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?

How colors influence brands

The choice of colors for your brand is something that you must choose very carefully

Color is the impression produced by a tone of light in the visual organs, or more accurately, it is a visual perception that is generated in the brain. Within marketing, color is one of the main characteristics that allows us to seduce customers to attract them to our products and services.

The colors have a great influence on the psychological behavior of each individual, and the purchase decisions were not going to be less. According to a study by Color Marketing Group, a company specializing in the use of colors, color represents 85% of the importance in the decision to purchase a product or service.

But colors are not only important when choosing a product, they are also fundamental in branding, to provide the brand with certain values ​​for consumers. That is why the choice of colors for your brand is something that you must choose with great care.

What should you keep in mind when choosing the color of your brand?

All the brands have a color that represents them and in most of the occasions when they name us a brand, it is their color the first memory that comes to mind. In short, the choice of a corporate color is one of the most important steps if you are learning to design logos. When choosing the color for your brand you must answer some basic questions.

With what emotions do you want to provoke?

Leatrice Eiseman, in her book Color: Messages and meanings, explains that colors provoke different emotions in human beings. Therefore, you should reflect on what emotions you want your brand to transmit and use colors that are in line with them.

What shades are used in my industry?

Pay attention to the tones that are mainly used in your industry to not choose a color that does not look natural when associating your brand to that industry. For example, in the United States, red is associated with meat, silver with dairy products or yellow with desserts.

What is the personality of your brand?

As we said at the beginning, colors convey emotions, but also personality to your brand. Therefore you must decide which are the most appropriate colors to convey the personality you want to give to your brand.

What colors does the competition use?

A great way to differentiate yourself from the competition, especially if they have gained a large market share, is the color. For example, Pepsi uses blue as opposed to Coca-Cola red.

Are the colors in line with my message?

Consumers are much more likely to believe in your message if the colors in which you print it are in line with it. For example, if you are talking about ecology it is more credible to use a green text than a red one.

What colors should you choose for your brand?

When choosing the colors for your brand, you must bear in mind that it is not the only color of your logo, but that in order for it to be effective, you must use it in all your supports: from the web page to letterheads or the business cards.

But what does each color transmit? Next, we offer you a small guide so that you have it easier when deciding:

Red:

Red is a warm and intense color, which conveys various emotions ranging from adventure to danger. But when it comes to using it in a brand’s logo, it is usually associated with adventure, energy, strength, vigor or passion. There are several studies that corroborate that it can lead to hunger or increase blood pressure. Therefore, it is ideal for energy drinks, restaurants or products related to the engine.

Pink


Pink is a color traditionally associated with femininity, delicacy, innocence and romance. In general, it is used to add a feminine connotation to logos and women’s products. It is recommended for feminine, children’s products or sweets.

Yellow


Yellow is a color that is traditionally related to joy, happiness, summer or sun. When it comes to using it in logos, you usually want to transmit happiness and warmth. It is especially suitable for children’s and leisure products; as well as to announce special offers and news.

Orange

The orange color is formed by red and yellow, which contains characteristics of both. It transmits strength and confidence like red and optimism and the joy of yellow. The orange is usually used by companies that have as their audience the young public, companies that want to transmit modernity.

Green

The green color represents life, freshness, the environment, vegetation, ecology and all the values that have to do with it. It is normally used by companies that want to transmit their ecological values and respect for nature.

Blue:

Blue is one of the most used colors by companies, both as the main color and to give some detail. It transmits authority, security, success, trust and loyalty. It is also a color that can be identified as masculine. Therefore, we will find it in medicine, government agencies and digital or technological companies.

Gray:

Gray transmits mostly stability and neutrality. It is the midpoint between black and gray. It is mostly used for fonts thanks to its neutrality.

White:

White is the quintessential color of peace and purity. It also conveys style, elegance and honesty. It is used in cosmetics, personal care, beauty, among others. Most cases serve to balance the other color.

Black:

The black color is technically speaking the absence of color. It transmits values such as tradition, seriousness, elegance and mystery. It is usually used in companies that target a clientele with high purchasing power, as it is associated with luxury and elegance.

When choosing which is the most appropriate color for your brand, you should also take into account the representative color of the product you are going to offer. If you are going to use a combination of colors it will be important that you know how to put them together so that it was not disastrous. The most recommended combinations are:

  • Yellow on black
  • Red on black
  • White on red
  • Red on white
  • 
Blue on white
  • Yellow on blue
  • White on blue
  • 
Black on white

If you have in mind to create a company or you are thinking of designing a logo, but you do not see yourself with enough knowledge or materials to do it perfectly, you can consult us to do it.

Shortcuts guide for social networks 2015

For professionals who are more than 14 hours a day connected and users in general who want to optimize their time and productivity, this shortcuts guide for social networks 2015 is a very interesting and essential resource for today’s Community managers.I share with you the infographic shortcuts guide for social networks. I hope you find it as useful as I am.

10 Tips for starting an online store

After having created a few online stores for our clients, we have seen that there is a series of details that are repeated in all these works and we have decided to make a small vademecum of how to set up an online store.

If you are an entrepreneur and you are clear that the future is in the new technologies, you may have come to the conclusion that an online store is the best possible window to sell your product and that millions of eyes around the world can see what you have what to offer But if you want to start, you must make a list of duties and see where you have controlled and what problems you have to decide. You will need a solution for each of the following needs; What is clear is that you will have to do it before or after if you want to open your online store.

But let’s go in parts, so that the first advice you should take into account is that everything must be done step by step and ensuring very well what should be the digital foundations of your future business. For it:

1- Decide what you are going to sell and get organized

Investigate the Internet in search of similar businesses. It is not about copying, but about learning what strengths and weaknesses your competition has and, more importantly, what sets you apart from them.

