Tag Archives: disaster

Practical tips for handling a Facebook Fan Page Crisis

A couple days back the food giant Nestle(after being targeted by Greenpeace) stepped on the wrong side of Social Media by posting rude and insensitive status updates and comments on their Facebook page. As expected, updates like this

and comments like this

did not go down well with their existing fans and those who checked the page because of the brouhaha. Therefore, Nestle suddenly found itself in middle of another debacle courtesy inappropriate management of their Facebook page. The person handling their Facebook page obviously had no idea (nor does he/she have any now) of the blunder he/she committed.

Now that the mistakes have been made and realized, what next? I’ve read as much as ten posts by Indian and International bloggers/social media whatevers essentially either link blogging what others are saying or making the most obvious and superficial suggestions how the tone of the messages should not have been rude etc. Interestingly none of them offered a direction if not a solution of what can a brand do if it happens to run into a situation like this.
Possibly, it’s because none of those who wrote about the Nestle Crisis have ever managed a single Fan page by themselves.

Keeping that aside here’s a quick list of things that I would have done had I been in charge of the Fan page
( I have intentionally limited the scope of discussion to Facebook Fan Page and Off course I don’t expect everyone to agree with my method)

1) Admit you have made mistake(s):
One of the best ways to start your firefighting plan is by acknowledging your mistake and maybe promising that it won’t happen in future. A big brand admitting they did something wrong and apologizing gives everyone the signal that the brand is conscious of what it is doing and sets the expectation right. Also, most aggressive critics and fans turned critics an ego boost from this.

2) Remove offensive content:
Yes, remove the content that offended people. Irrespective of what others feel I am a strongly believer that you should remove offensive content to avoid it offending even more people. An offensive status message will keep getting more eyeballs with time and it’s best to take it out of the loop.

3) Change the Landing Tab:

This is what one gets if they go to the Nestle Facebook page

The deal here is that it shows you the same things irrespective of the fact whether you are a fan or not. This landing page could temporarily be changed to some other tab, say info.

Facebook Default Landing Tab settings.

4)Turn of “Auto expand” comments:

Slightly below the default landing tab drop down is another option that let’s you configure if the comments

on a status will be expanded by default(with top few comments listed) or will they just show up as *x comments*, only on clicking which one can see the comments. The idea here is to reduce the visibility of negative content so as to reduce others doing the same thing.

These are just a few things that can possibly be done to control the situation from flaring further and in case things go really out of hand temporarily stop fans from posting comments to your page all-together.

All the points mentioned above are just for firefighting a Nestle like crisis on Facebook and are obviously not the perfect solution. Some people for example might have issues with removing the offensive content or making it less/easily visible but then a temporary fix needs to be done to avoid things from spilling over. Also, once the basic firefighting is taken care of the brand must get back to doing the right things and work its way out of the Crisis.

Social Media in India: Bigger me or Bigger WE ?

This post is a reply/comment to Gaurav Mishra’s post .

Before starting I must admit that Gaurav has done a great job in compiling and categorizing the list. I mean what are the odds that any individual or company/agency mentioned in that post knew about all others ?

All it takes now for any web company to become a social media company is just adding “social media marketing(smm)”  in their list of services offered or probably opening a Twitter account and following everyone mindlessly, but this is just the beginning. These are truely interesting times as we are not only observing but also shaping the growth curve for social media industry(If I can call that) in India. Our approach towards the core domain as well the business and social aspects of it will determine how things take shape.

By observing the figures(25-30 agenices in 2008 and 35-60 in 2009) it’s easy to slip into “The Pie Fallacy“, but as Gaurav rightly points “we haven’t even scraped the surface yet”. Social Media is yet to percolate into the way our organizations work.

While most Indian brands are still apprehensive/unsure about social media, those who’ve taken the plunge are still experimenting and trying to figure out what to make of it. Non Profits and Government are largely untouched by the social media wave. It is quite some time before Corporates start realizing what’s at stake if a social media disaster happens or individuals/govt etc learn how to handle social media with care.

What we face now is a classic “Whether or Which Dilemma”  and we need to pause for a minute and ask ourselves

“Are we trying to make the market bigger, or just grow our share?”

There are two ways to it.

1) Everyone just thinks about themselves and if their share is getting bigger or not(which’ll eventually lead to crab mentality)
2) Everyone tries to make the market bigger and in-effect making every/deserving one’s share bigger.

