Social media is wisely recognised as a tool for customer service, but sometimes things go wrong

Anybody who has said or done something in the real world that they deeply regret will not need much of a leap of imagination to know the palm-sweating, stomach-churning feeling they may have if the same happened on social media.

Justine Sacco, a former PR of InterActiveCorp (IAC), who posted an offensive and racist joke that implied only black people got AIDS, surely knows what this feels like. On her 11-hour flight to Johannesburg, the tweet posted shortly before she boarded the plane was picked up by one of her followers and went viral on a global scale, leaving her career as a senior PR executive for an American internet firm in tatters and her personal life under the microscope. In the press release she issued following the furore, ‘in anguish’ were the words used to describe how she was feeling and the impact her actions had had on her family. 

While this is, undoubtedly, a worst-case scenario, the real-time nature of social media means that awkward mistakes are inevitable, so brands utilising these platforms do need to have processes in place and be prepared to respond. Taylor Cole, Director of PR & Social Media, Hotels.com was on high alert following the Sacco incident because Barry Diller, the chairman of IAC also sits on the board of Expedia, and so they had to be prepared for the impact of this on their own brands. Luckily for Cole, IAC responded very quickly to avert the crisis.

The real-time nature of social media means that awkward mistakes are inevitable

Speaking recently at TDS North America, Cole said the most common social media mistakes tend to fall into the following buckets:

1.      Mixing up accounts
2.      Relying solely on automation
3.      Hitting the snooze button
4.      Blind bandwagon-ing
5.      Internal blunders.

So what are social media tips for brands faced with one of these awkward moments.

Without wanting to state the DON'T’s here they are:

·         At all costs avoid Sacco-style moments. Racism, chauvinism, sexism, fundamentalism and so on are never a good idea.

·         Neither is posting a comment when you are overtired. This is something that DiGiornio, the pizza company, learned only too quickly when an overtired executive posted an inappropriate comment to a conversation using the #WhyIStayed. The hashtag was being used to discuss experiences of domestic violence after American footballer Ray Rice was fired for abusing his wife and DiGiornio posted a somewhat trivial ‘YOU HAD PIZZA’. The good news for DiGiornio is that they responded quickly. More on this below…

·         Don't be afraid to start a conversation: Consider this: to date the number of airline flights that have made the news due to knee defender issues (spats that have arisen over whether you should recline or stay upright) is 11. Eleven too is the number of flights that have banned the knee defender. Well TripAdvisor used this to step in and start a conversation about this using the #recline or #upright on Facebook. With over 800 votes for team recline and 792 for team upright it was to close to call but Cole points out that the campaign “got some decent traction and started a conversation”.

When it comes to DOs:

·         Have processes in place to deal with the unexpected and learn from each experience: Cole shared an example of the challenge hotels.com faced when they were about to start their ‘vacation equality campaign’. Today just one in four Americans are guaranteed a paid holiday and the idea was to use an integrated marketing campaign to canvas the White House for fairer holiday rights for – in the hope, presumably, that more people would use hotels.com for their accommodation needs when this materialised. On the day that the campaign was set to launch, the July 17 Malaysian airlines crisis struck and Cole quickly had to change course which involved halting interviews, pulling content from multiple channels and so on. “We didn’t catch everything,” says Cole, but their processes enabled them to act quickly.

·         Say sorry when it’s appropriate: If you’ve done something wrong don’t be afraid to apologise. If you want to go a step further, do it personally. DiGiornio went some way to redeem its misplaced by responding personally – unusual in the fast-paced world of new media - to every single one of the 547 people who had retweeted it.

·         Double and triple-check before you post: Typos happen and things get misread and misinterpreted especially when things are happening in real-time, so be vigilant in checking what you post before you post. And again, get those processes in place.

·         Think creatively: When the perceptions of your brand are negative, it’s time to get creative. Take Birds Eye frozen foods. In the UK there is something of a stigma around eating frozen meals, explains Cole. But the company has taken a £5.6 million multi-pronged and multichannel approach to dispelling misperceptions. From launching competitions on social media through to photo workshops and pop-up shops to educate people about the goodness in frozen food (and giving away free meals to consumers who were willing to post a photograph of their meal in the process) Birds Eye has sought to engage the younger generation.

·         Know that it’s never too late: If your brand has come to a trending topic too late as hotels.com did with the ice bucket challenge to raise awareness of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) this can be rectified with a bit of creativity. “Knowing we were very late to the game we decided to call on Captain Obvious [the comic hotel guest who acts as hotel.com’s mascot] to work his magic,” says Cole, and this YouTube video was the result.

For more insights into how you can use social media to benefit your business or recover from a crisis, why not access 900 hours of searchable video and audio footage from the 22 EyeforTravel conferences run for the travel industry in 2013 and 2014. The content is transcribed and time-stamped so you can find the information you need in minutes.