It is fundamental to structure the set of your items for sale. So that users do not get lost, you will have to make a main menu that includes the main product groups. This menu is recommendable that does not contain more than 7 elements. This will not be too complicated for the user. The fewer elements and options, the better. From each of them, you can pick up sub-menus that group new divisions of the product. It is not advisable to do further subdivisions after these.

A tip: The most advisable thing is that you take blank papers and in each one put a category of your products. If you have a comic shop, write is a sheet, for example, MANGA. Fill as many sheets as necessary to be able to group all the product of your future online store. Try to collect them by groups of similar items. These would be the main menu, each sheet would be the submenu. This system works, we assure you.

2- Design a good strategy and create your brand

Set yourself realistic goals in the medium and long term (one year), start developing your personal brand which includes a good design, a name, a logo … an image that is the one that serves to recognize your product and that is durable in time

3- Social Networks and Blog

Fundamental for the promotion of any business and more if it is on the Internet. Have a Facebook page, a Twitter profile, and promote blog entries with both your products and relevant information of the sector in which your business model is inserted. The image of all these profiles must be the same that accompanies the web of your brand.

4- Marketing Strategy

Do you already have the store? Now you want to sell, right? Well, just as it would happen to you if you open a store in the middle of a forest, the same thing will happen to you with your online store: No one will pass in front of your shop window. You need visibility And that is achieved through advertising and work.

There are different ways to advertise:
SEM, paying Google to appear in the sponsored search results.
SEO, where you appear on Google because of the importance of your page. Free of charge, but with a lot of effort and time.
More channels: with brochures, advertisements, social networks, blog, etc …
In short, you’ll have to get people to see your store. Keep in mind that the conversion ratio of sale in a shopping cart is around 2%, so you’ll have to take many people to your store to sell a few items.

5- Positioning

Do not forget that your business is on the Internet and that, therefore, you must optimize your keywords and your links to try to be at the top of the search either in generic search engines or in those specialized in the product that offers

6- Take care of your client

As in a traditional business, the client must be the center of our efforts. In the case of an online store, establish secure payment systems (paypal, for example) and hire a good transport service for your products or services. These are the important details that make the difference. Enable a complaints and suggestions mailbox to collect opinions and know what works well and what you should improve.

7- Take care of your product

Pamper the image of what you are going to sell, offer quality images and from different angles so that potential buyers have access to all the visual and technical information of your products. Do not forget that it is better to have few products and quality than many and poorly managed.

8- Contact experts

It is clear that, unless your knowledge is very advanced, the work that comes before you is huge for what you should trust and practice alliances with experts to help you optimize the aspects over which you have no control or knowledge. Trust them

9- Keep your business in order

Renew stocks, inform if the products are finished, keep your page up to date and do not forget to incorporate new utilities and applications to make the user’s experience more and more pleasant.

10- Innovate and be creative

One of the keys in any business is to offer something different from the rest. Do not be afraid to innovate or bet on new paths; It is not about trying to prove, but trying to show all your creativity and put it at the service of your business.

First of all, and as you have seen, setting up an online store requires an exercise in patience and dedication that you must undertake on a daily basis. Check our services page and stay tuned for the next calls in this blog and on our website.

How to measure the effectiveness of your blog

1.Compare the natural growth of the visits first to the blog – and then the average visits for each post – with respect to the same period last year. Do the same with bounce%, traffic sources, social conversions, unique visitors, page views and the average stay in your site – and average in each post.

2.Measure the number of people who have unsubscribed in your newsletter, email subscription or RSS in the last month / quarter / semester / year. This way you will know if your content is accurate, if your community is interesting and if there is a connection with your readers. According to the calculations that I continue to make in my blogs and in others with which I have contact, the average rate usually ranges between 2-3% per month, at most.

3. On the other side. Check how many subscribers there are via RSS, how many via email and if you have a newsletter subscription, how many subscribers do you receive. You can calculate it weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.

4. The volume of comments you receive in each post. The more comments you receive the more popular your blog is, the more popular, the more read it is, the more you read the more you visit and the more visited, the more conversions you should have.

5. The number of “leads” you receive weekly / monthly. By “leads” I understand business opportunities, these are set by each person depending on the type, field, industry and purpose of the blog. It can be a budget for the advice of the decoration of a house in an interior design blog. It can be the request or question of the clothes that you described in your fashion blog. It can also be the  contact of a business interested in a PR action on your advertising blog or the proposal of an agency that wants to hire you as a     speaker at a gastronomic event through your gastronomy blog.

Without using any social mechanism (twitter, facebook, google +, menéame, etc.) that reach your posts. It will help you to measure the true influence that your blog has on its own.

6. Of the visits you receive in each post, how many actually perform the action you want. That is, how many visitors click on the “call to action” that takes them to the online store of supplements, buy the theme you recommend or make a donation to the NGO with which you collaborate. Sometimes the same “call to action” may be that they respond in the comments to the question that you pose at the end or that they register for your event, webinar or conference.

7. Analyze the number of links to other blogs, posts or websites that obtain each of your posts. This is not only positive at the SEO level, but if you receive many links you will know that it is a valuable post and that others use it as a resource.

8.The recommendations among users that your blog obtains via the social web, on Twitter, Facebook, Google + or LinkedIn. It also applies the number of times your blog or post is saved as a bookmark in a social bookmarking site such as Del.ici.ous or Diigo.

What other ways to measure the effectiveness of a blog occur to you?

Via: Isra García