A No-Nonsense Guide to Social Media & Crisis Communications for PR People

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Social Media Crisis
Communications
for PR people
A no-nonsense guide to
crisis communications and
social media for PR people
Dr Paul Marsden
Social Psychologist
Social Media Strategy
http://viralculture.com

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“If you lose money for
the firm I will be
understanding. If you
lose reputation I will be
ruthless.”
Warren Buffett
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes
to ruin it.” Warren Buffett

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Crisis communications is a core function of PR...

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Social media can help us do crisis communications
better, faster and more cost-effectively

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Better crisis communications with social media - more
useful, more responsive, more direct

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Faster crisis communications with social media -
immediate distribution, real-time updates

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More cost-effective crisis communications with social
media - self-publishing, inexpensive/free tools

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But social media can also trigger and facilitate crises

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Social media can trigger crises by causing crises
themselves or by giving a voice to unheard detractors

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Social media can facilitate crises by agenda setting and
helping detractors to self-organise against you

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So crisis communications teams need to know how to
use and deal with social media

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Four Essential Tools Four Point Plan
Wordpress (social media CMS) Manage Issues
Twitter page Plan & Prevent
Facebook page Crisis Response
YouTube channel Post-Crisis Response
So here are four tools you’ll need and a simple four point
plan for effective PR crisis comms with social media

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The plan is built on the practical, tried-and-tested, peer-
reviewed online crisis communications plan from IBM

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The Crisis Comms Toolbox: You’ll need Wordpress - your
social media CMS hub from which you will communicate

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The Crisis Comms Toolbox: You’ll need a Twitter page -
to auto-post links to news updates and answer queries

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The Crisis Comms Toolbox: You’ll need a Facebook page
- to auto-post links to news updates and answer queries

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The Crisis Comms Toolbox: You’ll need a YouTube
channel to host and post video news updates

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Setting up and connecting up your crisis comms toolbox
Wordpress Wordpress Training: wp101.com,
‘Hub’ wordpress.tv. lynda.com
Platform
‘Spokes’
Wordpress: Download the free Wordpress CMS from wordpress.org and do the
famous 5 minute install into a directory on your website - follow video training
Facebook - link your Facebook page to your Wordpress pages via a free service
such as Networked Blogs
Twitter - link your Twitter page to you Wordpress pages via a free service such
as Feedburner
YouTube - create a YouTube channel to manually post any video news for you to
embed on your Wordpress pages

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1. Issues Management

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Issues Management & Social Media (Overview)
Assigning Resources
Establishing Alert System
Mapping Influencers
Priortising Focus
Engaging with Social Media
Thinking Globally
Drawing up Guidelines
Training the Team

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Issues Management: Assigning Resources
Assign resources – human, economic and technological – to
social media issues management. Consider whether an external
agency or service can be of help
Get senior management buy-in to the importance of crisis
communications and social media and secure resources
Assign responsibility for social media issues management
internally or to an agency, and allocate time
Assign budget for crisis communications with social media,
including issues management
Empower whoever is responsible for social media issues to
act independently and immediately
JET (Just Enough Technology) Update infrastructure by
installing Wordpress (social media CMS) on your website

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Issues Management: Establishing Alert System
Establish an efficient social media monitoring alert system to add
to your online news monitoring solution
Set up a social media ‘listening post’ and use as an early
warning system for issues as well as insight generator
JET (just enough technology) solution - use free Google
alerts and Twitter search alerts to monitor social media
Consider paid social media monitoring services
Set alerts for your organisation, as well as key issues,
personnel and brands mentioned with your organisation
Manually monitor your Wikipedia page entries
Produce a weekly management summary of mentions and
sentiment in social media

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Issues Management: Mapping influencers
Draw a full map of social media influencers (bloggers, journalists
who publish in social media, group, page and forum moderators)
noting their issues of interest or concern
Do a Google and Twitter search for key issues and your
organisation and industry to identify leading social media
voices
Generate a social media contact list, listing their name, sites
and issues that interest or concern them
Subscribe to their content
Begin building relationships by commenting on their content

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Issues Management: Prioritising focus
Prioritise your focus based on issues - on their probability of
occurrence and their possible impact on the organisation
List the top 10 possible events that could occur that would
carry the most reputational risk to your organisation
Score each out of 10 in terms of it’s likelihood of occurrence
(0 not at all likely, 10 extremely likely) (= a)
Score each out of 10 in terms of severity of impact on your
organisation’s reputation (= b)
Multiply a x b, and rank issues by score. Prioritise issues
management activities by score

