Social media is a valuable part of a company’s marketing program – but it can sometimes take a turn we may not have anticipated 😳.
What happens when your brand finds itself in the midst of a crisis created by a social media post?
Well, first, you probably panic. 😱
Then, you might turn to your social media or PR team for help.
How can a company best manage a crisis created when a customer complaint goes viral?
My guest is Brooke Sellas, consultant, author, speaker and expert in digital customer care.
Show summary:
In this episode of PR Explored, host Michelle Garrett, host Michelle Garrett, a PR consultant, author, and writer, welcomes guest Brooke Sellas, founder of B Squared Media, to discuss the nuances of managing social media crises.
Brooke shares her expertise on how social media, often viewed merely as a content channel, should be utilized more effectively as a customer experience channel. Brooke emphasizes that the key to handling crises includes proactive listening, empathetic responses, and timely engagement with customers.
She introduces the CARE model (Conversation, Acquisition, Retention, Engagement) for social media management and stresses the importance of building a strong community before a crisis occurs.
They discuss various real-world examples, including crises at Chipotle, Kit, and Nike, and the long-term impacts of each.
Brooke also shares advice about team coordination, especially between social media and PR, and provides tips on how to keep responses authentic without sounding scripted.
The episode concludes with a Q&A session addressing common social media crisis scenarios.
00:00 Welcome and Guest Introduction
01:02 Brook Solis: Social Media Expertise
03:49 Defining a Social Media Crisis
07:08 Examples of Social Media Crises
10:43 Handling a Social Media Crisis
22:15 The Role of PR in Crisis Management
29:35 Balancing Brand Personality and Crisis Management
30:22 The Power of Emotional Content: Patagonia Case Study
32:16 Breaking Down Silos in Marketing and PR
34:22 The CARE Model for Social Media Crisis Management
46:19 Handling Layoffs and Sensitive Situations
51:07 The Importance of Authentic Conversations on Social Media
57:34 Final Thoughts and Future Trends
Show notes:
Brooke Sellas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brookebsellas/
Brooke’s website – B Squared Media: https://bsquared.media/
Full transcript:
Managing a Social Media Crisis_ How PR & Social Teams Can Work Together
Michelle: [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of PR Explored. Pr. Explored is the video podcast where we delve into trends and topics related to public relations. I’m your host, Michelle Garrett, a PR consultant, author and writer, and my guest today is the lovely Brook Sellas. Hello,
Brooke: Brooke. Hello. Hey y’all.
How’s it going? Yay.
Michelle: I’m so excited that you’re here today ’cause I love your work. I have followed you forever and, it’s just nice to have an opportunity to have this discussion and our worlds kind of collide a little bit.
yeah, I always love chatting with you. We’ve been online friends for a hundred years.
We need to try to figure out when our friendship started, because it, I feel like it’s literally been a hundred years.
Michelle: I think, right now. In internet time, it’s it’s like dog ears or what? I don’t know. Yes.
Internet time is like dog. Exactly. For every one [00:01:00] year it’s seven.
Michelle: But I am so delighted to have you here and, I know a lot about you and your work and, but I would love for you to spend a few minutes and just tell us everything that you’re up to, the latest and greatest, and I will share a couple of links while you’re talking so that people can follow you.
Yeah,
Michelle: please go ahead.
so again, I’m Brook Ellis. I founded B Squared Media. We’ll turn 14 next year, which is, I really still can’t believe it. And we are a social media agency, so we do social media management, we do paid media management, but our biggest service is what we call social media customer care. So this is where middle market to enteri, enterprise size brands.
Outsource to us, and we handle all of the conversations that are happening around their brand, their products, their stakeholders, through social media channels, with the goal of [00:02:00] either retaining customers who are unhappy or upset and gaining potential customers who are asking about our products or services.
Michelle: That is. that’s so important and I feel like it’s often overlooked. it
really is. Yeah, I think people are still looking at social media as a content channel, and it’s really a CX channel, a customer experience channel. So I think we need to stop focusing on content and start focusing more on conversations.
That’s my little soapbox moment. Hopefully the only one.
Michelle: I don’t know. I don’t know if we can say it too many times. I’m putting your site up here. I put your LinkedIn up here. Thank you. And I’ll put a link to the article that kind of sparked this idea for this talk today, so this discussion. Perfect. Yeah.
but yeah, just to set the stage a little bit, we are going to be, talking about what happens when a company finds itself [00:03:00] in the midst of a crisis created by a social media post. It could be a customer complaint that goes viral, for example. Brooke may share a couple other examples as we talk here.
but yeah, please feel free. To, share to, ask questions and we will do our best to answer those. I’m sure Brooke would love to take questions. I know, I always love that.
