How to avoid a social media disaster?

What’s the worst case scenario your brand could possibly suffer in a social media PR meltdown? That situation probably won’t occur, but by imagining the worst, you can craft “first line” responses ahead of time, so you won’t be caught off guard. That way you’ll be well prepared if sentiment around your brand suddenly begins to trend negative. This kind of brand take-down, should it occur, happens extremely fast — in a matter of hours.

Good question...here's my opinion

If online commentary starts to trend negative rapidly, consult your community management plan to decide who will respond first. Acknowledge questions and negative comments, and assure consumers you’re working toward an answer. Then, execute your official response as detailed in your escalation plan — an official blog post on your domain is always the first, best place to post new relevant information.

Even after you’ve delivered an “official” response, go back to unhappy individuals and point them to the latest blog post, as individual responses go a long way. Remember to speak personally and directly. Speed and honesty are what customers value most.

I believe a social media disaster would only happen if a customer is completely fed up with a brand, because customer buys products for use and not for creating social media disaster.   

Any customer which had a bad experience with any brand (Local, global or Glocal) would definitely go back to the brand with the grievance. This is the very important and tactical point of contact because a customer is almost feeling cheated. One wrong response at this point would make him feel like "company has a policy to cheat" but thats not the truth. One has to understand that a customer who is back with grievance would have trust deficit and it is the brand who has to take the responsibility to fill up the deficit.

As long as Brand is able to provide out of box grievance handling mechanism to its customers in its very first encounter, brand can regain the faith and could score few points rather than feeding to a social media disaster.

Ask your clients what they need, what they would like, what are the issues that need solving, what would make you stand out from competition, how much and which pains they are facing from similar products - and then, ONLY then, act. Social media strategies based on researching your target audience succeed, those that are only from a company's own point of view, fail. You shouldn't start a social media campaign or wider strategy if you're not ready to listen, and to aviod a disaster in planning the strategy, listen FIRST, not afterwards, and you'll face much more positive comments than complaints.

And don't go to any media before researching and listening to your audience where they are at, you might just end up in MySpace when your audience is in LinkedIn... And everything fails if your content is not right! You can speak all day long about your new products to empty chairs if your clients need only information how to activate your previous product or how to change batteries... Don't seel hard-cover books if your clients are buying Kindle's. Always listen first, only secondly act.

Tom Laine/Social Media Enthusiast

Twitter: @lainetom

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/tomlaine