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Issues Management: Engaging with social media
Consider starting a corporate blog to engage with social media
users well before a crisis situation arises
Install Wordpress in a folder on your site, and use as your
social media news room - inviting comments, sharing and
discussion
Communicate on your blog in an appropriate social media
style - social, conversational, realtime, multimedia, mobile,
search-engine optimised
Consider video-blogging with interviews and Q&As with
staff, publish on blog and to your YouTube channel
Automatically syndicate your posts to your Facebook and
Twitter pages (feedburner / networked blogs)

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Issues Management: Thinking globally
Think globally. Any local issue can today easily evolve, through
social media, into a regional or a global crisis.
An upset customer flapping their arms in a far off land can
cause a Tsunami where you are - think global, act global

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Issues Management: Drawing up guidelines
Draw up guidelines on the approach, tone, and language that is
appropriate for dialogue in a dynamic, social media environment.
This will be quite different from the more formal and distant
corporate tone and language used in traditional
communications. Adapt communication by making it:
‘Social’ by enabling social interaction and sharing,
‘Conversational’ - informal and brief in style, ‘Real-time’ - live
and on demand, ‘Multimedia’ - with images, video and
sound, ‘Mobile’ - handset-friendly and location-aware,
‘Findable’ - using search terms people use
Create organisation-wide social media guidelines, who - as
employee - can publish what, where and when in social
media - specifically referencing issue priorities (see appendix
for template). Get senior management sign off, publish on
your intranet, conduct training as necessary

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Issues Management: Training
Train the team. Become familiar with how issues develop in
social media
Review social media issues management cases, and know
you’d respond (see social media crisis timeline in appendix))
Know how to and “speak” in social media and understand
the 6 principles - social, conversational, realtime,
multimedia, mobile, search-engine optimised
Learn how to use the four key social media communication
tools - Wordpress, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube
Know when to respond and when to ignore social media
content (see next)
Run regular scenario training using an internal training blog

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Issues Management: Training
Take reasonable
Yes action to fix issue
Positive Negative and let customer
know action taken
No Do you want Assess the Evaluate the Yes
to respond message purpose
Does customer
need/deserve
more info?
Can you add Unhappy Are the facts
No response
value? customer? correct?
Yes No
Gently correct the
No No facts
Respond in Thank the Dedicated Are the facts
kind and share person complainer? correct? No
No Yes
Explain what is
Comedian Is the problem Yes
being done to
want-to-be? being fixed?
correct the issue
Yes No
Adapted from US Airforce Let post stand and
monitor

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Planning & Prevention

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Planning and Prevention & Social Media (Overview)
Creating your Situation Room Evaluating capabilities
Putting together Rapid Response Team Engaging specialists
Updating Contacts Testing the plan
Assigning Responsibilities
Testing Monitoring Real-time
Planning how to Respond
Creating a ‘dark’ Crisis Blog
Registering at-risk Domains
Identifying Allies

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Planning and Prevention: Creating your Situation Room
Consider developing your crisis manual online: it is easier to
update and maintain than hard-copy, and it offers the possibility
to include links to multiple sources of information and
databases. It also allows communications actions such as e-mail
distribution and point-and-click distribution of press materials
Use a passworded Wordpress pages on your site, or install
Wordpress on your Intranet
Consider using these pages as your internal ‘situation room’
to be used by crisis management team members to obtain
internal information related to the crisis, guidelines, plans,
news reports, statements, contact information, etc.

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Planning and Prevention: Putting together the team
Put together your rapid response crisis communications team
and assign responsibilities
Who will have overall responsibility - ensure they are
empowered to act fast and autonomously in a crisis?
Who will fulfil the communications tasks?
Internal (Senior management, and staff)
External (Publishing news updates on social media properties,
Influencer Outreach (Bloggers/Journalists), Responding to
comments and queries in social media)
Ensure you have contact details of all rapid response
comms team members, and ensure they understand it is a
24/7 responsibility

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Planning and Prevention: Updating contacts
Update e-mailing lists, contact databases and site directories
Email lists - rapid response team, staff, influencers
Contact databases - rapid response team, staff, influencers
Site directories - key sites to monitor during crisis

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Planning and Prevention: Assigning responsibilities
Decide who will be able to publish what, where and how during
a crisis, and get sign-off
How will your social media policy change in the event of a
crisis? Consider only allowing crisis team to publish
How will marketing communications change in the event of
a crisis? Consider pausing any marketing messages

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Planning and Prevention: Testing monitoring real-time
Check whether the regular media monitoring service is fast
enough to follow the crisis, especially for online media outlets.
Can your traditional and social media monitoring report on a
half daily or even hourly basis?

