How to Weather a Twitterstorm

I started my internship this week, and my employer shared this article by Abbey Klaassen with me from an April edition of Advertising Age. Please forgive me the age of the article, but I thought it was definitely worth sharing!

Sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube give new ways of amplifying and unifying the voices of critics, activists and even everyday people. This feature of social media can have advantages for brands when it magnifies praise, but it can also be incredibly detrimental when it amplifies criticism.

Amazon, when "thousands of its titles, many of them gay- and lesbian-themed, disappeared from its all-important sales-ranking system," and Domino's, when a video of its workers "defacing a yet-to-be delivered sandwich," are two examples of companies who recently suffered from magnified criticism in "Twitterstorm[s]."

Here are 6 steps for dealing with such online frenzies:

1. Listen to the what--and the who. Know who is doing the talking. Who is angry? How angry are they? How widespread is the problem?

2. It's OK to say, "We don't know." One PR pro reminded companies that "'[i]t's perfectly fine if you say, "We're aware there's an issue; we're not ignoring it, and we're working hard to get to the bottom of it."'"

3. Address the crowd where it's gathered. "Knowing someone is listening to you is often more important than getting exactly what you want," Klaassen said in her article.

4. Tone matters. "'People don't expect companies...to be infallible. They do expect those companies to want to learn, to want to engage with their customers, to want to listen hard, and to show genuine commitment to fixing the problems -- with the human voice they've become known for,'" one professional communicator pointed out in the article.

5. Explain how you'll address the future. Transparency is a must; own up to the problem, explain why it happened, explain measures in place to prevent another incident and apologize for the problem.

6. Invest now to prepare for accidents later. Have a plan.

Tips like these can help companies recover in the wake of viral crises like those of Amazon and Domino's.