Social media crisis communications: 8-step response plan

Social media crisis communication means using social channels to communicate to followers and the broader public during a brand crisis or local/national emergency.

During a crisis, social media can help you:

• Communicate critical updates in real-time
• Prevent the spread of misinformation by amplifying official messages
• Track online sentiment to better understand what people need from your organization

But is social media the best channel in times of crisis?

You know how the saying goes — better safe than sorry.

Here’s how to cover your bases to best avoid a fire, or prevent one from spreading.

Things move fast in the first 24 hours of a crisis. You’ll be in a better position to respond rapidly if you outline common scenarios in advance.

And it all comes down to pre-planning. What possible situations could impact your community, the world, and your business? What are competitor mistakes to avoid?

Think up everything from widespread product recalls and insensitive social media posts to local disasters and mainstream political outrage. While it’s impossible to plan for all potential crises, it’s worth the time to map out anything you can think of.

Then, consider what will be most important for your followers to know in each type of crisis. For local or national crises, this might include evacuation orders, emergency contact numbers, or shelter locations.

Who’s in charge in a crisis situation? Document it!

Is it your existing social team? Do you need to call in extra support? Will your social content follow your regular approval process, or do you need to get more senior people involved?

Identify the people who are best suited for each of these critical roles (and outline their responsibilities):

Navigating a crisis can be stressful for any social media manager — companies are expected to act quickly to resolve issues, without making things worse.

An escalation framework (or a list of procedures) is worth implementing to help guide your response.

The four stages of social media crisis communication are:

1. Pre-crisis: This is when all is going well. Take time before crisis hits to develop your social media crisis communication plan.
2. Crisis: This is when you are in the thick of social media crisis management. In the immediate wake of the crisis, your social media team goes into high gear to implement your emergency response plan.
3. Response: You’ve had time to better understand the situation. After the initial emergency plan is put in place, you can implement your medium-to-longer-term social media strategy for dealing with ongoing issues related to the crisis.
4. Post-crisis: After the crisis is over, look back at your response to evaluate how things went and what can be improved. Incorporate your learnings into a revised social media crisis communications plan. This will help you be better prepared for the next crisis (and takes you back to the pre-crisis stage).

To put it simply, the average day of a social media manager can be chaotic.

Luckily, Hootsuite has you covered with a suite of tools to help you stay in-the-know and free up time to tackle your social media crisis communication plan.

Here are just a handful of the perks you get with a Hootsuite account:

To avoid minor brand mishaps on a daily basis, Trish says social media managers should “step away from their work and give it a 360-degree look.”

“What does this post look like at all angles? Read it without any emotion. Read it but place the stress on different words. Does the message still come across positive or could someone interpret it differently?”

She continues:

Take it from Paige: “A crisis may happen at any moment. And as a social marketer, you need to be prepared.”

Here is your social media crisis response plan, in eight steps.

As a crisis unfolds, it’s critical to “understand the nature and severity of the crisis and assess how your brand may be impacted,” Paige says.

You also need to know what your employees, customers, and followers are saying about your brand as you navigate the crisis. “With social listening alerts in place, social marketers can be alerted as soon as there is an abnormal spike in negative sentiment,” Trish says.

Remember the crisis team you assembled back in the last section? It’s time to call them on deck.

Paige’s top priority? “Ensure everyone is aligned on messaging and next steps.”

Ideally, you already have somewhat of a response template via that infamous brain dump from earlier. Consider this the foundation of your messaging for speedy next steps.

Your key messaging should cover your official response, including the context of the crisis, how you’ll address it, and what people can expect moving forward.

Especially if your audience is waiting on your apology, Paige says “temporarily halting all scheduled and planned posts to avoid appearing out of touch or inappropriate” is the way to go.

In a non-direct crisis, Paige advises to “follow the lead of other brands and competitors, but trust your gut too. Your content probably won’t make a huge difference overall, but an insensitive post can seriously hurt your brand’s reputation.”

Which social channel will appropriately reach your audience in this situation?

Start by listing the channels that your audience spends time on. Then, prioritize the ones that best match the message you’ll share.

Like Paige mentioned earlier, social media is great for quickly sharing important updates.

However, your speed shouldn’t sacrifice sincerity.

In the aftermath of controversial brand messages or tragic national events, it’s important to choose your words carefully and communicate with empathy — both in your initial statement(s) and replies.

Especially in the midst of your brand’s wrongdoing, accountability should guide your continued response.

You’ve shared a response that’s equally empathetic as it is timely — congrats!

But your initial post was just a peek into the front lines of this crisis. Once your post is out in the world, which social media platforms and media sources will you continue to monitor during and after the situation?

You’ve made it out the other side — it’s time to debrief on what just happened.

This is your team’s chance to reflect on the situation at hand, and the pros and cons of how you handled it.

Compare this against your brand’s recent social sentiment history. Map the shifts in sentiment to the actions you took and use those results to update your social media crisis communication plan.

Good news: you’re not the first to find yourself in a social media crisis, and you sure won’t be the last.

Here are three note-worthy brands who tackled difficult times (arguably) successfully.