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Planning and Prevention: Planning if/when to respond
Draft guidelines to respond quickly to web-based rumours
Use the social media response plan to decide whether to
respond
Respond when rumour source is influential, has a large
online readership
If you can’t provide clarity or help, do not respond
Be courteous, human and helpful - but do not debate, point
people instead to your own site for the response
Rumours spread when there is an informational vacuum,
informational ambiguity, and a lack of informational authority,
so provide clear authoritative and helpful information to quell
rumours

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Planning and Prevention: Creating a crisis blog
Create hidden or ‘dark’ blog on your web-site to be used in case
of a crisis to update all constituencies about the issue
Use your Wordpress directory to create a crisis blog (web-
log) that can be made visible in the event of a crisis. Have a
web agency do this for you if necessary
Create a pre-formatted page template, with an area for
news, key contacts, useful links and resources and get sign
off from senior management prior to any crisis
Use Google adwords to build list of keywords (negative and
positive) to use in the crisis blog for SEO/SEM (Search
Engine Optimisation/Search Engine Marketing)
Assign budget for promoting your crisis blog with SEM
(Google ads)

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Planning and Prevention: Registering at-risk domains
Register domain names, including those with negative
connotations, that could be hijacked by activist groups
CompanyNameDisaster.com/net/org
CompanyNameSucks.com/net/org
SueCompanyName.com/net/org
CompanyNameFail.com/net/org

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Planning and Prevention: Identifying allies
Identify relevant third-party organisations and individuals (e.g.,
bloggers) that could act as allies and can provide a balanced
view in the case of a negative audience debate. Engage with
them in advance.
Use the fruits of your influencer outreach activity in Issues
Management to identify and engage with friendly third-
parties

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Planning and Prevention: Evaluating capabilities
Evaluate your in-house capabilities to develop graphic, video,
and audio files that could be quickly distributed online, whether
they are simple digital pictures or more elaborate podcasts.
Purchase the necessary equipment or think about outsourcing
these services.
Ensure you have a digital video camera, regular digital
camera and audio recorder, and know how to use it
Know how to use basic media editing software (iPhoto,
iMovie, Audacity)
If outsourcing, contact providers and purchase emergency
media production capabilities

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Planning and Prevention: Engaging specialists
Consider whether you need your traditional PR firm to do online
PR and social media or you need to hire a separate PR firm or
partner.
Ask to see the crisis communications plan of your traditional
PR firm (their own, not what they sell) to evaluate their
capabilities

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Planning and Prevention: Testing the plan
Test the crisis plan.
Scramble your rapid response communications team out of
hours at least once a year and run an extending training
scenario. Debrief the team on what they did, and discuss
what they could do better.

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Crisis

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Crisis & Social Media (Overview)
Scrambling the Team
Monitoring in Real-time
Going Public
Updating Staff
Getting Visibility
Reaching Out
Showing a Human Face

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Crisis: Scrambling the team
Scramble your Rapid Response Crisis Communications team,
and alert senior management to the crisis that is unfolding
Ensure everybody is present, in contact with each other and
knows what they need to do

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Crisis: Monitoring in real-time
Ensure monitoring services are aware of the crisis situation and
that they report electronically all outcomes as they appear
Before responding, use monitoring data to understand how
people are responding to the situation, what is being said
and why

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Crisis: Going public
Go public as soon as possible by making your crisis blog visible
with latest information, updates and instructions
Place an obvious link to your crisis blog on your home page
as soon as possible
Keep information true, helpful and brief. Explain how you
are resolving the situation. Respond to legitimate questions
honestly - this is not the time for PR spin.
Acknowledge the emotional dimension of the situation “We
understand/realise this is frustrating, confusing...”
Update crisis blog regularly, at least every hour in acute
phase of crisis, confirming when the next update will come
Update blog with links to reputable third-party sites or
people who are favourably covering the issue.

