All brands at some point will go through a cri­sis (or sev­er­al of them) and it’s inevitable that your brand’s social media will play some part in it. From inform­ing your cus­tomer of the inci­dent to mon­i­tor­ing var­i­ous plat­forms to watch out for var­i­ous items regard­ing the event, your social media team needs to be edu­cat­ed and kept abreast of all infor­ma­tion that is going on dur­ing a cri­sis.

If your social media team isn’t trained or aware of a cer­tain sit­u­a­tion, you could seri­ous­ly put not only your brand’s rep­u­ta­tion in jeop­ardy, but could also be ignor­ing a large amount of your con­sumers who com­mu­ni­cate heav­i­ly with­in social media.

Sit­u­a­tions can explode so quick­ly online. A brand cri­sis is bound and going to hap­pen. Rep­u­ta­tions can be dam­aged in real-time.

Let’s look back at the way one recent social media cri­sis played out online for piz­za chain Papa John’s. Then we’ll explore three ways brands can pre­pare and han­dle them­selves dur­ing a cri­sis.

The Backstory

Recent­ly pop star Iggy Aza­lea used Twit­ter to blast Papa John’s in a series of tweets. The media was quick­ly all over the sto­ry. What hap­pened?

A cou­ple days after a new Papa John’s deliv­ery per­son had dropped off some cheesy good­ness to Aza­lea’s house, she began receiv­ing calls and text mes­sages from phone num­bers she did­n’t rec­og­nize. Come to find out the new piz­za deliv­ery per­son had indeed shared her phone num­ber with sev­er­al peo­ple he knew.

@PapaJohns I ordered a cheese piz­za but instead I got tons of calls and mes­sages like this one. pic.twitter.com/fgKhydivXb — IGGY AZALEA (@IGGYAZALEA) Feb­ru­ary 8, 2015

When Aza­lea reached out to the man­ag­er of that branch, he said he would take care of the sit­u­a­tion and place that employ­ee on per­ma­nent leave. That did­n’t hap­pen. Instead, the man­ag­er reached out to the employee’s moth­er so she could rep­ri­mand the son.

Aza­lea quick­ly fired back at Papa John’s for the lack of pro­fes­sion­al­ism in han­dling the sit­u­a­tion:

When an employ­ee steals infor­ma­tion it’s called data breach. It’s ille­gal. There are steps a cor­po­ra­tion is sup­posed to fol­low after­ward. — IGGY AZALEA (@IGGYAZALEA) Feb­ru­ary 9, 2015

A short time after, the senior vice pres­i­dent of the chain reached out to the Aza­lea, apol­o­gized, and quick­ly rec­ti­fied the sit­u­a­tion.

@iggyazalea #We should have known bet­ter. Cus­tomer and employ­ee pri­va­cy is impor­tant to us. Please don’t #bounce us! — Papa John’s Piz­za (@PapaJohns) Feb­ru­ary 9, 2015

Exter­nal­ly, this prob­a­bly wasn’t viewed as a huge cri­sis for the brand, but from an inter­nal brand per­spec­tive, it prob­a­bly was because the whole inci­dent played out on social media, where poten­tial­ly mil­lions of peo­ple were watch­ing. Com­pa­nies must always be care­ful of how they con­duct, respond and inform them­selves, not only in press releas­es or web copy, but also in social media.

3 Ways Brands Can Prepare & Handle Themselves During a Crisis

1. Develop Standard Operating Procedures (SOP)

If your brand or busi­ness hasn’t cre­at­ed one of these doc­u­ments, then this is a good place to start. An SOP con­tains var­i­ous pro­to­cols and pro­ce­dures that gov­ern the use and main­te­nance of social media plat­forms and how employ­ees should con­duct them­selves online when rep­re­sent­ing your com­pa­ny.

Some items you can include in this doc­u­ment:

• How employ­ees should con­duct them­selves online.
• A flow­chart or doc­u­ment of triag­ing when it comes to com­ment­ing or respond­ing to your cus­tomer or audi­ence.
• Time­frames with regards to response time and how long it will take for your com­mu­ni­ty man­ag­er to respond to an inquiry.
• The review process for con­tent that you post with­in social media plat­forms.

Map­ping these items in a detailed man­ner will only help prep your com­mu­ni­ca­tions and social media team so they can han­dle them­selves con­sis­tent­ly online. The SOP can also help mit­i­gate var­i­ous sit­u­a­tions before they get out of hand.

2. Inform Your Company of the Crisis

While mem­bers of your social media or com­mu­ni­ca­tions team will be aware of a devel­op­ing or full-blown brand cri­sis, you should nev­er assume that every­one with­in your com­pa­ny knows. Edu­cate your employ­ees about the sit­u­a­tion and com­mu­ni­cate any updates as they occur.

Send­ing out a com­pa­ny-wide email or updat­ing your intranet is prob­a­bly the most effec­tive way to inform your employ­ees. When your com­mu­ni­ca­tions team does meet regard­ing a cer­tain cri­sis or event, it’s imper­a­tive that your social media team is includ­ed, as they are the peo­ple who direct­ly com­mu­ni­cate with your cus­tomers in real time.

3. Develop Talking Points

While your employ­ees may be well aware of what is going on when it comes to a cri­sis, it’s impor­tant to share with those peo­ple how to respond to the sit­u­a­tion in per­son and online. Devel­op­ing con­tent in the form of video, a press release, or a blog should be reviewed to make sure that the infor­ma­tion is con­sis­tent and infor­ma­tive.

Oth­er things you can include in your talk­ing points are:

• Pre-con­struct­ed social media posts or tweets about the sit­u­a­tion.
• A brief sum­ma­ry of the sit­u­a­tion.
• Fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions and answers about what is going on.

Dur­ing any brand cri­sis, it’s impor­tant that you do your best to keep your cus­tomers informed and edu­cat­ed about the sit­u­a­tion. No mat­ter how big or small your com­pa­ny is, you’re bound to run into var­i­ous lev­els of inci­dences.

On social media, you brand or busi­ness must do its best to be human, apolo­getic, and sin­cere. Ignor­ing or fail­ing to mon­i­tor social media com­ments dur­ing a cri­sis will reflect poor­ly on you.