How to Manage a Social Media Crisis: A Practical Guide for Brands

On social media, things can move blindingly fast. Sometimes, it’s an Instagram post of an egg going inexplicably viral. But sometimes, it’s a PR crisis that seems to come out of nowhere.

Your best chance to make it through a social media crisis is to prepare ahead of time. Have a solid plan, a list of key stakeholders and responsibilities, and a clear chain of command.

Of course, it’s even better if you can prevent a crisis before it begins.

In this post, we’ll look at methods for spotting potential issues as they emerge and how to shut a problem down in the early stages. If that doesn’t work, we’ll show you what to do if you end up with a full-blown social media crisis management situation on your hands.

Before the crisis

An organization adopting a proactive communication strategy should take the following into consideration:

  • Monitoring and response frameworks.
  • Identifying key online powers (people and entities).
  • Checking ownership of social media platforms.
  • Being clear on the resources needed in the event of a crisis.
  • Training the social media team.
  • Including social media in risk assessment procedures.
  • Controlling IT in the organization to ensure the required information gets out in due time.

Don’t Be Scared, Be Prepared

During the crisis

The damage has been done and the organization needs to rescue the situation. As you go about handling the situation through digital channels always:

  • Monitor the situation to know what people are saying about you.
  • Maintain consistency in messages sent across all channels.
  • Think about packaging content for every social media account.
  • Involve stakeholders to guard against rumors and wrong information.
  • Be quick at responding especially if you have the right answers to queries.
  • Reinforce accurate, updated communication across all departments and branches.

Social Media CrisisAfter the crisis

Just because you have the crisis handled does not mean that is all. There are other issues to be attended to which include:

  • Let your stakeholders know the crisis is over to restore the good name.
  • The crisis management review should look at what strategies worked, which ones failed and figure out ways to improve.

The size of an organization is not a factor when a crisis occurs. Whether big or small, the organization requires an efficient digital communication strategy. This will ensure the public and other key stakeholders have all the information they need about the crisis. Withholding information that should be in the public domain is disastrous, as people will make speculations that could hurt your brand. The pressure could be too much, but if you have a great communications department, there is nothing to worry about.

If you want to have an easier time during a crisis, adhere to the before, during and after stages. If you at least foresaw a problem and planned on how to handle it, it will be much easier. This will help you regain consumers’ trust and your brand’s reputation.

8 Social Media Crisis Management Tips for Businesses and Brands

  1. Create a Social Media Policy

The best way to avoid any type of social media crisis is to create a solid social media policy for your company. It should provide clear guidelines to those who are posting on your brand page. Your social media policy will be different based on factors like your industry and the size of your company. Following are some subjects all social media policies should include:

  • Guidelines for Copyright
  • Guidelines for Privacy
  • Guidelines for Confidentiality
  • Guidelines for Bran
  1. Secure Your Accounts

Poor passwords and other social media security risks can quickly expose your brand to a social media crisis. In many cases, employees are more likely to cause a cyber-security crisis than hackers are. Do not share passwords among the various members of your team who need access to your social accounts. Always use systems like Hootsuite to control use permissions and grant the appropriate level of access. If you have a centralize access, then it also allows you to revoke access for employees who leave the company or move to a role that no longer requires them to post on social.

  1. Use Social Listening to Identify Potential Issues

A good social listening program can track and analyze an emerging issue on social media well before it turns into a crisis. Monitoring brand mentions can give you some advanced warning about crises. But if you really want to keep an eye out for a potential social media crisis, you should be monitoring social mentions daily. Social mentions is a metric that captures how people feel and talk about your brand on social platforms. There are many paid and free tools available that gives you advance warning of a crisis while it’s still in the early stages.

  1. Define What Counts as a Crisis to You

Many times people say rude things about you online. That maybe their experience, not actually a crisis. But if many people are saying the same negative things about you on social, all at the same time, that might be a crisis—or a potential crisis waiting to explode. What really identifies a social media crisis for a brand is a major negative change in the online conversation. Even if a many people posting negatively about your brand, it may be best to respond through customer service channels.

  1. Craft a Crisis Communication Plan

A company-detailed social media crisis communication plan allows you to respond quickly to any potential issue. Instead of debating how to handle things, you can take action and prevent things from getting out of control. Acting quick is important when any crises arises.  Your crises management plan should describe the exact steps everyone will take on social media during a crisis—from top executives to the most junior employees.

  1. Engage – but don’t argue

When you post on social media and people start giving negative comments then you need to be calm and get engage with the comments instead of starting argument on public platform.  As we’re talking about social media crises, simply issuing statements won’t cut it. You need to have to engage with people who may be saying very negative things about you brand on social platforms. Keep your replies short and avoid getting pulled into a long discussion of what went wrong.

