[Editor’s Note: Each week we highlight a slide(s) from a presentation of interest to readers. This week’s slide comes from Temeka Easter, senior director, social media, Sallie Mae, who spoke during PR News’Digital Communications Marketing Summit last month in Miami. If you have an appropriate slide(s), please contact: [email protected]]
McDonald’s’ site contains invective; the web site for the Girl Scouts includes the organization’s position on abortion; and on November 2, the president’s Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump, goes silent and displays an error message:
“@realDonaldTrump does not exist”
Social Media, Sallie Mae
All these are examples of what can happen when brands lose control of their social media channels for a period of time.
Just a few hours without control of a brand’s site or social media can spell disaster, of course. Temeka Easter’s upper slide emphasizes the importance of having a social media policy in relatively tame times. For Easter at Sallie Mae, these include times when there are questions surrounding pending legislation or a lawsuit.
As you can see in these cases an organization’s social media policy must specify the review process for such questions and the standard response time. Archival procedures also are critical she says. “You don’t want to be scrambling when a request comes in” for documents and information that was posted socially.
To avoid a crisis, the social media policy also should include procedures for when employees leave the company. In Easter’s case at Sallie Mae, they are immediately removed from all social media accounts. Since Sallie Mae uses Sprinklr for all its platforms this simplifies things when an employee leaves, she says.
The lower slide looks at crisis response. As you can see, one of the steps is to have a system in place to halt all outbound social media posts.
It’s also essential to have redundancy built into your crisis system, she says, so you’re covered if the head of digital media is on vacation when a crisis occurs, for example.
Training is essential, too, she adds. While her slide mentions annual crisis drills, her team drills quarterly at unplanned intervals, she says.
A “solid listening tool” can help spot issues before they become full-blown crises, Easter says. She recommends finding a vendor that specializes in listening, as opposed to using a tool that does a bit of everything, in addition to listening.
As we saw in last week’s Slide of the Week feature, from Orlando Health ,preparing a list of messages in advance for use in a crisis can help communicators avoid having to craft responses in the midst of a volatile situation.
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