COVID-19 is the first pandemic of the social media age. It’s enabling the world to stay connected with loved ones, keep the public informed of the latest government announcements and allows businesses to remain connected to customers, providing business continuity while working from home. 

In a heightened environment like a pandemic, emotions are high and an overload of information is flooded across social channels. As a result, companies need to know what is being said about their brand, whether it’s positive or negative. 

To reduce risk to your business, there are three vital steps companies should take to handle a crisis effectively:

1. Detect a crisis early: Automatically listen for and detect crises using smart social listening queries and a rules engine with a built-in real-time alert system.

2. Act: Distribute pre-approved brand responses on various channels and halt all outgoing advertising campaigns.

3. Mitigate: Report on volume and sentiment of messages around the crisis topic. Reporting will enable you to mitigate further damage and learn from the incident. 

To enable this, we recommend developing the following crisis management workflow:

1. Plan: Define what a crisis looks like for your brand. Create a crisis playbook and plan.

2. Build: Map social listening technology to the crisis playbook and train staff on the crisis response in an event.

3. Monitor: Monitor social channels to look for warning signs of an emerging crisis.

4. Activate: In the event of a crisis, use your playbook technology and resources to address customers quickly and on brand.

5. Inform: Improve and optimise your social crisis program and report on key findings.

If you want to take control of your brand during what is a very unstable time in our history and empower your organisation to be proactive not reactive during a possible crisis, contact us.