Back in February of 2020, I wrote a post about a crisis management plan for social media (A Social Media Strategic Plan for Crisis. An Outline for Bed and Breakfasts and Other Businesses) I had written it a few years back for a business client and yesterday did a workshop on Reputation Management and was going to share the checklist I had made up.
In reviewing it, a LOT has changed in just four years (Yikes!), so I updated it with some new information, and wanted to put the new version out there so if it’s useful to anyone, I hope it is of help.
My feeling is that with all the shoot first and ask questions later (i.e. “your business did this” and it’s a hot button for people, but that may not be actually the real story) that goes on in social media and online reviews and discussion, it’s better to be prepared in case something does happen, with the hope it never does, then try to scramble to regroup after the fact.
Please keep in mind the reference links to Facebook and other social links change every few years, but they are up to date as of now. In the future, if a link has moved, it’s best to go into every platform’s help section and search for the topic and you will typically find an updated link.
The Chess Piece
The horse chess piece image speaks to me about this topic because the piece is probably, in my opinion, one of the strongest and can be used the most strategically, and it moves the most unconventionally compared to the other pieces. Many chess players consider it as a key piece in winning a game, but can also be one of the weakest. Because knights are bound by a fixed number of movements, they are particularly vulnerable to traps.
When dealing with an online social media crisis, a business can be the knight that saves itself or it can fall into the trap of handling things not the right way, making things worse OR getting complacent and thinking a crisis has passed and stops monitoring, or stops being prepared to deal with if is not “done”.
You can download the plan in (PDF) Social Media Strategic Plan for Crisis or MSWord Social Media Strategic Plan for Crisis or Google Docs (make a copy or download) Social Media Strategic Plan for Crisis. This is an outline and checklist to be changed, or tweaked as needed, and to customize it to your own business.
