Lessons Learned: Mistakes and attacks in social media

Editor’s note: This is the last post in the series of Lessons Learned:  Easy tips on how to create and grow a social media program.   This series includes a discussion on the following topics:

1. Create a Social Media Policy
2. Research your business
3. Set goals
4. Write an Editorial Calendar
5. Create content
6. Start the program
7. Grow your social media program and overall web presence
8. Handling mistakes and attacks

Mistakes and attacks

Everyone makes mistakes. In social media, mistakes are recognized and companies are rewarded based on how gracefully the mistake is corrected.

Determining whether to respond:

One of the smartest things companies can do is to ensure that they are prepared internally on how to handle complaints.  Many times online complaints reflect conversations sales and customer service teams already handle.  Use them to help ensure quickly and timely issue resolution.

If your brand is attacked online the first thing you should do is assess the situation/impact of this interaction:

Use Compete or Alexa to determine the visibility of the website, including:

• Size of site – How large is the website?
• Site visibility – How popular is this site in search engines?  How likely is it that your customers will come across the site?
• Audience type – Look at the demographics.  Is this site frequented by your target audience?
• Site tone  - Is your product discussed in the same tone as everything else on the site?

Use the data here to determine your response and method of response:

• Update your blog with correct industry knowledge
• Outreach publically responding directly on a blog or a micro blog platform
• Outreach privately by asking the complaining party to discuss via phone or email
• Don’t respond (some fights just are not worth the battle)

One note, while I do believe there are times when a company should not respond online, it must be done with care.   This is a terrific article from TechCrunch on FTD’s social media mistake which occurred when they chose not to respond to angry complaints online.  As you can see, if they had simply just outreached publicly asking to contact each person off-list, they could have avoided this entire mess.

Social media mistakes happen.  Use them to your advantage by handling them quickly and easily and you will find a happier, more visible vocal fan base.

This series has been a great journey for me!  I hope you enjoyed reading it in parts.  I would love feedback on this series as well as any topics you would like me to cover next!

Related posts:

• Lessons Learned: Easy Tips on How to Create and Grow a Social Media Program
• Lessons Learned: Starting and growing your social media program
• Lessons Learned: Setting Goals in Social Media
• Lessons Learned: How to research your business
• Lessons Learned: How to create social media content

Tagged as: making mistakes, serena ehrlich, Social Media