It does not matter if you are a fortune 500 company or a startup; you need a Social Media crisis management plan in place – Period!

Why you ask – good question; consider the  Customer Engagement on social media in “one minute”:
  • 4+ Million likes on Facebook
  • 1.7+ Million likes on Instagram
  • 347 Thousand Tweets on Twitter
  • Almost ½ of the world population is considered an internet citizen


 Another critical item to consider here is the customer lifecycle journey (CLJ). According to HBR article Competing on Customer Journeys, the new CLJ has compressed the consider phase and in some cases completely eliminated the evaluation phase.

This, in my factual based opinion, is a direct result of the #data available to the #consumers about the #brand via #socialmedia channels.



Before diving into the “how” to avoid the #socialmedia crisis, let’s start with the “what”, i.e:
  • What constitutes a social media crisis?
  • What are the triggers for it?
  • What role does social media play in customer complain process?
Patricia Redsicker provides an all-encompassing definition of social media crisis (Figure#1), while Christian Fuller provides a great set of insights on triggers (Figure#2) and Gregoire et al, elaborate on the role social media plays in the Customer Experience process (Figure#3).


Figure#1



Figure#2


Figure#3

It would be quite asinine for a brand to ignore the fact that the consumers, knowingly or unknowingly have become prosumers on social media.   With its global reach, every comment, like, favorite, share…etc, on social media can impact the #brand value in two ways; positive or negative.

While the former is desirable, the latter requires the #brand to have a socialmedia crisis management strategy in place.

As it was noted earlier that 76% of social media ciris can be avoided – here’s how:



To drive the point home about the importance of brand preservation, I will conclude with this quote from Warren Buffet: