Article Contributed by Carol Williams
One social media gaffe can seriously hurt even the strongest brand, not to mention the reputation of a small business. Facing outraged consumers and trying to apologize is the last thing you’d like to happen. One wrong step will drag behind your brand reputation for years – the internet never forgets.
How to avoid risking your reputation on social media? By developing a strict social media policy that will ensure a smooth operation of your company’s channels and build an awareness of standards for social media. Here are 6 helpful tips for developing a social media policy at your small business.
- Establish the basic rules
Before developing a social media policy, you need to have a clear understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish through social channels. You can achieve it by asking yourself the following questions:
- Which platforms do you plan to focus on in your social marketing?
- What are your goals on social media?
- With which tools will you manage your channels?
- What sort of content are you planning to share?
Once you’re done developing your social media strategy, you need to think about the practical side of your policy. How will it respond to key industry changes? How do you plan to spread the awareness across your small business?
Every single employee at your company should know of the policy’s existence – even if they won’t be directly responsible for managing your accounts. Communicate it to everyone and prepare a special information package for those who will take care of social media. Make sure the communication is concise and clear.
If you decide not to communicate your policy, people will be left in the dark and if they gain access to your channels, they might potentially commit some serious mistakes. Especially if nobody is checking their work. This is what recently happened to American Apparel, which posted a gif of the exploding Challenger on their Tumblr page.
The brand had to deal with heaps of negative feedback and made it even worse by admitting that their social media manager was born after the tragedy and had no idea about what stood behind the picture. This kind of poor decision making can have serious impact on your brand reputation online. (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-american-apparel-challenger-20140703-story.html)
- Show how to respond on social media
It’s a good idea to sketch possible interactions between your brand and the audience, providing potential ways to respond. Write down different scenarios for communication and prepare your managers to deal with different consumer responses. A procedure for responding will be useful when they’re pressed for time when facing a negative response.
When done right, responding to negative comments can become a significant marketing boost. Just have a look at the example of Smart Car, a brand which playfully responded to a negative tweet sent by a consumer with an infographic. Needless to say, their response went viral and brought them even more following on Twitter. (http://mashable.com/2012/06/21/bird-poop-smartcar/#Sh31ADl7Mikg)
- Give a definition of a social media crisis
The truth is that a social media crisis can mean many different things – it will mean something specific to your business. Take your time to define what it means to you and suggest a plan of action for each kind of crisis to help employees alleviate its negative impact.
It’s a good idea to monitor other brands in the industry and see what they’re going through. Over time, you’ll find it easier to define a social media crisis and learn through your mistakes. Don’t worry about them – they’ll only help you grow and might have a positive effect on your brand if you deal with them instantly and with a dose of transparency.
One of the common social media issues is the use of Twitter hashtags launched for specific marketing campaigns. We’ve seen hashtags being hijacked by consumers over and over again. It recently happened to McDonald’s when the brand debuted a refreshed version of their mascot, Ronald McDonald, using a simple hashtag #RonaldMcDonald. The plan backfired when consumers started to use it to criticize the makeover. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/caroltice/2014/10/30/why-ronald-mcdonald-failed-on-twitter-branding-lessons/)
- Identify the level of employee involvement
Your policy should make sure that all workers have sufficient understanding of how social media work for branding. You need to decide whether to bring your employees on board to participate as representatives of your brand online. This is something that can have a strong positive impact on your reputation. But if you plan to encourage their participation, you should provide them with a rulebook to follow when using social media. Otherwise you risk falling victim to a terrible social media gaffe.
Even the CFO of Twitter could use such a rulebook. Anthony Noto recently tweeted what was probably a private message, disclosing Twitter’s plan to acquire an app called Shots. Revealing such plans in public is probably the last thing you’d like to happen to your brand. (http://uk.businessinsider.com/anthony-noto-twitter-cfo-dm-fail-2014-11)
- Pick the right speakers for your brand
Your policy should also state who has access to your social media accounts and specify people authorized for posting on the behalf of your organization. Define any restrictions or limitations to this authorization, for instance specific regions or employee teams.
Sketch a list of traits employees should possess to be considered the right fit for the job. Even if someone is really talented in marketing, it doesn’t automatically make them perfect for representing your brand online. If a quick Google search reveals extreme political opinions, take it as a warning sign.
If you decide to hire an external agency, take your time picking the right one. Remember what happened to Chrysler in 2011? The company which manged @ChryslerAutos Twitter account had an employee famously tweet “I find it ironic that Detroit is known as #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to f#*!ing drive”. Facing consumer outrage, Chrysler was forced to apologize profusely for a tweet that wasn’t even their creation. Needless to say, the company was fired from the job.
- Make the most from social listening and analytics
Your policy needs to offer a strategy for social listening and monitoring. Keeping an eye on what’s being said on social media is key if you want to reduce your response time when something bad happens to your brand. Dealing with negative user content is impossible with a delayed response. A web event can gather steam in a matter of minutes and can instantly slip out of anyone’s control.
Monitoring online conversations helps to spot and address such issues before they bring serious damage. US airways once sent a very inappropriate response to a customer complaint on Twitter and took an entire hour to delete it. Clearly, they stood no chance against the public and the embarrassing screenshot made headlines all over the web. Response time does count. (http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/us-airways-just-tweeted-out-one-of-the-most-graphic-things-y)
A clear social media policy will help you to carry out your social media interactions and avoid the danger of terrible PR disasters which happen to many brands who never care to develop their social media policies.
About the author:
Carol Williams works as a Community Manager for fruit shippers from Florida – http://www.orangesonline.com/. She loves to share her experience in social media which she combines with her passion for writing.