The Art of Social Media Ethics
With the environment that is social media ever-evolving, it can be hard for businesses and brands to keep up with current social media etiquette and minding their p’s and q’s on the world wide web. And with smartphones in the pockets of almost every adult on the face of the planet, getting wrapped up in a situation that might be completely detrimental.
Take Nike for example. In 2019 Duke star basketball player, Zion Williamson, was left severely injured during one of the biggest games of the season. Many were quick to point out on social media that Zion was wearing Nike shoes when his shoe suddenly fell apart, causing him to severely injure his knee. This caused Nike to be pulled into a tailspin. Social media users left and right were berating Nike’s faulty shoes and demanding them to answer for Zion’s injury. The incident was so high profile that Nike stock dropped 1.8% the following day.
So what does your company do when it gets caught in a fiery situation? Does it stay quiet? Be upfront and honest with your followers? Or does it take full responsibility for whatever incident and remain unscathed? To best handle these situations, it’s best to have a crisis and ethics management guide so you’re best prepared.
Here are some tips and tricks for crisis management so you can be sure you’re ready and prepared for your next incident.
First, know your audience.
Knowing your audience is key to being ready for whatever crisis situation you may find yourself in. Whether it’s a sneaker falling apart during one of the biggest basketball games of the year, or your employee accidentally tweeted a derogatory term via your official Twitter account, it’s important to know who is actually reading your tweets. When you really know who’s following you and who pays attention to your brand, you are best able to craft messaging and handle the crisis to the best of your ability because you know what your audience expects in response.
Second, use social listening to identify potential issues early on.
Hootsuite notes that using the art of social listening is key to getting ahead of any potential problems because it can help you identify what may be lurking in the shadows. Hootsuite mentions that by social listening you can monitor brand mentions “to give you some advance warning of a surge of social media activity,”. But it doesn’t just stop there and social listening should be taken one step further. Hootsuite emphasizes that you should also be monitoring social sentiment, which is defined as a “metric that captures how people feel about your brand,”. Hootsuite offers programs like ZeroFox and Brandwatch as being great tools to help you achieve this, ZeroFox even giving you alerts about dangerous or offensive content targeting your brand.
And finally, communicate internally.
If you are going through a crisis that can be detrimental to your brand it is best that everyone within your company are aware of what is going on around the situation. You want everyone within your company to be on the same page with how to best handle the situation. This means conveying preapproved messaging to any employees you feel may be impacted by the situation. Hootsuite offers a program called Hootsuite Amplify that allows for companies to easily distribute company messaging to any number of employees on a large scale, keeping all of your employees up to date and in the know.
With social media ever-changing and the ability for a simple company mistake to turn into a full-on social media crisis, it’s best to be as prepared as possible so you can be ready for anything that may come your way. Keep a social media etiquette policy nearby for all employees with access to official accounts. You never know when a huge catastrophe could be lurking around the corner, so be sure to think before you post. We can’t all be perfect social media users all the time, but by being on your game, you can be ready for whatever social media crisis comes up, even a faulty basketball sneaker.
