No marketer wants to experience the same fate of so many other brands when social media disaster strikes. We all hope everything we post is useful and loved by our most loyal followers. But no matter how hard you try and how safe you play, disaster can strike at any time and many marketing teams are not prepared when it does.
Learn from others
This weekend, Buffer served as an inspiration to all marketers to have a plan in place. Last Saturday, many users were upset to find their social profiles were sharing spammy links through Buffer. Not a great look for Buffer when many of its users could jump ship for another social publishing app. But Buffer handled the crisis the best way that an app with over 1,000,000 users could have.
Almost immediately, Buffer sent out emails, Facebook posts and tweets to let users know they were aware of the issue and were working diligently to resolve it. What followed were several acclamations of praise for the brand’s responsiveness and transparency in handling the issue.
While no one wants to experience the panic that comes with getting hacked, the crisis could have been much, much worse. First of all, the hack happened on a Saturday afternoon, a time when most employees are at home with friends and family or trying to recharge for the coming week. But Buffer’s team was ready to drop everything and get to work solving this major problem.
Don’t get caught unprepared
It’s important for marketing teams to have a plan in place when disaster strikes. How will you notify each other when something happens? Who will be responsible for taking on each role in the process? How will you communicate the disaster with your followers? These are all questions marketing teams should be asking.
Even when everyone is out of the office, services like Skype or Google Hangouts can be used to keep team members in the loop on events as they happen. As questions roll in from customers, your team will be properly equipped with the right answers.
Assign roles
Who is in charge of handling social inquiries? Will you separate social accounts by assigning a different member to each one? Buffer’s team took the time to respond to each and every social post during the crisis. Not almost every post. They actually responded to each and every single one.
Tweets to @buffer went up 10X (5,676 on Sat) while handling our breach. Glad to share we replied to every single one. pic.twitter.com/zpBeVjQjKl
— Joel Gascoigne (@joelgascoigne) October 28, 2013
Buffer founder Joel Gascione sent an email to notify users of the problem and to keep them in the loop on what was being done to fix it. Who should be the voice of the company when something similar occurs? Should you send a generic email from info@companyname.com? Or should it come from your founder? A CEO? Community manager? Knowing who that person would be will allow you to respond quickly and not scramble around trying to decide during the already frantic time.
Buffer could have remained silent until they were sure the problem had been fixed but instead they chose to take the blame for the hack and let their users know they were working as quickly as possible to resolve it. It’s users are now much more trusting and loyal to the brand and marketer’s everywhere are in awe and continue to praise the brand for its crisis management.
Does your team have a plan of action in place for times like this? Comment below to let us know what steps work for you!
via Business 2 Community http://www.business2community.com/social-media/buffer-dodged-social-media-iceberg-0664258?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=buffer-dodged-social-media-iceberg
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