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Crisis: Updating staff
Update staff on the situation, and on any changes to traditional
and social media communications during the crisis
Keep staff updated as a matter of priority, and ensure they
are aware of the crisis blog
As appropriate advise a temporary black-out on marketing
communications, social media and PR during the crisis

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Crisis: Getting visibility
Use search engine marketing (Google Ads) and search engine
optimisation (using search words) to improve the visibility of your
crisis blog.
Buy Google search display ads for search terms related to
the event, linking to your crisis blog
Use search words, even if unflattering (Eurostarfail) in the title
and copy of your news updates increase Google visibility

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Crisis: Reaching out
Reach out to key social media contacts (bloggers, journalists,
page/forum moderators) by email and text with a personal
message and a latest update, pointing them to your crisis blog
Respond to their queries as a matter of priority
Link to any favourable coverage as a result of the outreach

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Crisis: Showing a human face
Get CEOs to personally address visitors to your crisis blog (post,
video post)
Give your organisation a human face with an interview or
post
Record any media interviews and post transcripts to your
crisis blog

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Post Crisis

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Post-Crisis (Overview)
Tracking & Monitoring
Thanking Everyone
Updating Content
Rebuilding Reputation
Evaluating Actions

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Post-Crisis: Tracking and monitoring
Continue tracking the issue by monitoring social and traditional
online media, during the months – and even years – to come
Update the keywords you monitor to include those related to
the event
Continue to respond to legitimate questions and anxieties by
showing what - practically you have done, and are
continuing to do to put it right
Be truthful, be compassionate, move on

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Post-Crisis: Thanking everyone
Thank those who helped the organisation during the crisis. From
a social media point of view, this could include ‘thank you’ posts
on blogs, through contact forms or personal e-mail messages
Your colleagues
Your team
Your customers - for their understanding
Third-party bloggers and journalists
Your investors - for their support

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Post-Crisis: Updating content
Update the company’s online properties appropriately, editing or
updating any legacy content
Don’t try and rewrite the past, you can’t
Consider leaving your crisis blog online with a public thank
you to your customers and to all those that helped
Update your company’s Wikipedia page to acknowledge the
incident

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Post-Crisis: Rebuilding reputation
Define the strategies and tactics at play to rebuild the company’s
reputation: from in-depth analysis of online content and opinion
leaders, to online chats with the most active bloggers.
Understand how your reputation has been damaged and
what you need to do to repair it
Know that it’s actions not words that will repair your
reputation - so put it right

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Post-Crisis: Evaluating actions
Evaluate what happened and how the organisation responded,
so that the crisis plan and all the online-related measures could
be properly adapted.
Run a debrief session with all parties involved to find out you
can learn from the event to improve your crisis
communications

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DR PAUL MARSDEN
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGIST
SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY
LONDON
PAUL@VIRALCULTURE.COM
@MARSATTACKS
+44 777 95 77 248
I’ll look forward to helping you apply the plan in the ‘Social
Media for PR People’ course. Enjoy. Share. Profit.

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Social Media Crisis Timeline
Source: SMI

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Social Media Crisis Timeline
September 2004 A Kryptonite lock is picked apart by a blogger
with a Bic pen. First blogs, then the New York Times amplify the
feat as the company fails to respond. Social Relevance: Viral
effect costs $15 million in product recalls.
June 2005 L’Oreal is skinned alive by the first big fake blog
fiasco Social Relevance: The first demonstration that flashy
advertising values don’t work in social media.
August 2005 Jeff Jarvis invents “angry blogger slams customer
service syndrome”. Hundreds of others blog about similar
shoddy Dell customer service. Social Relevance: Dell is one of
the first companies to learn that, in social media, you ignore your
customers at your peril.

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Social Media Crisis Timeline
April 2006 Chevy’s Design your own Tahoe competition loses its
big end to crowdsourced complaints. Social Relevance: A big
brand learns first-hand it has no control when it comes to social
media marketing.
June 2006 Dell’s reputation goes up in smoke after leading tech
blog Gizmodo publishes photo of exploding laptop. Social
Relevance: The power of a single image that spreads online. Dell
forced to recall more than 4 million laptop batteries.
June 2006 Diet Coke and Mentos – Who knew? This was one of
the first YouTube memes, copied numerous times and with
millions of views. Social Relevance: Coca-Cola hated it and
complained but later came to embrace social media. “Our
consumers control our brand” became its mantra.

