Your phone is buzzing off the hook – notification after notification on twitter as one of your unfortunately overlooked tweets goes viral. What do you do next? The piece of content may not have even been created or posted by you, but it’s your responsibility to “fix it” – and fix it fast. Where do you even start?

Well first start by taking the piece down. There are likely copies and screenshots already so this won’t solve the problem, but it’s important to get it off of your brands page.

It’s also important jump into action immediately! This is where brands often fall short in recovery, they want to develop the best possible plan of action, resulting in a delayed response. When media picks up the story you want to have your voice in the mix (to be clear – not in a defensive or aggressive way, take responsibility, and explain your plan to solve the problem).

An example of this is when a Dominos staff member posted a video of employees contaminating food before sending it out. This went viral and Dominos waited a full 48 hours before responding. They apparently hoped the hype would die down – and when it was clear that wasn’t going to happen they issued a formal apology and action plan via Youtube video. The video resulted in a quick positive sentiment recovery, but issuing this quicker would have been much more effective.
More information on Domino’s social media mishap can be found here and here.

The most important thing to note is that playing the blame game won’t work. Take responsibility for the mistake and try to move forward. The DiGiorno example in the previous post was handled well. Only a few minutes after the tweet was sent it was deleted and a formal apology tweet was up. They also have sent personalized responses to numerous people who expressed their discontent.

Photo via Adweek

As digital marketers it’s important to be careful with content being posted, have an action plan in place in case of a mishap, and when something happens take responsibility and swiftly do everything in our power to remedy the situation to minimize the damage to your brand and reputation.

Follow

Every couple weeks a story breaks because a brand’s digital media content was perceived negatively or a mistake was made which put a group of consumers in uproar. Most of the time the post was sent with the purest of intentions, but as digital marketers it’s especially important to ensure that your post will not be misinterpreted and that you fully understand every context it could be viewed from. Being that the social media sphere is such an instantaneous community there is pressure to get your content out fast – especially around hot topics – for the best results.

(First example of a company doing this right that comes to mind is Oreo’s “You Can Still Dunk in the Dark” tweet during the 2013 Superbowl blackout)

But what about when you come up with something clever, put it out there, and things go horribly wrong? The unfortunate thing with digital media is that once it’s out there, it’s near impossible to take it back. Last week it was DiGiorno’s twitter account made a horrible error by trying to get a witty tweet into a trending hashtag conversation without researching the context. The #WhyIStayed was for people to express their experiences in abusive relationships and to combat the perception that the victim is at fault for staying in that relationship. DiGiorno prides themselves on being on top of real-time conversations and quickly put in the following tweet after seeing the trending hashtag without apparently looking into the context of the conversation.

Photo taken from AdWeek

It’s vital as digital marketers to be especially careful with what we put out (especially if you’re doing so in the name of a brand) because this small mistake put DiGiorno’s reputation at risk. We need to be aware of the pressures of instantaneous communication but balance that with taking a deep breath to think about the many ways a comment could be perceived to avoid misinterpretation from the author or reader!

Follow