Yeah. Happy to take questions. Fire away.
Michelle: So here, so posting this article and then I will. Actually get started here, with the questions.
What is a social media crisis?
let’s just set the stage a little bit. So I, just described what, a potential social media crisis could, how it could start maybe. But let’s just get, make sure everyone’s on the same page. How would you define a social media crisis?
Ultimately, this is when a brand loses control of the public narrative.
Brooke: [00:04:00] So what we see happening when a crisis starts unfolding, it may not be a full-blown crisis yet, but negatives. Sentiment starts to rise. A negative sentiment just means the chatter that’s happening, the conversations that we just talked about are skewing negative. And the reason why a crisis happens is because one negative thing pops up and then all of a sudden people start blobbing on and it starts spreading faster and faster.
And usually what we see happen is the brand can’t respond. They either get analysis paralysis, they’re not sure what to say, so they let it up, sit out there. Fester a little bit, or they are trying to respond, but it’s just gotten so out of hand because they didn’t handle it early enough that it, that again, it spreads like wildfire.
So it’s not usually one angry customer that creates that crises. Or that crisis, it’s when the conversation becomes visible. Because we all know social [00:05:00] media’s a spectator sport. So it becomes visible, it becomes viral, and ultimately what happened is people are starting to lose trust in the brand. So Michelle, you said it could be like a viral customer complaint.
It could accidentally also be an offensive post. Sometimes you’ll see. See a brand post something that seems like tone deaf or offensive to some of, the followers or users of that brand. It could also be like product defect videos. Like sometimes customers will actually create videos of products that aren’t doing what they say they’re gonna do, right?
So the brand promise is broken. It could also be employees behaving badly within the branch, right? So an employee might go rogue and post something that sends people into a spiral. So there’s a lot of different ways these crises, can happen. but ultimately it all boils down to. Trust, right?
We don’t trust the brand all of a sudden, all of a sudden because of something that happened.
Michelle: I always think of [00:06:00] social media as a blessing and a curse because, it’s, obviously it’s, no one can ignore it as part of their marketing, right? but it’s just, it’s so like fraught with, scary
spectator sport, stressful.
It’s a spectator sport, and unfortunately. The algorithms, literally the algorithms, thrive on negative negativity. This is a proven fact, right? Through research, the way the algorithms are set up, a lot of people will call it like rage bait. you’ll see a lot of rage bait types, posts, like things that.
They know that emotion gets us to stay as brands. We want those emotions to be good, but the algorithm literally lifts up bad emotion because they know that spreads a lot faster, wider, bigger, has more people getting involved. So we’re literally fighting against human nature, but we’re also fighting against the algorithms themselves when it comes to social media crises.[00:07:00]
Michelle: Yeah. Oh yeah. so I, liked, those, how you laid out those scenarios. Let’s talk about some examples, because I know, really daily,
several times a day. Yeah.
Michelle: So you have no lack of material for when you, speak or, write about, crises. These are just, I can’t get over it.
yeah. It’s, there’s a lot of examples out there. So like one, which I mentioned in the, post was, Chipotle. So if you didn’t see that whole crises, Chipotle had a TikTok fueled crisis because their customers were accusing them of shrinking the portion sizes and people were actually creating videos and sharing those own socials.
They were making duets with each other. There was even local store employees from Chipotle who started chiming in. this is obviously [00:08:00] classic crisis territory. It’s visible. It’s emotional. It’s emotional. And it was spreading, right? It was spreading very quickly. Kit is another example. it used to be Convert Kit.
Now it’s just called Kit. Yes, they increased their pricing and man, oh man, did people have some thoughts? And so I actually used this in a recent, speaking gig at, Marketing Shop Marketing Profs, B2B Forum. Shout out Ann. I was showing basically it, I wasn’t showing the crisis side of it, but I was showing how fast these things move.
And what was happening in those conversations is not only were people complaining about these, price hikes But their competitors, so like float desk and beehive we’re coming in and globing on and saying oh, hey, you need a free or a cheaper option. We are here to help. so a crisis doesn’t just.
Affect your customers. It affects customers who are thinking [00:09:00] in that consideration mode of buying from your brand, and it gives your competitors an opportunity to grab that friction or that potential churn moment and convert your customer away from you. Yikes,
Michelle: that I do remember that one because I saw, I just saw a lot about it probably ’cause of the people that I.