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Social Media Crisis Timeline
June 2006 Asleep at the wheel: Comcast technician becomes
poster child for poor customer service. 1.3 million view the
video. Social Relevance: Comcast humiliation caused a change
in priorities. Soon becomes industry leader in Twitter customer
service help.
August 2006 Starbucks is hit by a satirical attack on the price of
Frappucinos as it fights accusations of unfairly treating Ethiopian
coffee workers. Social Relevance: Videos like this highlighted
Starbucks was losing touch with customers. Starbucks decides
to make social media a priority.
October 2006 Folksy “Isn’t Wal-Mart great” travel blog “Wal-
Marting Across America” hits a reputation pot-hole when
unmasked as being paid for by company. Social Relevance:
Black eye for Wal-Mart amid accusations that it was trying to
shift attention away from criticism of its labor practices.

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Social Media Crisis Timeline
December 2006 Sony sets new low standard for fake blogs with
“All I want for Xmas is a PSP”. They even made a memorable
video, now infamous. Social Relevance: Digital egg on face. PSP
fans are outraged at being patronised. Sony issues social media
mea culpa and pulls campaign.
January 2007 Valentine’s Day: Jet Blue passengers are stranded
for up to 8 hours on runway. They film and blog their ordeal.
Social Relevance: Jet Blue understood how its reputation was
being hurt online and so CEO David Neelman quickly crafted a
YouTube apology.
February 2007 Taco Bell suffers the ultimate PR horror, rats
taking over one of its Manhattan chains. And a local TV news
crew was there to document it. Social Relevance: Rodents in the
kitchen making local news isn’t exactly new. But 1.2 million
views on YouTube? Global embarrassment and one still viewed

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Social Media Crisis Timeline
March 2007 Greenpeace “punks” a Kleenex TV ad to protest
Kimberly-Clark’s clear-cutting of ancient Boreal forests. Social
Relevance: A 5-year campaign really took off once Greenpeace
made its message social. In 2009, Kimberly-Clark changed its
sourcing policies.
November 2007 Molson’s first Facebook campaign backfired.
Who could guess “ Show everyone how you and your crew get
the party started!” would encourage photos of binge drinking?
Social Relevance: Be careful what you ask for when associating
your brand with unfettered Facebook content. Sobering lesson.
February 2008 GM, fast on the heels of its pioneering Fastlane
Blog, launches a social network site, GMNext. Its “green”
section is pilloried by green activists. Social Relevance: Caught
in the headlights of consumer ire, GM smartly engage its critics
admitting some problems and responding on blogs and forums.

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Social Media Crisis Timeline
April 2008 Unilever’s Dove finds itself on the receiving end of an
aggressive Greenpeace social media campaign against palm oil-
driven deforestation. Social Relevance: Understanding the
power of compelling, shareable content Greenpeace uses
YouTube to stoke consumer ire against the largest palm oil
buyer.
June 2008 JCPenney’s “Speed Dressing” ad wins a Bronze Lion
at Cannes. Just one problem: Neither the retailer or its ad
agency claims to know anything about it. Social Relevance: In
social media, content never dies. When the makers of the faux
ad put it online and JCPenney disowned it, Speed Dressing’s
fame was bound to grow.

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Social Media Crisis Timeline
August 2008 ExxonMobil isn’t known for its social media chops.
Hence the surprise to see it start a Twitter feed. Especially as the
oil giant knew nothing about it. Social Relevance: In one of the
first cases of Twitter-squatting, “Janet” showed one of the
world’s biggest companies that it couldn’t ignore social media.
November 2008 Motrin’s sassy commercial aimed at Moms
backfires spectacularly after a Twitter-army of motherly
discontent swarms. Johnson & Johnson apologies. Social
Relevance: A small group of influential Tweeters uses the social
media megaphone to noisy effect. Twitter, it seems, really can
give you a headache.

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Social Media Crisis Timeline
February 2009 The last straw: PepsiCo’s Tropicana rebranding
gets pulped following an outraged online reaction by its
traditional fan base. Social Relevance: Beware the focus group.
PepsiCo’s research hadn’t anticipated the level of anger coming
from its most loyal customers. The fiasco cost $35 million.
February 2009 Skittles embraces social media by ceding control
of its site to customer chatter. Talk about making a hashtag out it
as air turns blue with obscenities. Social Relevance: Social
media “experts’ preach “Be where your customer is”. But that
doesn’t mean give up your brand. Bold social media FAIL.
February 2009 Target shoots itself in the foot when it refuses to
talk to a blogger because it claims Target customers don’t read
blogs. Social Relevance: Who has influence in today’s social
media world? Target took a very old-school view of things but
forgot that the MSM didn’t share its outlook.

