How to Create a Social Media Crisis Management Plan [Free Template]

Nowadays, community managers and customer service professionals have to deal with business crises over social media. These problems could include nasty comments, unhappy customers, delivery issues, a marketing faux pas, or a global pandemic — all problems that arise frequently and deserve reasonable and empathetic responses.

When these complex situations occur, how do you categorize them? How do you determine the point of escalation with each scenario? When should you get help from a manager or another team member — and who should you even reach out to?

If you're working on acustomer serviceteam, you need to know the right answers to these questions, so you can communicate with customers during a time of crisis.

免费下载模板

What is a social media crisis?

A social media crisis could include nasty comments from customers on social media, unhappy customers voicing their concerns, delivery issues, perhaps a social media marketing faux pas, or even the global pandemic and how your company posted about it online.

社交媒体危机管理

Whether a crisis occurs online or off, you can expect there to be a social media response from your customers. In fact,studiesshow that 80% of customers will use social media to engage with a brand.

社交媒体正成为c的首选方法ommunication because it empowers consumers with the ability to post a review instantly on your account for all of your followers to see. If your brand makes a mistake, customers will be quick to take to their phones to tweet or post about the issue.

When left unchecked, these comments can quickly compound and escalate a simple problem into an alarming crisis. To that point,37% of consumers使用社交媒体品牌投诉或问题吗s expect to get a response in under 30 minutes. This is why it's important to be prepared and have a plan in place.

Benefits of Social Media Crisis Management

好消息是，社交媒体bob官网官方网站可以成为管理商业危机的强大工具：

1. Social media allows you to communicate with nearly your entire customer base over one or two platforms. Your company can quickly broadcast a message and get ahead of a crisis when needed.
2. Social media allows you to speak directly with customers using direct messaging or commenting. If one customer has an issue, your customer service team can respond to them instantly through a private or public message. If the customer posts publicly on your timeline, an effective response from your customer service team can serve as a positive example of your team's credibility.

下一节将分解您的业务如何提出危机的应急计划，并将其集成到您的客户服务团队中。

社交媒体危机管理计划

When it comes to managing a crisis, having a social media plan in place can be essential to your team's success. If you're not sure where to start, take a look at this outline which details every component that you should include in your crisis management plan.

1。Identify the source of the problem.

The first step to crafting a social media crisis response is to identify the problem and locate where it originated. Not every social media crisis will start from an online source. Often something that happens in popular culture or in news events will result in a social media uproar. Finding out what caused the crisis can help you determine not only the correct response but also the appropriate channels to distribute it through.

If the problem does occur offline, you'll also want to look at the current status of your social media accounts. Has there been a response? Even if there isn't one yet, you have to expect there's going to be one.

If customers are already posting on your timelines, then:

• Assess the damage that's been made thus far.
• Look at which social media accounts it's affecting.
• 尝试确定评论中的任何趋势。

Evaluating the situation before taking action will ensure that you're creating a long-term plan to handle the crisis.

2。Categorize the issue as a crisis or problem.

The next step in handling a social media crisis is to determine the severity of the issue. Is it a problem? Or, is it a crisis? You may think that's semantics, but there's a key difference between a problem and a crisis that determines the response that you'll want to deliver.

一个问题是一个次要的客户服务问题，可以使用标准服务策略解决。您的公司可bob全站app以通过发送给撰写不愉快评论或发表的客户的优惠券或折扣来解决此问题。

In comparison, crises affect larger audiences and require a special response from your business to prevent escalation. It's important not to mislabel a problem as a crisis as this can result in negative attention being brought to your brand.

Social media is a public forum and users will be able to watch your company make a formal apology to a seemingly minor issue. If you're unsure if it's a crisis or not, begin with your standard customer service approach but be prepared to escalate the issue to a crisis if needed.

3。Use an internal flowchart to execute actions.

Once you have established the right course of action to take, the next step is to execute your prepared game plan. Since crises tend to escalate, it helps if your team plans a flowchart for what to do if a crisis becomes more severe. We've included one example of what this can look like using the image below.

图像源

As you can see, standard responses using just the customer service rep and经理位于量表的下端。随着危机的加剧，采取了其他措施，以确保提供适当的响应。企业高管可以在危机期间使用此流程图作为监视情况状态的指南。

One component missing from this flowchart is the action of pausing or editing future content.

• 笔记：随着危机的升级，您可能需要调整发布时间表，以表明对该问题的完全关注。考虑暂停预定的帖子，广告和营销电子邮件，以向您的客户展示您真正致力于解决危机。

It's important to keep in mind that this plan will vary depending on the crisis you're faced with. Some situations will require you to take different steps to produce the most effective response.

Before we can start planning to handle a social media crisis, we first need to know what it looks like. In the next section, we'll highlight a few examples of notable social media crises that affected real-life businesses this year.

Social Media Crisis Examples

Social media crises are often unexpected and can occur at any moment. Brands big and small are both susceptible to these types of crises that can significantly impact their business's reputation. Here are a few examples of real-life social media crises that can help you become more familiar with these types of situations.

1。Undermining of Customers

A U.S.-based rideshare company caused an uproar with its customers when it took advantage of a cultural movement that it was supporting by tweeting a message to promote its discounts. Consumers immediately recognized this as an attempt to undermine the social campaign and decided to boycott the company on social media.

