The Top 10 Business Limiting Social Media Mistakes Made By Black Lawyers and Black-Owned Law Firms - Mistake #7

The Top 10 Business Limiting Social Media Mistakes Made By Black Lawyers and Black-Owned Law Firms - Mistake #7 - Badly Managed PR Disasters

May 25, 2020

Whether you like it or not, once a piece of content, offer or news story is in the wider environment, people will take to social media to talk about it.

Unfortunately, even if it’s a good piece of news, it won’t always be fed back on positively. Jumping on angry bandwagons is also something that social

seems to fuel periodically.

Social media is another communication method that can be used by brands to help with situations e.g. to offer information or to allay fears around an

issue, but often also be the cause of PR disasters, such as the sharing of an incorrect image or statement.

In the image above, Delta Air made a PR blunder on Twitter by congratulating Team USA on their victory over Ghana in the 2014 World Cup by tweeting a picture of the statue of Liberty for the U.S. and a giraffe for Ghana. Unfortunately though as Twitter users quickly pointed out, there are no giraffes in Ghana.

WHAT SHOULD I DO?

- Tackle problems head-on – never ignore comments, always answer them with a polite response, and do it as quickly as you can

- NEVER argue – use social media to suppress anger and diffuse situations; offer a response but also direct communication offline e.g. to an email address, private messaging platform or call centre.

- Don’t delete posts – you can ‘hide’ them if they are offensive, but never remove comments

- Plan for escalation – in the event of a more major disaster, have an agreed route to escalate it to inform social media managers of the right people to reach out to for advice

- Assign responsibility – prevent mistakes by assigning one person to post updates, and employ an approval process to check the content plan

- Offer guidelines – recommended content and provide content where possible to control what it sent out

- Monitor brand reputation – check that your customers are not discussing your brand without directly mentioning you; less than 3% of customers directly @ mention brands on Twitter