  1. Communicate Internally

Communicating with team members is a crucial part of your crisis management response. This keeps everyone on the same page and will help to prevent misinformation and the spread of rumors. You need to make sure that everyone in the organization knows exactly what they should (or should not) say about the crisis on social media.

  1. Learn From the Experience

When you make it through your first social media crisis, take the time to debrief and examine what happened in past. Always keep a detailed record of everything you did, and how well it worked.

Take the time to examine your future social media plan. Think about what new you could add that would prevent a similar crisis from occurring in the future. And always review your crisis communication plan to look for opportunities to incorporate lessons learned.

How to Use Instagram Videos to Market Your Business

In the age of social media, many businesses have found new and exciting ways to tap into technology and make their businesses go viral. One of the latest and best ways to do this is through Instagram videos and Vine videos. These services only give you a 6-second to 15-second window to capture a viewer’s attention. The clips are easily watchable and shareable which makes it possible for people to remember. Also, the fact that you get to reach millions of Vine and Instagram users is a great plus. You just have to plan out your video and “GTTP” – get to the point – fast. Here are a few ways you can use Instagram and Vine videos to market your business:

Create a Vine and Instagram Videos to Tease an Upcoming Product

Such a short span of time is perfect for teasing the audience about your latest products. Just show them enough to create interest but cut it short of actually revealing the product. This can be done in a variety of creative ways that would surely create a buzz. Rolling Stones magazine does this every month to slowly unveil the celebrity to feature on the cover of the next issue, building curiosity among its fans so they will continue to return. BMW has been doing this for years, look at the video in the section below. They show their fans “just enough” to get excited over the car then close it off with their signature logo and sound.

Unveil a New Product

Vine and Instagram videos are also great ways to unveil new products or services by giving an interesting look at the product and making sure it goes viral at the same time. Taco Bell created an interesting video to announce a new taco showing a taco coming out of a pack of Doritos. Then we had to wait for weeks on the release of the new product.

Engage the Audience with Innovative Ideas

You can simply create an interesting concept video using various techniques like stop motion, animation, or using mobile phone screens. Nordstrom, a fashion retailer, made a social video featuring a number of smartphone screens with people massing Puma sneakers from one screen to another, while Target used their own product, Lite Brite, to make a stop motion video of changing season to wish its fans a happy summer, while marketing their product and creating something unique at the same time.

Let Your Audience Do the Filming

Many businesses encourage their fans to make videos and add creative hashtags. These videos can be about trending topics and include their products or services in some way. User-generated content is essentially free advertising and helps the audience feel involved and be part of your company. ASOS is an online fashion retailer which asked its customers to upload videos of them receiving their packages with the hashtag #ASOSunbox. This allowed them to reach all their customers’ friends who aren’t following them yet, and the best video was uploaded on their official page.

Hold a Competition

Similarly, holding a best video competition with trending and product-related themes, also encourages your audience to do the marketing for you. Many companies, including Dunkin Donuts, who introduced the idea, use this method of marketing on Vine and Instagram.

Tips, Trivia, and How-To Vlogs

Vine and Instagram videos can be very effective as they show your fans you care beyond marketing your product, and also give a refreshingly new and subtle way of marketing. Oreo Cookies does this by uploading countless videos with ideas on how to eat Oreos. General Electric uploaded an interesting video announcing Thomas Edison’s birthday, and one showing fans how to make art with milk, food coloring, and dishwashing detergent. Lowe’s, a home improvement store frequently uploads Vine videos showing customers how to complete a variety of DIY projects in just 6 seconds.

Whether you’re working as a freelance video professional in a big company, or are the head of your own start-up looking for innovative ideas to market through videos, Instagram and Vine offer a cheap and creative platform to help you reach millions of people. This is a great way to help you make money doing what you do best!

Why do online stores fail?

“It’s Fashionable …”, “It Seems Easy …
“Come on, this is going to be a shot …”

“I set up an online store and I’ll be mounted on the dollar.”

Every day more statistics are released by experts on the growth of E-Commerce. The idea seems logical, there are less costs, I do not have to have commercials. Anyway, everyone talks about it. It seems easy.

An Online Store has to be easy, right?

Every day that goes by it does not stop surprising me the amount of people who start to create online stores thinking that it is easy. Let’s leave one thing clear. Any business is hard, requires persistence and clear ideas.

In many cases critical knowledge that is essential for the launch of the business.

The question is: Business or Hobby?

If it is Business …



A minimum level of knowledge of Online Marketing is absolutely essential if you want to have an online business. In an Offline business you can be located in a mall and have a good product and the business is almost alone. Online NO. The reality is that most fail. They have no traffic, there are bad conversions, there is a lack of control of the metrics that drive the sale.

How can you hire Online Marketing services if you do not know what you are hiring?



This is an industry full of scammers willing to charge you for SEO when what they really do is take your money every month and they are not doing anything for you, taking advantage of your lack of knowledge.

Community Managers taking advantage of absurd fashion… And even the neighbor next door is a community manager, with a license to sell smoke.

And when you ask for tangible results, you only hear: “… No, no, social media does not measure ROI, it is measured by engagement, community …”. In short, and many other words.



You Need Knowledge

The other day a person interested in working with my agency told me: “In my online store there will be music, it will be different”.

I told him: “In your online store what there must be are sales. First, sell and then, if you want, we’ll talk about music. “

When you are not clear about what works in Online Marketing, it is very easy to focus on elements that are not important, sacrificing what really is important. Many mistakes are made with online stores. Here you have 10 of the most frequent errors that I see.

1. Do not work the sales and navigation process

Before putting on music, before creating carousels with beautiful images … Get to optimize the sales and navigation process. Use some Analytics with a behavior code like Crazy Egg and see what your website visitors do based on the heat maps.

Define a clear objective and optimize your metrics. It’s about selling, and when you have this before you can start buying traffic to scale your business.

2. Your home is to sell not just an image

The home of your online store is a showcase. Many entrepreneurs of online stores believe that the function of the home is to show how beautiful your website is. Bad idea … The function of the home is to sell. Be clear, in exact steps, what you want people to do when they go to your website.

3. Think you design once and never again

99% of the owners of online stores believe that the work is done by activating the online store when, really, you launch an online store and, depending on the feedback on sales, conversions and interaction with the web, now you must be doing redesigns to optimize your website.

4. Not having a plan to optimize the store

A good optimization plan can be one of the most effective and cheapest Online Marketing weapons for an online store. Most people who launch a website do not take the time to follow a plan that, month by month, allows optimizing the web to increase sales. They become obsessed with more traffic instead of, before, optimizing conversions.

5. Wait until the organic traffic arrives

SEO traffic takes. Also, it’s a very bad idea to rely 100% on free traffic. Online entrepreneurs ready, they diversify the risk and do not depend only on a source of traffic, but they work more traffic weapons.

6. Do not understand that the texts are the commercial ones of the Online Store

It may be that you do not have commercials in your online store, but the texts are the same as your commercials, and they sell to you and your product. You have to put a little heart and good copy behind … It is not to be taken lightly, because it can be the difference that you sell or not.

7. Being without a plan to segment the database between non-buyers / buyers / and product segments

The E-Commerce business is in the list of emails; Therefore, the better the segmentation, the more sales you will generate. There are many who set out to create an online store business without taking into account that the key is in its list of non-buyers and buyers, its most important asset.

8. Create more steps than necessary in the purchase process

In your offline store would you put obstacles before going to the cashier? This is just what many do in their Online Store. They create a lot of obstacles that lower conversions. The idea is to make it easy, not difficult. Analyze your sales process and ask yourself: Could a 6-year-old boy navigate here? If not, make changes.

9. Not having a long-term strategy to acquire clients

It is always easier to sell to a happy customer than to capture a new customer. The E-Commerce business is in acquiring clients. The more customers you have and the more repeat purchases you have, the more solid your business is. Having this clear, incorporate the metric controls to go measuring these two data is essential.

You must be willing not to make money in the first transaction and then recover it in the following transactions.

And The Most Important Error

10. Not having a Marketing and Investment Plan to start the store

Having an E-Commerce business that works is a serious business, it’s not a hobby. If you are not willing to create an online store in conditions, with a design that sells, an aspect of branding and an investment in the launch, better not do it. Yes. You have to invest in SEO, in Adwords, in having a CRM, and whatever it takes to make the business work.

When you tell people that they have to invest in Online Marketing to make their Online Store work, it bothers them. They tell you that you do not know… That there is something called social networks and that this does not require investing.

If your intention is to launch an online store and wait for them to come… Of course they can already accommodate themselves, because they will wait a long time.

It’s a bad idea to go against the laws of gravity. To think that you can fly does not change the fact that, if you jump from a skyscraper, very, very bad things happen.

This is not complicated. It’s not much different than an offline business. You have to invest, you have to sell, you have to measure your ROI, look at the numbers. And you must scale what works.

And you, do you want to have a successful online store that generates constant sales?