To make matters worse, the company's direct competitor took an opposing stance by donating money to the same cause. This sparked the creation of a viral hashtag that bashed the company and resulted in increased usage of the competitor's service.

图像源

2。Inappropriate Marketing Messages

A popular clothing brand found itself in trouble with customers when it accidentally tweeted an inappropriate message following the Boston Marathon. The email's subject line was titled"Congrats on surviving the Boston Marathon,"which inadvertently echoed the tragic events that occurred in 2013. Twitter users quickly criticized the company for its poor choice of wording and lack of social awareness. The company immediately deleted the Tweet once it learned of the situation that it had caused.

图像源

3。Distasteful Comments From an Executive

当其首席执行官驳回将其业务扩展到西班牙和印度的想法时，一位非常成功的社交媒体应用程序受到了重大批评。高管称这些国家为“贫穷”，并继续谈论他的免费应用程序是如何专门为富人设计的。

This resulted in an immediate backlash as users from both countries and elsewhere began uninstalling the app in protest. They also left thousands of one-star reviews on the app's listing pages as well as started a boycott on competing social media channels.

图像源

成功的社交媒体危机管理始于提出一种主动为潜在问题做准备的策略。

社交媒体危机管理示例

1。国家牛仔博物馆- 社交媒体保安人员

When COVID-19 plunged the world into quarantine in March 2020, the National Cowboy Museum was forced to close its doors. Ticket sales screeched to a halt, and the security team spent its time monitoring empty halls. To give these essential employees a bit more to do, the museum decided to hand the keys to its Twitter account over to the head of security, Tim the Cowboy.

图像源

从他的第一条推文中可以看出，蒂姆对社交媒体平台并不太熟悉，这导致了一系列有益健康和轻松的后续推文，如下面的推文。

图像源

为什么起作用

In a time of uncertainty, Tim's content was exactly what the world needed. He gave us something to smile about as an escape from what was going on with the rest of the world.

而且，老实说，我们大多数人可能没有在牛仔蒂姆（Tim the Cowboy）之前访问过 - 甚至不知道国家牛仔博物馆。在2020年3月之前，博物馆不在1万Twitter followers. Now, over 300 thousand people follow the museum's account.

2。Sephora- Racial Profiling

当名人在社交媒体上提到您的品牌时，它可以引起人们对您的产品和服务的很多关注。但是，如果这个有影响力的人对您的公司说负面的话，那可能会迅速激起损害您品牌声誉的危机。bob全站app

以丝芙兰为例，例如，当音乐家SZA在公司发推文以报告种族概况的实例时。bob全站app

图像源

Twitter用户涌向她的辩护，呼吁丝芙兰（Sephora）进行其他歧视例子，并表达了他们的支持SZA的言论。这是对SZA推文的回应：

图像源

Sephora acted quickly, though, and publicly reached out to SZA to apologize. The company also closed its stores to conduct mandatory diversity training so it could educate its employees and prevent issues like this from happening in the future. Below is Sephora's response to SZA.

图像源

为什么起作用

No matter how you slice it, this situation doesn't make Sephora look great. But, when posed with an unexpected crisis, the company responded quickly and took meaningful strides to reconcile the issue. It not only issued a public apology to those that were hurt, but it also showed an investment in preventing the problem from occurring again.

3。American Red Cross- #GettngSlizzerd

The American Red Cross turned some heads back in 2011 when it tweeted this message late one Tuesday night.

图像源

显然，这是该公司的品牌推文，它很快引起了其社交媒体的关注。bob全站app尽管美国红十字会知道它必须删除这条推文，但社交媒体团队决定对聚光灯有一点乐趣，并在推特上发布了这一后续信息。

图像源

为什么起作用

Rather than taking themselves too seriously, the American Red Cross embraced the moment and playfully poked fun at its mistake. This approach not only went over well with the brand's target audience, but it also got the attention of other companies as well. Both Hootsuite and Dogfish Head Brewery responded to the American Red Cross's tweet and even made donations to the company as well.

图像源

This is a great example of a company taking advantage of a timely opportunity and preventing a small social media crisis from turning into a big one.

4。JC Penney- 水壶难题

In 2013, retailer, JC Penney, added a new tea kettle to its product line. Problem was, the kettle resembled an infamous political leader of the 1940's — we'll let you connect the dots below.

图像源

这显然是JC Penney的营销团队的监督，因为Twitter用户迅速开始质疑产品设计背后的灵感。作为回应，该公司决定领先于该问题，bob全站app并向其每个追随者发送透明信息，完全承认其错误。

图像源

为什么起作用

In the end, most people forgave the mishap and realized JC Penney did have much control over the product's design. While the ad could have certainly repositioned the angle of the product to make it look more like an innocent tea kettle, there was no malicious intent on behalf of the company.

If you truly want to be prepared for every possible crisis then it helps to have an entire playbook that outlines the response to every possible situation. You may think that'll take forever, but below is a free template you can use to create your crisis plans.

社交媒体危机管理计划模板

In this free PDF guide and Excel template, you'll learn:

• How to become an expert problem solver
• 问题与危机之间的差异
• 当问题变成危机时该怎么办
• How to create your very own crisis management plan

When it comes to a social media crisis, it's important to respond as quickly as you can. Owning responsibility for the action, apologizing, and perhaps poking fun at yourself (if appropriate), can help your customer service teams respond to incoming inquiries as quickly and effectively as possible.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in May 2015 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.