I remember my first week working on Social Media at Citibank. Tears running down my cheek, I ran into my bosses office and with a heavy sigh said, ” They hate me, they just hate me.”
Sure, most brands don’t choose to join social media in the middle of a massive, multinational crisis; ours was a a unique situation. Citi took it’s first steps into social during the height of the banking crisis in 2009 and I quickly had to become an expert in crisis management. Sure, I made a few mistakes along the way, but through every painful moment I learned a little bit more about how to work with consumers. When to engage, when to ignore and most importantly how we could change as a business, became things I began to intuitively recognize. Above all I learned trust, transparency, and timeliness were essential to being successful.
The PowerPoint below outlines a few of the things I learned along the way. Most importantly it introduces the common complainers cube. The thinking behind this diagram is to remind social media managers that all complainers cannot be treated the same. Different types of crises require different responses.
It is by no means an answer to every questions, problems or concerns a brand will face in social, but can be a helpful source of information to get you thinking in the right direction as you start to prepare for Social@Scale: Crisis Management.
- Blog post by Anna OBrien, Director of Strategy at Sprinklr. You can follow her at @AnnaOBrien and connect at LinkedIn.
Tags: crisis management, social media crisis, types of social media crisis