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Social Media Crisis Timeline
February 2009 Louis Vuitton threatened to sue the young
designer who created this Darfur charity T-shirt claiming IP
infringement. Blogs and Facebook had a field day. Social
Relevance: In the old days, aggressive lawyering might have
been a deterrent. In today’s social media goldfish bowl it looks
like corporate bullying.
April 2009 In the wake of an employee gross-out video that
spread virally on YouTube, Domino’s USA president takes a leaf
out of JetBlue’s book and issues a social media apology. Social
Relevance: Once crisis comms was handled by press releases
and carefully co-ordinated TV interviews. Now the discourse
plays out online in real time.

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Social Media Crisis Timeline
June 2009 Habitat seemed to be getting the hang of the Twitter
thing– until it was caught promoting new products using
hashtag spam, including the Iranian election. Social Relevance:
Twitter may be a new medium but you shouldn’t relinquish
control of your corporate communication to “an over
enthusiastic intern”. #FAIL!
July 2009 United Airlines handles hundreds of lost and damaged
baggage complaints each year. But aggrieved Dave Carroll went
viral with his ballad of a broken guitar. Social Relevance: United
had 9 months to placate Carroll before he penned his protest
song. Instead they were confronted with a backlash millions
empathised with.

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Social Media Crisis Timeline
August 2009 Dooce blogger Heather Armstrong couldn’t get
Maytag to fix her washing machine. She groused on Twitter to
her 1m+ followers. Maytag rapidly dispatched a repairman.
Social Relevance: Armstrong’s Twitter clout was far more
influential than Maytag’s own social media presence. A case of
supposed corporate power turned on its head.
October 2009 From the Dept. of “It seemed a good idea at the
time.” PepsiCo quickly pulled this AMP iPhone app aimed at
young guys after it was lambasted on Twitter as sexist. Social
Relevance: The desire for social media to magically connect with
the youth audience is fraught with danger for brands. This idea
didn’t get to first base.

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Social Media Crisis Timeline
February 2010 Another month, another twitter fiasco. This time
it’s a rogue homophobic employee. Social Relevance: Social
media is often delegated to junior employees because they “get
it”. Doesn’t mean they can understand how to protect a
company’s reputation.
February 2010 Southwest Air’s “Customer of Size” policy
receives a high-profile roasting when the airline targets director
Kevin Smith and he tweets his experiences. Social Relevance:
Forcing obese passengers to buy an extra ticket had taken a
back seat on the news agenda until Smith’s tweet to millions hit
the headlines.

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Social Media Crisis Timeline
February 2010 British retailer Paperchase gets hammered by an
artist who claims in her blog that the company has plagiarised
her work, and rebuffed her offline complaints. Social Relevance:
Unlike many big corporates, Paperchase had no social media
presence prior to this attack. Social media swarms can hit mid-
level companies too.
February 2010 Greenpeace targeted Nestle but only when
activists besieged Nestle’s Facebook page and the company got
aggressive and deleted posts did it become a global story.
Social Relevance: Nestle’s inept social media community
management made it look like an arrogant, tin-eared corporate
to the public. Just what Greenpeace wanted.

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Social Media Crisis Timeline
May 2010 8-year old kid sends cute crayon plane design to
Boeing. Company responds with standard impersonal rejection
letter. Kid’s father blogs it. Boeing apologises. Social Relevance:
Boeing isn’t used to dealing directly with the public but
nevertheless the age of replying with automated letters must
surely be over.
June 2010 BP spills millions of barrels of the oil into the Gulf of
Mexico. Finds its online PR response clogged by Facebook
outrage and a fake, hilarious Twitter account. Social Relevance:
While BP spent £93m on ads, social media kept the pressure
on. 350 “Boycott BP” Facebook groups formed and 188,000
followed fake @ BPGlobalPR.

