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Social media & crisis
communications

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Getting prepared; thinking ahead
Social media is real-time, you no longer have the luxury of gaterhing the troops and determining
your strategy. Before you do anything:
• Has your compnay managed a recent crisis?
• Are you managing in-house or outsourcing?
• Who is monitoring 24/7?
• Who is your response team?
• What is your response policy?
• Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

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Respose Tree
Putting a clear plan in place eases the fear of crisis, a crisis response tree is great place to start.
• Examples

5. Positive/Neutral Comments Yellow Alert Red Alert
Following are general guidelines for responding to positive/ • Unhappy customers • Criminal incidences pertaining to safety, theft, etc.
neutral comments.
• Dedicated complainers • Legal concerns involving the center or its tenants
Response Time: 24 hours • Reputation management
Response Time: 4 hours
Response Team: Center social media team Response Time: 1 hour
Response Team: Center social media team and agency (if
Approval Process: These responses do not require an necessary) Crisis Team: Center management team and agency
approval process.
Approval Process: Strategy and communication must be
Approval Process: Craft response and review with approved by the center’s crisis team within one hour of being
Guidelines: <NAME> (and additional center management team alerted to the issue. Upon approval, the agency will post the
1. Assess the message. members if necessary). Upon message approval, center response and monitor.
social media team will post.
2. Do you want to respond? Guidelines:
1. Immediately following a known occurrence or the discovery
• If the answer is YES: Guidelines:
of a Facebook/Twitter comment reporting an occurrence,
- Provide supporting information/commentary. 1. Is the complaint warranted? Are the facts correct? schedule a conference call with the crisis team.
- Monitor the conversation. • If the answer is YES:
- Craft a response addressing the concern and 2. Together, the crisis team will identify a response strategy. If
• If the answer is NO: alerting the author as to what steps are being taken the incident requires police attention, hold responses (other than
- Monitor the discussion to see whether the to resolve the issue. Invite an offline discussion to the prepared statement) until we have spoke with authorities.
community continues the conversation and further answer questions.
3. Within one hour of crafting the strategy/response, center
whether future action is required. management must provide all revisions and/or approval.
• If the answer is NO:
Response Considerations: - Craft a response that gently corrects the facts. 4. If there is a proactive response strategy, agency will post the
• Transparency: If/when responding, make sure you are Invite an offline discussion to further answer approved message and monitor for as long as deemed
being honest and conversational. questions. necessary.
• Sourcing: Reinforce responses, with stats or articles that 5. Should the issue escalate, we will revert to step 1 and
support your message. 2. Monitor hourly over the next 48 hours and reassess, reassess follow-up actions.
• Timeline: Be timely with responses but take the time to should the situation escalate.
craft an accurate, relevant, engaging and conversational Prepared Statement: In the situation of a “worst case scenario,”
message. such as a shooting or something of a similar nature where an
• Tone: Remember that we don’t have the luxury or face- immediate response is deemed necessary or if we are unable to
to-face communication, so ensure that your tone is clear gather the crisis team in a timely manner, the below prepared
statement should be used:
and cannot be perceived negatively.
• Influence: As followers grow, brand ambassadors and “We are aware that an incident took place on site <insert timing;
loyalists will emerge; make sure you are actively engaging e.g., last night>. We are currently working with our community
these fans. partners to assess the situation and will post further details as
soon as we have more information.”

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Playbook—advice from around the web
Monitor your social media 24/7 and think before you react (but be quick):
• Aplogize when necessary
• Address the problem
• Thank customers for their feedback
• Clear up any misinformation
• Listen and engage conversation
• Be human, not corporate
• Invite an offline discussion

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Calling an audible
Guess what, people are unpredictable.
• Unitentionally fueling the fire
• Lack of follow-through
• Over-communicating

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Audible
When logic usually works:
• Misguided: do they have inaccurate information?
• Unhappy customer: post result of a bad experience?

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Audible
When logic may not work:
• Troll: focused only on negative comments?
• Rager: ranting, raging, satirical?
Lessons (from personal experience):
• In the end, it’s about the community...not necessarily the individual.
• Recognize when it’s time to stop engaging.
• Be careful about online actions—discussions/actions will get
exaggerated online
• Don’t remove the post (unless vulgar or inappropriate or threatening),
instead, execentuate the positive

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Social Media as a Crisis Tool
Using social media as a communication tool for offline crisis.
• Small restaurant fire at a shopping center.
• Fire trucks and police on-site addressing situation.
• Center did due diligence working w/ restaurant, fire dept. and media.
• Did NOT proactively post updates to social channels.
• Networks exploded with frenzy of rumors about what had taken place
• Center forced to take a reactive position.
In hind site:
• Post quick statement with status report—small fire, no injuries, when the restaurant will reopen
• Monitor over the next 24 hours to answer questions and manage conversations (rumors)