resistant packaging. In addition to the new packaging, Johnson & Johnson reformulated its product from capsules to caplets, which are more resistant to tampering.
  Throughout the recovery process, Johnson & Johnson used media releases and advertising campaigns to communicate the changes in the packaging and the new pill form to the public. In order to motivate consumers to return to Tylenol, the company offered a $2.50 off coupon, which was generous when you think it was 1982, on the purchase of the product. The coupon was made available through newspapers and by calling the toll-free number. Tylenol sent out a sales force to make presentations to those in the medical community. The company hoped these measures would restore confidence in the product. It is said that Tylenol was able to recover 70% of its market share within five months of the tampering crisis. Johnson & Johnson has faced other crises since 1982 and has been able to manage them successfully. The company learned from the tampering crisis in 1982, making it easier to manage future crises.
  Now let’s look at the FedEx example. FedEx was committed to recovering and regaining the public’s trust in the organization, and it took strong action to make those things happen. After taking care of the immediate customer and issuing a public apology, FedEx immediately began working on customer service processes in order to prevent such a problem from happening again. To that end, FedEx has built in a number of social media early warning systems that move the company’s actions much closer to the customer, says Shea Leordeanu.1 This allows FedEx to rapidly personalize its efforts with dissatisfied customers.

1. Personal interview with Shea Leordeanu on January 28, 2013.
   Remember how the video ended up on YouTube in the first place. It landed there because the customer had no way to share the video with the FedEx customer service representative directly. FedEx is currently building out a new video upload solution so that its customer service representatives will soon be able to provide a link to any upset customer who’d like to show them a video. Files will be tagged with any and all available information, such as account number, tracking number, and complaint number. That way, any video will be connected directly to the concern, allowing customer service to share it with the accountable operations teams for an even faster resolution process.
   FedEx has kept its focus on serving the needs of the customer. Leordeanu said, “While we always strive for the best customer experience possible, we recognize that the way we help a customer recover from an unsatisfactory experience is critical to customer retention. We’re honored to serve every one of our customers.”
   The recovery stage helps an organization move forward while learning from the experience and refocusing the organization on getting back to business.