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Social Media Crisis Timeline
June 2010 Environmental activists tell Facebook to “unfriend
coal,” a pressure campaign to get the company to ditch plans to
build a new, coal-powered data centre. Social Relevance: As
seen with the backlash over its privacy conditions, Facebook
may be a social media leader but it continues to struggle with its
own reputation. For this issue, it was forced to address
environmentalists’ concerns at Davos in 2011.
June 2010 Proctor & Gamble faces Mommy blogger
groundswell over claims that Dry Max diapers cause rash and
blistering. Social media storm prompts lawsuits and safety
inquiries. Social Relevance: Pampers engages with social media,
invites influential bloggers to P&G HQ where experts address
concerns. Product safety inquiry finds no link to rash.

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Social Media Crisis Timeline
September 2010 McDonald’s wasn’t overly concerned by this
local TV ad made by a community nutrition group linking its
burgers to heart disease. That’s before they took it to YouTube.
Social Relevance: YouTube continues to make local issues
global when they resonate with worldwide audience. It’s already
been viewed nearly 900,000 times.
September 2010 Greenpeace is using Hollywood’s playbook
with its sequel strategy of shaming multinationals out of using
Sinar Mas palm oil. This time Burger King capitulates. Social
Relevance: In just 12 months Facebook has become a crucial
communication channel for major brands, making them more
accountable than ever to customer feedback.

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Social Media Crisis Timeline
October 2010 Rainforest Action Network punks Chevron on eve
of its “We Agree” do-gooder ad campaign with a series of
fictitious stories and spoofed Like-worthy press releases tarring
the oil giant as an environmental menace. Blogs and legit news
sites take the bait and RAN’s fictitious “news” generates
headlines (and buzz). Social Relevance: Who’s the villain here?
This one will be debated for a long time. RAN may have won the
day, but hoodwinking the bloggers and the mainstream media is
no way to build credibility around your causes.

79. 79
Social Media Crisis Timeline
February 2011 Evidently, Kenneth Cole didn’t get Habitat
hashtag memo (Jun ‘09). The fashion house tried to cash in on
the rising tide of #Cairo Tweets, using it to plug its new spring
collection. Cole even signed off with his signature -KC. Social
Relevance: Insensitive and stupid? You bet. Coming from the
boss, this hashtag abuse shows a particularly ugly side of the
brand culture. Within hours, hundreds vowed to boycott. Few
were mollified by KC’s mea culpa.
February 2011 This is becoming a recurring theme in social
media mismanagement: errant, out-of-character Tweets sullying
a brand’s reputable Twitter feed. How could this happen? Hint:
next month’s Chrysler gaffe could hold the key. Social
Relevance: Turns out Red Cross do-gooders like a good brew
as much as the rest of us. Odd that it comes amid desperate
Tweets about fresh water and war crimes. Still, the online
community brushed it off as “no foul.”

80. 80
Social Media Crisis Timeline
March 2011 Did Chrysler really drop the F-bomb? Turns out, no.
It was its social media agency charged with running the Twitter
feed. Chrysler apologized on its blog and cut ties with the
agency, which then fired the foul-mouthed offender. Social
Relevance: The whole groan-worthy story went from bad to
worse when the fired employee blamed the whole mess on “a
bug in TweetDeck.” God, we hate those F*&^ing bugs!
April 2011 Cisco stuns the tech world by abruptly killing off the
Flip video cam. It then pulls the plug on all communications on
Flip’s Facebook and Twitter channels for more than a week,
leaving disappointed fans seething. Social Relevance: File this
one away in the “how not to kill off a beloved product” file. The
300,000-plus fan base quickly turned on Cisco for leaving it in
the dark for so long.

81. 81
Social Media Crisis Timeline
April 2011 The personal details of 77 million Sony PlayStation
Network users are stolen by hackers in a massive breach. Sony
shuts down the online gaming network within days, but takes
over a week to inform users they’re at risk, prompting
Congressional investigations. Once-loyal fans turn on Sony on
the PSN blog, Twitter and Facebook. Social Relevance: Sony’s
social media channels become a flashpoint for users’
complaints, leaving privacy watchdogs and tech-savvy
politicians plenty of ammunition with which to grill Sony execs.

82. 82
Social Media Crisis Timeline
July 2011 A high-speed train crashes in the Chinese region of
Whenzou, killing 40, injuring 192 and seriously denting the
nation’s faith in high-speed rail. When government censors order
mainstream news to drop their coverage, the outrage finds a
new home on Weibo (China’s version of Twitter) and forces
tough responses from politicians. Social Relevance: Has China’s
powerful censorship machine met its match? Viral amateur
online video of the doomed train and probing Weibo posts force
officials into a rare, candid response of China’s rail safety record