Speaker 1: In this video, you'll learn about the world of crisis communications and how social media plays a significant role in the specialized area of communications and marketing. What is a crisis? Crises have been defined as events that either cause harm or the potential for harm to an individual or organization. Whether the harm produces physical, emotional, or environmental damage to individuals and communities involved in the crisis, or damage to the corporate reputation or financial standing of an organization, the range of harm is different in each unique situation. Full understanding of a crisis encompasses not only the actual event, but also the process or time leading from an event, including the subsequent perceptions of the crisis by various stakeholders. While most research has been dedicated to focus on traditional crises, social media crises are quite different due to where they start. Texas A&M professor Tim Coombs, who is one of the leading researchers and scholars in crisis communications, classifies social media crises as acting somewhat like zombies in nature compared to traditional crises. What Coombs means by this is that a social media crisis is an incident or triggering event that happens on social media or on a particular platform, rapidly spreads from person to person, spreads virally to become a traditional news story. Advances in social media have opened a world of opportunity for sharing information across public and private sectors and disseminating necessary information about a crisis among stakeholder groups. Emerging communication platforms are transforming how crisis communicators reach their audiences and partner with agencies in a variety of situations. These transformations and adoptions not only change how individuals and organizations communicate during a crisis, but also how others perceive their actions and behaviors and the overall reputation of brands or corporations involved in the situation. New types of social media crises arise every day, and the brands need to be prepared for that. Here are some examples of social media crises you might come across. Number attacks or the hacking of social media accounts. This happens when an account is compromised and is sharing either inappropriate or spam content that is not reflective of the brand voice and mission. Advocates calling for boycotts on advertisers. When audience members are not happy with how the organization is practicing, they may use social media to voice their outrage and cause others to follow them. Live video. Video is unpredictable and can show a situation happening in real time causing chaos and emotion to spark. Fake news and rumors. Information that is not true can circulate online which will distract from the real information about the crisis being shared. Employees going rogue. Sometimes employees go off script and go against social media policy behavior. This comes about when employees perhaps do not agree with the actions by their employer or they feel no one will catch them. These have to be addressed and handled in a timely and appropriate manner. Trend jacking during a sensitive situation. Trend jacking happens when you take advantage of a situation that is trending in order to get your commercial message out. Outrage based on something that has been shared or posted. People view social media platforms as first impressions and if they see something they do not like, they will voice these concerns openly and loudly online. So what do you do if you're experiencing a social media crisis? Do not panic. When a problem arises on social media, you want to ask yourself a few questions. First, is this a real crisis or not? As Melissa Agnes discusses in her book, Crisis Ready, there are differences between what an issue is and what a crisis is. If it is a crisis, you need to own it and take responsibility for your actions. You need to have a sound team in place for your crisis team. You will want to have a mixture of professionals who are part of your team like the CEO and key decision makers, representatives from the legal department are going to be key to make sure the actions and messages follow the law. In addition, subject matter experts will continue communicating the key specifics that the media may have questions about. For example, a health specialist on Ebola for the Center for Disease Control. Internal representations from the brand like PR, marketing, accounting, finance, and HR are also key to have as part of the crisis team. Each member will be able to come in with their subject matter expertise and offer a unique perspective. Lastly, one of the most important things you need to have is a crisis plan. A crisis plan outlines all the steps needed to take during a crisis. It describes who should be involved, when to respond, prepared statement, and the action plan if a crisis escalates. You should regularly look at this plan and revise based on the social media platform changes as well as in response to the rising issues and challenges that need to be accounted for in a crisis. When a crisis emerges, you do not want to be responding on the fly. Preparation is key to be as proactive as possible when a crisis hits. There are three different stages to a crisis. Preparation, pre-crisis, response, crisis, and recovery, post-crisis. Preparation comes in many forms like setting a proactive monitoring system, training all your team members in crisis communication, setting social media guidelines and protocols, creating a message map for responses and statements for each given situation, building a healthy and interactive relationship with key parties. Even the best brands can have preparation plans in place, but they still are in the midst of a crisis. In the response stage, a social media manager and their team has to react quickly, compassionately, with authoritative and clear words and actions, understand the emotions being shared on social media, pay attention to feedback, comments, sentiment, and false information that could be spreading. Integrate social media messages to the appropriate medium and audience. Monitor and integrate comments into crisis plan strategy. Provide statements to audiences to take certain actions embracing self-efficacy. Once the crisis has been resolved and addressed, the recovery or post-crisis stage emerges and we have to evaluate the overall sentiment of the messages, determine the overall response in the media and amongst key audiences, analyze the data to see what lessons to take away, evaluate team members and the response strategies from the crisis, determine best practices and lessons learned. What exactly is involved in a crisis plan? There are many different types of crisis plans out there, but you need to first build one that fits your team, resources, and the industry you are in. Here are some must-have components for your crisis plan. A good mix of executive personnel to enforce decisions, management to coordinate and partner with communication experts to craft the messages. Make sure you also have someone from legal and potentially investment relations involved. Brainstorm all of the potential issues that could arise. Start by making a list of everything you can think of that could be a crisis or a