Preventing a social media crisis
One of the best ways to prevent a social media crisis or any other type of crisis from occurring in your company is to predict the potential problem before it happens. In today’s technological climate and with a little planning, this is not as difficult as it may sound.
In an extreme example, CNN highlights the work of economist Noreena Hertz and her attempts to use social media to predict the outcome of events. So far, she has not been able to predict some major events she has examined, but has successfully predicted the winner of a talent contest using her algorithms.
The task she has taken on is enormously more complex than that which faces you in the prediction of your own potential problems. Critical to the success of crisis management planning is the capacity and effort to monitor the signals that may indicate a problem is building in your company.
This may mean social media, but should not be limited to those channels. How frequently do you simply ask your customers and other stakeholders how satisfied they are with the performance of your company, its products and personnel?
Monitoring, detecting issues on social media
If your company utilizes social media to promote and market your company, it should go without saying that you should also monitor those same channels to detect issues that may arise. You can accomplish that manually or using one of the many commercial social media monitoring tools which not only monitor the presence of communication regarding your company, but also its tone.
After an assessment of the most likely and potentially damaging problems that could face your company, set up tools to monitor your communication channels to detect the signals of those problems. Many issues that end up damaging companies can be prevented by staying on top of those signals. And don’t forget the opportunities that may come your way through the same process like Oreo’s rapid response to the Super Bowl blackout.