I follow, but man,
we follow a lot of marketers. So we saw a lot of, we saw a lot of stuff being said, but listen, kit, if you’re listening, I love you, you should call me. But the way they handled it wasn’t very good because even though it looked like they were responding, it was very much copying and pasting and regurgitating.
this is what it is. They weren’t actually listening, they were just responding. They weren’t. Trying to solve for a solution for a lot of these lower tier, free level, and lowest tier customers. So I bet they lost some market share over that.
Michelle: Yeah. I think so. I know we’ll probably talk more about this, but the listening, yeah.
[00:10:00] instead of just, I just feel like there’s a lot of times just kind of social media posting at, but not with, thinking about
yeah. Yeah, it’s a lot of posting to, it’s in any relationship, it’s a lot of talking to talk and not talking to listen.
Michelle: Yeah.
yes.
Michelle: Yeah. Yeah. That can be, that can get you in trouble really quickly.
let’s see. sometimes I, we, I wanna talk about how PR plays into this too, and we will talk about that.
What’s the first thing a company should do if it finds itself in the midst of a social media crisis?
But, so this next question, let me make sure I have it here. yeah, what’s the first thing? A company should do, if it finds itself in one of these situations, because I know sometimes I get these panicked calls, from a local business or something and be like, oh my gosh, somebody posted about us and now everybody’s, like jumping on, like you said, they glom on and then yeah, [00:11:00] the, people panic ’cause they’re just a small business in many cases that, that, they’re just looking for somebody to help ’em, figure it out.
And I’m like, wow. yeah. It’s,
It’s a lot. It’s a lot. I think, let me hold my, hold everybody’s hand when I say this ’cause it’s gonna come across as mean. And I don’t mean it to sound mean, but this is just like tough love, we’ll call it.
the first step is to get outta your head and get outta your own way.
and don’t be the ostrich with the head in the sand and get into those comments. You cannot fix what you’re not listening to, what you’re not watching, and what you’re not responding to. So pause for a moment, assess, and then do not panic. Do not post a novel. Don’t be like. Kit, sorry, again, kit, posting this novel about why the price change and why it’s good and blah, blah, blah, and definitely don’t go dark, do, this is not [00:12:00] the time to go silent.
So I want you to, when you pause, look at what’s happening. Look at who is affected, and this means literally affected, so in the kit scenario, it’s the, it’s their current customers, but it was also potential customers and. We gotta look at the level of competitors coming in and offering, basically what the solution that Kit’s customers were complaining about.
And then you need to look at how fast is this spreading? So what happened? Who’s affected? And how fast? how fast is it? Spreading for kit. In this scenario, it was spreading really quickly. So then once you understand, you can wrap your talents around what’s happening, then you need to acknowledge it publicly and privately.
So publicly, yes, put out your statement, make sure you’re responding to those angry customers, but try to move some of that conversation into private dms or offline, into email or whatever phone. I think the biggest [00:13:00] thing though is silence is gasoline. On this fire you cannot afford to be quiet.
This is how you will most certainly lose market share.
Michelle: Yeah,
and if you can just give a quick. Human empathetic response that is pouring some water onto that fire. It really will start to quell things again because it’s a spectator sport. So when you start responding to that first person, that second person, that third person, everyone else who’s watching, see that you’re starting to address the issue.
Michelle: And don’t you think that this is where your followers and your, community can come into play too? Because I know, the, one of the ones that I always talk about is the Jenny’s ice cream, which is, yeah, Jenny’s is local in Columbus where I live, and it’s very popular. Of course, now it’s nationwide.
But yeah, their fans, their followers, they had a listeria, situation. Outbreak. I don’t know what the right word would be, but, but yeah, [00:14:00] so they had quite a few, issues with that, but they were able to ride that out. And I think a lot of it was due to the fact that people were so loyal and supportive.
Their community, their fans were just really on board with them. And of course, that wasn’t a crisis, that it was a little bit of a different type of crisis.
Yeah. Yeah. I’ve been doing this for 14 years now on social, and I can tell you that nine times out of 10, I really mean this. Nine times out of 10 people just wanna feel heard.
The minute you address with, we, we use a formula called a cubed when we are trying to al align, talk to someone with, empath with an empathetic response. Acknowledge, I’m acknowledging your frustration, Michelle. I’m so sorry. I’d be frustrated too, right? Like immediately you go from a level 10 to okay, I am level five now, because they’re saying like, I’d be frustrated too.
So you acknowledge, then you [00:15:00] align, right? So I’m gonna align with you and say here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m going to try to do X, Y, Z. And then that final step is to make sure that you follow up. If I say to Michelle, I would be frustrated too. Here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna take a look at your account and come back to you to see if there’s any sort of additional discount we could give.
