Chris Syme (
cksyme.org) is CoSIDA Chair of the New Media/Technology Committee and an emerging social media crisis and reputation expert. The article below is one of her recent blog entries and part six of a Crisis Communications series for CoSIDA.com. Follow Syme on
Twitter.
Crisis Communications Series:
Part 1:
Listen before you speak: Using social in crisis
Part 2:
Engage to build a loyal following - Using social media in crisis
Part 3:
In crisis, be quick - but don’t hurry
Part 4:
In real time: Four benefits of using loyalty strategies to prevent a crisis
Part 5:
3 reasons why you need a social media response triage
Syme has just published her first book:
Listen, Engage, Respond: Crisis Communications in Real Time. This is a 40-page e-book where Syme discusses how to integrate the power of social media into a crisis plan that will not only help avert trouble, but also build a corps of loyal fans that can help you ease the negative impact of a crisis when it hits. Find more on the book
HERE.
The information below is an excerpt from that e-book.
Effective crisis strategy isn’t just for stormy weather. The best way to pre
pare for a crisis is to take tactical steps on a regular basis when there’s smooth sailing. One of those is listening, or monitoring social media for conversations about your brand and sector.
I’ve written before about
the benefits of a listening strategy and what conversations you should be listening to. Within those conversations, we are looking for and keeping track of
signs, warnings, and patterns that may involve one or more of the following:
• Frequency and intensity of conversations
• Sentiment or tone of posts and patterns of that sentiment
• Key fans or critics present, and frequency of their posts
• Incorrect information, misquotations, or slander
• A pattern of comments that uncovers an organizational blind spot, or “ball that has been dropped.”
• Legitimate requests for information in a crisis
• Breaking news concerning the brand, especially from influential non-traditional media sources
All these elements should be documented on a regular basis to help implement a
responsible triage strategy. Not all negative events online need a response, especially if your community of fans is good at policing themselves. Sometimes we have to let people vent, especially if it is a legitimate observation of a blind spot we may have.
Documentation during smooth sailing can likely be done on an Excel spreadsheet, but if you have a monitoring platform like
Radian6 or
Meltwater Buzz, which I suggest, this is an automated function you just need to monitor.
Understanding what to listen for within each conversation helps save you time in monitoring and could make a difference in how quickly you respond to a potential problem. Are you listening for a crisis?