Bandaging a Bleeder – Addressing PR nightmares on social media

If you work in social media long enough, whether you only manage your own business page or contract to manage several, it will happen to you. From negative reviews to ugly rumors or accusations of some kind of wrongdoing, on a long enough timeline, you’re going to face everyone’s worst nightmare about social media. It’s why some companies and government entities resisted putting themselves out there online for so long. When the interaction with customers and the public goes real-time, negative PR can snowball astronomically faster.

Seasoned in social media since 2012, I’ve witnessed it happening to entities of all sizes and industries. I watched the Progressive Insurance Twitter gaffe in 2012 and the nearly unbelievable Black Milk Clothing Facebook facepalm of 2014. Those two certainly rate as excellent examples of what NOT to do. I also appreciated the swift and impeccable response to an incident of breastfeeding discrimination at the Cleveland History Center earlier this year. Now THAT’S how it’s done!

And, I worked directly on a few ugly incidents for my own clients. A car dealership found itself facing an accusation of extremely poor customer service from many years prior. Unfortunately in that case, a member of the dealership’s staff responded first to the comment which came in on their Facebook page, and in rather spectacularly poor taste, addressing the whole thing far too conversationally and accusing the original commenter of making up the story. By the time our agency team got a hold of the incident, we could do little but advise them to just STOP replying to the far too-deeply-dug thread. The business came off looking unprofessional, reactionary and childish.

Conversely, when a hospitality company our agency managed received a negative review accusing them of discrimination and poor customer service, they contacted us right away to manage the response. One wayward comment from an employee made its way into the mix, but we were able to rectify that small gaffe and formulate a professional response to the complaint to keep the company’s reputation intact and get their social image back on track before it could slide into dangerous territory. Today, a little over a year later, it’s no more than a blip for them.

So what goes into damage control when things turn ugly for your organization in the social sphere? Well, it all depends on whether you care to do it right (and prove to your fans and customers/clients/constituents that you are indeed on your game) or whether you’re going to muddle through it in entirely the wrong way and become the next unfortunate example of a poorly-managed professional page. Sometimes the best thing to do is call in the experts, but if you do plan to manage your own way through it, here are some steps to take to avoid the most common pitfalls and face palms of the social landscape.

1. Have a plan in place. This doesn’t immediately help if you’re already facing an attack or accusation, but even if you’ve already muddled your way through one (or more) online reputation crisis(es), don’t let another day go by in your organization without putting a plan in place. Key to this plan will be naming the representatives of your company who are authorized to respond to online complaints. These should be cool-headed professional individuals. They don’t have to be social media gurus. They should be the same people you would trust to stay pleasant and professional when addressing an angry customer face-to-face. After establishing this part of your directive, make sure everyone in your organization knows who you’ve named and understands those individuals must be consulted before any kind of response can be posted. Be sure to add that, that includes responses from employees’ personal social media accounts as well.
2. Don’t try to hide the evidence. One of the worst mistakes you can make as a social media manager for your organization is trying to simply delete all negative posts. This is another example of something for which you really should have a policy on the books, because while you certainly SHOULD delete posts that are defamatory or offensive to your fans, deleting a complaint or an accusation makes you look not only like a weenie, but also paints your organization as outmoded and/or incompetent in the online sphere. This directive also goes for any knee-jerk reactions you or someone else in your organization may have posted prior to a proper professional response (see more about this in the \”BONUS\” section at the end of this article) which leads us to…
3. Don’t be an animal (or a robot). Our animal instincts dictate two options when responding to attack – fight or flight. Neither are acceptable options while managing your online reputation. In fact, employing either can be catastrophic. Try to “fight” by outright denying a claim or attacking the character of the person or people perpetrating the accusation, and you will lose customers/clients/constituents FOREVER. Employing the “flight” option, simply ignoring the claim for days or forever, and you’re proving you lack the social media acumen to professionally handle your company’s reputation. You need to be better than an animal. BREATHE and THINK before formulating a response and try to instill that response with as much empathy, humanity and grace as you can muster. Conversely, don’t go too far in the other direction and stick with too-canned of a response, repeated or just slightly recapitulated over and over. Be open to the additional questions that are bound to pop up and, within reason, respond individually to new questions and concerns as they arise.
4. Demonstrate a genuine concern and professional investment in your response. Look again at how the Cleveland History Center not only accepted blame for the incident in question, but stated how they would be responding to rectify the situation. Even if the claim made against you is patently false, you need to demonstrate (again, within reason) a sincere investment in the concern brought up. A page I managed once received a complaint about a mother using our platform to bully another mom. I first confirmed that no such incident had taken place on any of our sites or social media. I then made the suggestion that the poster might be confusing our organization with many similarly-named entities in the region, but I didn’t stop there. As this poster was concerned about online bullying, I went on to restate our policy against bullying and the use of discriminatory language while participating in our online community. In this way, I allied the organization with the original poster instead of alienating her. I also made sure to never directly contradict what was being alleged. Instead of denying the claim outright, I simply stated we could find no record of any such exchange across our platforms.
5. Never let ‘em see you sweat! Be calm and tidy in your response. Run it through spell check and have at least two pairs of eyes review it for tone and professionalism. Save it in a document before you post it if you need more time for it to be properly reviewed. Run it by your ad agency if you have one, your lawyer if necessary, your only employee or your best friend if you have no one else. A few hours lag time leading to a well-formulated response is FAR better than a hastily-typed, defensive-toned, typo-filled immediate response. Grammatical errors and/or a reactionary tone will cook your virtual goose, even if your reply is factually correct, because they are the virtual embodiment of sweat dripping from your beet-red forehead.

BONUS: It’s not too late… until it is. Even if you screwed up and posted something inappropriate as a first response, it’s not too late, within a few hours or even a day or so, to come back with a more thoughtful and appropriate statement. Online PR crises are open wounds. Responding wrongly is tantamount to clawing at the surrounding flesh and making the bleeding worse. Every time you let your fingers flail (continue to post inappropriately and/or unprofessionally) you lose more and more blood (fans/customers, etc.) Do it for too long, and you’re letting your organization “bleed out” online. Take proper stock of the situation by posting something professional and well-formulated (even if your first response made it worse), and you’ve effectively bandaged the wound and stopped the bleeding.

What you’d really like to be doing is posting about the services/activities/etc. that make your organization great, and once you’ve applied a good “bandage,” that’s exactly what you can and should get back to doing.