I’m pretending like I’m in a kit situation. I’ll get back to you by the end of the day, and then I need to make sure that I come back by the end of the day, like I said, I would and follow up, even if the answer is, look, I talk to the powers that be, and there’s nothing that we can do right. Nine times outta 10, Michelle is going to stop posting the vitriol on social because I’ve done these things.
So it’s just communication 1 0 1, really.
Michelle: But I think when it goes to, it scales up, it like, it’s not just one person. Now it’s it’s a lot of people. So like I [00:16:00] feel like that’s when sometimes when you do have people that are loyal to the brand, they can even help you like a little bit, they can defend you, they’ll too, and come to your, aid, come to your side when you need them the most.
And that’s. that’s another discussion, but that’s a reason to really focus on, building your fans, followers, or community. That’s, I think that’s really important. So
yeah, that community and those advocates will jump in. They’re the, they’re, actually really quick to jump in and defend the brand.
But if you haven’t done the work inside of your community by talking to them through social right before the crisis happens. Yeah, they’re not gonna be there to help defend you building that community is really like building a moat around your brand when the, this, these crises happen.
Michelle: Yeah.
Build your community before you need it. I’m putting that in. it’s true. Type little tips and takeaways over here for people. and [00:17:00] people, please, if anyone has questions, please do ask. someone says interesting discussion. Thank you.
Brooke: Thank you.
Should you delay your response to a crisis because it will “blow over” in a day or two?
Michelle: so you were talking about timing. and I have seen, at least in the PR realm that there’s been advice more the last, probably the last couple years that goes something like.
People are gonna forget this tomorrow, so we shouldn’t do anything. We’re just gonna kinda wait it out. ’cause I’ve seen that happen. and I, as far as when, okay, so say you’re working with a company, there’s something going on, the broadcast, the news folks get in touch and they wanna talk to the client, the company.
Yeah. sometimes the company wants to hide and wants to wait it out and they feel like, yeah, by tomorrow there’ll be something else taking the headlines and we won’t need to do anything. What do you think about that?
I disagree. For social media specifically, I think that advice [00:18:00] is dangerous. yes, attention spans are short and yes, we have something to be angry about every other minute, so that could be the case.
But attention spans are short. like you’re saying, y yes, they’re short, but screenshots last forever. And. As I mentioned earlier, the algorithms are amplifying anger. That is literally how they are built. So ignoring a complaint on social doesn’t make it disappear. It usually makes it go viral faster, right?
So other points that I would think about here is on social, we’re playing a very different ballgame. Customers on social media expect a response within minutes, not days, and not even hours, right? I think the most recent research says an hour or less. Is really where response times sit for social media.
So if you’re even waiting hours that you might be then Signaling indifference.
Brooke: With
that conversation or that customer and indifference [00:19:00] as we know. Again, just think about human relationships. ’cause that’s all this is people, I promise you it’s not hard. if we have indifference with each other in our real lives as humans, that destroys trust faster than, the negative conversation or the comment.
So I wouldn’t want to seem indifferent if I were the brand and, this is my opinion, doing what we do, social care and, addressing these conversations, the good, the bad, and the ugly on social.
If this is not optional any longer, this is public customer service. It’s also how we literally, like I was saying earlier, gain and retain customers.
When I’m talking about gaining and retaining customers, I’m literally talking about revenue dollars. That the company gets to keep or gain because they’ve just managed these communications in an effective way.
Michelle: I think a couple things from the PR side of things is that the, [00:20:00] these can do a lot of damage to the brand and, it is financial, as well as just, trust and just goodwill or whatever you wanna call it.
To wait it out. See, to me, this advice, I started seeing this, I don’t know. I, like I said, probably a couple years ago, and I see I’ve seen it more, often now because we do see, like the headlines, the mo the news moves so fast now. Yeah. Breaking news 24 7. it’s not like it used to be where, you would, a story would have legs for days and weeks, sometimes they do.
But often it’s just like with celebrities, it’s this guy did this today, but tomorrow. Person will do this. it’s, I feel like it’s really I see the, sentiment, I understand what they’re getting at there, but also I don’t feel like it’s probably the best. I thought that was cringey advice when I heard it.
I was like, what? They’re
gonna, they’re de too,
I just think social’s a [00:21:00] different ball game. It moves quickly and this is where your customers are shopping, they’re researching new brands. You wanna be. Fast and quick on the good stuff and the bad stuff, and I say good stuff too, because that’s the whole acquisition piece where they’re usually asking that question to several brands.
And this is report, this is researched by Jay Bear, his report called Time to Win. What he looked at was the brands who respond first to those inquiries typically win the business, even if they’re more expensive. Because you were the fastest and the most helpful, the fastest. So I think speed is something on social that really.