What’s interesting in the case of Social Media is that it’s about YOU or We and not ME.

The Scope of both individuality and cooperation in this space is immense. All that needs to be figured out is if,

You want to work towards a bigger ME or a bigger WE ?

because  “He who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how.”

Domino’s Reacts, Finally !!

It’s been a few days since that appalling video of Domino’s employees tampering with food at their outlet got attention of social media users and started spreading in a viral manner. A crisis like this can easily get worse if things are not handled correctly and in a timely manner but luckily(mostly) for Domino’s that’s not the case. Despite the huge wave of disgust that the video generated, it feels like things are under control now and the negative buzz which was generated will subside in the next few days.

While we tried to discuss what could be done to handle a social media disaster let’s see what Domino’s actually did and is still doing for damage control post this Social Media fiasco.

1) Initiate action against the culprits:
The folks at Domino’s were quick to realize that “actions speak louder than words” and thus their first step was to initiate an inquiry into the matter and punish the guilty. Not only were the employee involved terminated from their jobs, they are now in custody and face felony charges.

2) Stop the negative content from spreading:
Stopping new people to talk about negative content and trying to control the spread of negative content should be next on the agenda. Domino’s got this right(though it took some time) and got the video off YouTube.

dominos_gone

3) Participate in social media conversations:
Domino’s guys were decently quick to realize that they were getting a lot of bad PR in Twitter and thus they jumped into the scene by creating an account on Wednesday afternoon and started engaging with disgusted people. This works well for various reasons including pumping out positive things which otherwise don’t spread that virally as the negative one’s.

dominos_twitter

There is nothing more important or sacred to us than our customer’s trust

While the firefighting efforts had started on Twitter, Domino’s guys opened another front on YouTube by posting a nicely drafted public apology by Patrick Doyle, President of Domino’s U.S.A. The apology helped in re-affirming brands commitment towards it’s customer’s trust. Patrick also mentioned the steps they plan to take to avoid future happening of any untoward incident like this( sanitizing stores, tighter recruitment process, daily audits etc)


While Domino’s did open communication channels on a few Social Media Tools they didn’t announce anything on their official web resources and didn’t do a press release as they feared this will lead more people to know about this debacle and invite more embarrassment for the brand  said
Tim McIntyre, Dominos spokesman. So domino’s websites remain the way they were, as if nothing happened. While I see the point, I would have still preferred an official “what we are doing about the incident” channel.

Update: Domino’s site has an official update for their customers

dominos_site

While these efforts will definitely help in dozing the fire, it will still take a lot of continued effort on Domino’s part to keep the fire from spreading.

For example: It will take them a while to realize that while they have removed the video from YouTube, goodasyou still has that video and a few even gross one’s and some explaining for this(assuming it’s not fake)

dominos_violations

and ensuring that people don’t start talking about other things which can further take down their brand value

The next few days would be interesting, let’s see how the situation stands then.

Handling Social Media Disasters

When I wrote “Social Media: Handle with Care” it skipped me that Handle with Care applies to everyone who uses Social Media whether they realize it or not and this hold true even more strictly with employees/representatives of a brand.

The interwebs are abuzz with links to this video

These workers at Domino’s didn’t realize that just by uploading a 2.5 minutes video on YouTube  about what apparently is just a prank they have brought the company they work for in face to face to what could be called a “Social Media Disaster”.

Negative buzz spreads a lot faster than positive confirms Emanuel Rosen, author of highly popular book “Anatomy of Buzz” and that’s what we are seeing as I write this. It’s a given  that had this video been about something great Domino’s folks are doing, not even 10% of those who are spreading the word would have bothered to share it with their friends and followers.

While a lot is being said and will be said about how gross the video is, the employees are jerks and should be fired(or even jailed) and how we shouldn’t eat out etc what people tend to miss is “what next”, we have a situation at our hand and we know that it’s just an unfortunate incident which doesn’t really signify or imply anything about the way pizza’s are made at Domino’s or at any other pizza joint but what is it that they can do to reduce the side/after effects ?

Goodasyou posted a few videos and communicated with Domino’s officials about the same. The company reps replied diplomatically which is a fair way to go about it. Other than replying to all the written and telephonic communication in this regard they also need to find a way out to remove/block those videos(fake ?)  and there has to be opened an official channel(social media off course) to interact with upset customers and update them regularly about the incident and what they are dealing with it.

What do you think should the people behind dominos do to reduce the impact  on their brand ?