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How to Defuse a Social Media Crisis

Many of us make controversial posts on social media once in a while. Sometimes, we may get away with it, but other times, we may have a real social media crisis on our hands. The post starts to fill up with plenty of negative comments. Deleting it may not be a good idea, because you will lose the chance to explain yourself. Negative comments will spread and contaminate other posts. If you are selling products, controversial posts will only taint your brand. If someone is provoked by your post, he/she will share it to dozens of friends and that person will add an unflattering opinion on top of the shared post and this could become a negative viral marketing headache for your brand.

What to Do

This situation can be quite upsetting, because social media is supposed to be about having good relationships with other people. Your first step is to delete all profane and spam comments. You need to focus on people who have relevant concerns about your post. Facebook may be the biggest social media platform on the planet, but it consists of many smaller, close-knit communities. If you are facing a crisis, you need to prepare the best arguments to deal with the responses. Words will quickly spread through the community, so you need to quickly handle the situation. There will be a barrage of counter-arguments from multiple people. You should answer them all with a single comment and you need to cover all of the most important points. It is important to respond quickly and you may need to apologize if you said something wrong. If you fail to react in a timely basis, you will lose your credibility. Defusing a social media crisis will be time consuming and exhausting, but it is essential.

Acknowledge and Apologize

Rather than being stubborn, it is often better to acknowledge your mistake and apologize. You may still lose some of the trust and credibility, but at least, you are not making things worse by typing controversial follow-up replies. You need to show a sense of urgency that you want to defuse the situation and proactively resolve your problems. Some people may become your new haters, but this is a consequence that you will have to deal with.

It is clear that having a social media crisis can be quite damaging to your online credibility. So, it is important to think carefully before making a new post or comment. You should see things from others’ perspectives and make sure that you won’t offend them.

     If you want to grow your business and succeed using effective social media channels, contact Social Buzzing, the digital marketing agency Chester trusts, and let one of our social media marketing professionals assist you today! If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to share it on your favorite social media sites.