Social Media Disaster Recovery: It’s All About the Response

“With great power comes great responsibility.”

The owner of the sandwich shop I managed in college said this to me prior to my first time flying solo as the shift supervisor for his store. He was only kidding, or so I told myself, so I rolled my eyes and shrugged it off.

Really, it wasn’t that much responsibility. Besides, what could go wrong?

I found out the hard way that the answer to that question was “a lot.”

But it wasn’t just the fact that I forgot to bake the day’s bread at a sandwich shop that morning that got me in trouble. It’s what I did after I realized my mistake. 

As the store owner came by to check on me before we opened I had a decision to make: I could face the music or I could try a little improv. I went with the improv and grabbed a bunch of yesterday’s bread – wrapped in paper and taped shut for resale by the loaf – and stacked it up as if I had made it that morning.

He didn’t notice … until I served the first sandwich and an angry customer came up to complain that not only was his bread stale, but it had a piece of tape stuck to the bottom of it. I turned the mistake into a disaster by trying to dance my way out of it.

Many people who have yet to establish organizational social media guidelines are faced with the same type of split-second decision I was faced with that day in the sandwich shop: own up to a mistake and deal with the consequences, or dance around it and risk a potential disaster.

Following are two examples of responses to social media disasters:

The wrong way to respond to a social media disaster:

Responding to environmental activists who used their logo in protests against the company’s decision to use palm oil in some of their products, the admin of Nestles Facebook page decides that enough is enough:

What Nestle did wrong:

• They made their statement regarding use of their logo, which is perfectly fine. But when their first detractor spoke up, they took the bait and got into an argument.
• They made it personal, and got into an ugly back-and-forth with a customer
• They didn’t back off their stance

The right way to respond to a social media disaster:

When the admin of the American Red Cross Twitter account accidentally posted what should have been a personal Tweet into the official Red Cross Twitter account it could have been very bad.

But they acted calmly and turned it into a positive.

Getting a little help from Dogfish Head didn’t hurt:

“While we had no problem with the tweet, we could see where it might not be part of the official Social Media plan over at the Red Cross. But here is the surprising thing… the Red Cross did not freak out! They handled it with humor… put up a retraction, removed the post, apologized to their followers and went about their business of raising awareness for the Red Cross and their important work.”

Hopefully, you won’t be faced with a moment like this, but as social media creeps into more parts of our lives, situations like this will happen more and more. Some ground rules?

1. Acknowledge the mistake. Humor helps, but sometimes you need to be solemn and respectful.
2. Apologize. Actually apologize. There’s something magical about the phrase “I’m sorry” that gets us out of the dog-house, out of couch-sleeping duty, and back into the hearts of our loved ones and customers.
3. Act. This one is the most important: Get to the root of what caused the problem and take action. Do you have the wrong person manning your account? Do you have lack of clarity in your guidelines? Figure out what structural failure caused the problem and fix it. And let the world know that you did.

Have you had to respond to a social media disaster? What advice would you give?
[image: pictureperfectpose]

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• Red Cross Does PR Disaster Recovery on Rogue Tweet (mashable.com)
• #GettngSlizzerd (prbreakfastclub.com)
• How We Use Social Media During Emergencies [INFOGRAPHIC] (mashable.com)