Suche
Mein Konto
Social Media for Business: The Brown Storm
Series, Part 11: Expert Gergely Teglasy explains how you should react to a shitstorm.
Social Media for Business: The Brown Storm
Thanks to the tips here, you can sail happily on social networks and monitor them, meaning you'll know early on that something is brewing thanks to monitoring. Hopefully before the big storm even happens.
After reading this column carefully, you know that negative emotional reactions occurring quickly and in large numbers on social media mean a shitstorm. Even if these reactions do not always have a real basis and are often an indignation that has taken on a life of its own. We differentiate between seven levels on the Shitstorm scale: from 0 (calm) to 6 (hurricane). At level 0 (completely calm sea) everything is fine, up to 4 (strong wind) you can take good countermeasures, from level 5 it's a storm and all you have to do is hold on! Sometimes this mass outrage happens so quickly that it takes us by surprise. The shitstorm is a tsunami of outrage in which communication becomes increasingly detached from the original topic. The end result is denigration and insults to the company about which one is outraged. So about you.
Then the only question left to you is:
What should I do to prevent our boat from sinking?
Here comes help:
1 Don't panic! A hasty reaction is the worst reaction. Stay calm, but react quickly.
2 Hopefully you have social media guidelines, netiquette (= guidelines for users) and a crisis plan. If not, do these three things right away. The crisis plan is important right now: What happened, who needs to be notified (management), who has to approve the response?
3 Don't exaggerate the issue, don't react emotionally, don't pretend to be ignorant.
4 Look into the matter (= the problem), check the facts and clarify them.
5 Be accessible, react, communicate concretely and objectively, get partners on board and keep control of the discourse.
6 Solve the problem, apologize and keep promises.
By the way: The word shitstorm is a Germanized term, in English it is called “flame war”. Sounds much more likeable, but is just as dangerous.
The author:
Mag. Gergely Teglasy / TG teaches at the University of Vienna, the FH Vienna and the FH Burgenland. He is the winner of the Innovation Award, advises international organizations and companies on their digital communication strategy and wrote “Zwirbler,” the world's first Facebook novel.