problem. This could be events like gun tear, a lying executive, a fire, white collar crime, delivery problems with your product, internet trolls gone wild, data breaches, sexual harassment, website issues, you name it. Assign a level based on how much it will affect your company's bottom line. And determine exactly at what point will you push the issue up the risk ladder. Determine which stakeholder will be notified at what risk level. Managers, executives, partners, clients, vendors, local and federal authorities, and the press. Create a list of internal contacts and their titles, the departments that should get involved. Include their email addresses, phone numbers, and alternative contact numbers. Alert the stakeholders using the risk levels you've preset. You'll also need a social monitoring program that will help you see all of the incoming social conversations that you have a sense of the urgency of the crisis or problem. If there is a situation that needs an apology, do it and do it fast, within 60 minutes. Be as sincere and as transparent as possible. The longer you wait, the more the situation can spiral out of control. It is a proactive move to see what mentions, keywords, and conversations are emerging about a brand in crisis. It is not only important to explore what is being said, but who is driving the conversations. These conversations can tell us a lot about any potential early warning signs, level of sentiment for the brand in crisis, who are the influencers driving the conversation, for example, advocates, customers, media, or trolls, and any issues that need to be addressed in a timely manner. There are different ways to approach this. Let's look at examples from two case studies. Southwest Airlines, which has established itself as a proactive party to social media because of its dedication to timely customer service, was responsible to the Indian explosion incident that happened in April 2018 with one of their planes. In this crisis, the team responded promptly and discussed the ways in which they will be addressing this type of situation in the future. In 2017, Uber took actions that were counter to individuals protesting at New York's JFK Airport during President Donald Trump's travel ban. Customers of Uber were outraged by the actions of the CEO and voiced their frustration publicly, which resulted in a worldwide viral movement on social media of people deleting the Uber app. In 2018, there was also a Delete Facebook crisis, which came about when Cambridge Analytica, a little elections consulting agency, were outed by a whistleblower for hijacking data from over 87 million Facebook users without their knowledge. As a result, Uber and Facebook had to address the Delete Uber and Delete Facebook movements online. Many felt that the companies took too long to respond to the crises and their statements appeared to not be tailored to the situation. Uber's CEO eventually left the company, and Mark Zuckerberg had to testify to Congress. Both brands had different results to their crisis, but neither had a sound listening and monitoring protocol to guide them in how they needed to respond. You also have to know where the crisis first started on social media. Most of the time, a crisis sparks on a particular platform. This is where you have to be since this is where your audience will be having the conversations surrounding the particular incident. Not responding or being present on social media could result in a bigger situation to address, which could impact the company more in the future. Within the social listening and monitoring protocol you have set forth, you do want to make sure you are empathetic to the current landscape and emotional state of your audiences. This is not the time to promote posts or newsjacket a crisis situation. In addition, researching why certain trends are trending is crucial because not understanding the context of things could result in getting yourself into a bigger crisis. In this day and age where everyone wants to be relevant and trending on social media, this could actually result in creating a crisis for yourself. Look at what happened a few years ago to DiGiorno's and the Why I Stayed hashtag. The brand entered a serious conversation about survivors of domestic violence by stating they stayed because of the pizza. The brand apologized for this incident and recognized it was a key to first research a trending hashtag before jumping into the conversation. With that being said, here are some tips for handling social media during a crisis. Make sure to pause scheduled social media posts. Pause paid ads on social media channels. Pause marketing emails. Assess the plan, blogging, and campaign schedule for appropriateness. Create a blog post addressing the situation as needed. Provide talking points for executives as needed. Check all content for relevant references that could be perceived as offensive or rude in light of the event. Schedule any planned product updates or changes. Create a plan for employee communications as needed. Communicate issues and customer support via social media. Notify folks speaking that day on need to address or not and relevant talking points. Consider creating a flowchart of action. Make sure you disseminate your plan to internal stakeholders. For the most part, social media crises can be prevented. Personal training is key, and crisis simulations need to be conducted to make sure all parties are aware of what they need to do if something happens. If a mistake happens, own it and take responsibility. Make sure you address this proactively and in a timely manner. Never say no comment. This is what you do not want to do. There are always ways to address a question from the media and others if you do not have the information at a given time. For example, stating, at this time, we are still in the midst of an investigation and do not have all of the facts, however, we will be providing an update on Tuesday to provide more details for you all. Don't engage in a flame war. Trolls and those who are not your fans may want to start a heated conversation with you to create an emotional spark. While it is tempting to reply, it is better to not engage in a conversation that could escalate into a bigger situation. Do not blame the intern. Many times there is a perception that if something goes wrong, it's because of the intern. That's not always the case, and it is key to not allow this narrative to spread amongst the online community. Understand the role of the spokesperson and key players involved. How you present yourself is just as important as what you say. First impressions matter. Make sure the statements you share on social media reflect on these points. Use your best influencers and advocates. These individuals are not just for promoting new products and services, but could be your best allies in a time of crisis. In summary, preparation is the name of the game for having a strong crisis communication plan. Like the changes we see in social media, we have to be prepared for the incidents that could negatively impact our brand culture, reputation, and community. Listening and monitoring for these potential crises could help in being a proactive and effective social media professional.