Is a thing. Unfortunately, I also see Rachel’s asking, what’s the third? A and a cubed? It’s acknowledge, align, and assure. Okay. The assure part is if I told Michelle Hey, I’m gonna get to you by the end of the day, I’m going to assure her, I’m going to start rebuilding that trust. By coming in before the end of the day and saying, Hey, [00:22:00] here’s where I am, or here’s the solution, or I tried to get you a discount, but unfortunately I couldn’t.
Yeah. Whatever that assurance is within the timeframe we gave, we need to make sure we follow up.
Crisis planning is a must – social media and PR teams both play a role
Michelle: Okay, great. And so, back to this preparation, again, I’m speaking from the PR side, but on the, to prepare in advance, because a lot of times I feel like when I start to work with a client, I’ll ask ’em if they have any crisis management plan in place and most of them look at me like I’m bananas, right?
but right now, and I have a chapter on this in my book, it’s a crisis can befall your brand at any. Point. And it could be, anything, right?
literally anything. Yeah.
Michelle: Some businesses I think are more, it’s probably more likely if, like airlines, right? That’s a, and I know that’s one of the examples in your article too, that United Airlines, which is like a textbook like, [00:23:00] example.
But, But yeah, so the preparation, so like having a holding statement, having a plan that you update or refer to every once in a while, make sure it’s, current things like that. But what, how would you say, do you, does, do you think social and PR should work together on those things?
Because obviously I feel like social, Integral to what, PR folks are doing.
Brooke: So
yeah, 1000%. we work with a lot of PR teams with our clients and to, to me it’s like a relay team, right? What’s the relay race where you have the batons and you have to pass it to the next person is the running Anyways, that’s the way I look at PR and social.
It’s a relay team. PR sets that messaging framework. So Michelle, to your point, you have those baselines, those holding statements. Those policies, we help our clients also build troll policies, right? Because a lot of social media experts will tell you, oh, [00:24:00] just ban, block, delete, hide that comment. guess what?
In the real world, when you’re actually doing social customer care, you can’t do that because sometimes that troll is like one of your top paying clients who just happens to be going on a tirade. Yikes. You can’t block pan high, delete your top. Paying client because they’re going on a social media tirade.
troll policies are important and, so PR sets, the messaging helps build those frameworks, and then social executes those frameworks In real time based on what customers are actually saying. So again, this is where that listening part comes in. ’cause with the kit. Crisis. They weren’t really listening to what was being said.
They were just regurgitating the copy, the situation, the crisis. PR information that they were given and that wasn’t helpful. So you do have to respond based on what customers are saying. And then when PR and social [00:25:00] collaborate, what happens is you start to get, we way more clarity, way more consistency.
it sounds more human instead of just like damage control. Happening.
Michelle: Yeah. Because those implications, for, obviously both the social and PR teams, but the company, overall too, and I mean I, call on legal too in a situation that is a crisis.
we have to get things approved by legal, and I’ll say this.
I hope you have a great legal team because the legal, gives us like, here’s what we have to say, but we get the buy-in from legal to. Not copy and paste that verbatim, but to say it in the way that we need to follow for legal. But still makes it human and empathetic and personalized to that particular person’s situation.
That’s, everybody talks about hyper-personalization. That’s what hyper-personalization is. It’s [00:26:00] looking at Michelle coming to me with her issue and looking at her situation literally by itself. Not in, let me follow policy, but Here’s Michelle’s situation. How can I say the right thing that’s legal and polished and whatever, but still address her specific frustration or situation?
Michelle: Yeah, because I think just, I’m speaking now from a customer perspective, but it’s very frustrating when you lodge a complaint and then, hopefully it’s a valid complaint with a company and they do just treat you like. it’s just like a blanket, I hope. Okay. And they send you the cut and paste response because I did customer service when I was in college and I like, so I know how that works.
Like standard response number 10 or whatever, yeah, it’s, that makes you angry. That’ll, just. Fan the Flames.
Customers noticed that. Yeah. And we have, we in our early days, got called out a few times on the whole copy and pasting thing. They’re like, is this a bot? Is are you even [00:27:00] real? And now think about that being years ago now.
Today people would really assume that was a bot or ai. So I think. Personalization is, I’m glad you brought it up. It’s such a key part of what we’re talking about. You really have to align, do the a cubed with the person and their situation specifically, not the event, but this specific Michelle’s frustration and issue.
Michelle: Yeah. Yeah. And, I was gonna say, a lot of people are using, using bots, nasa,
Brooke: oh boy. Making it different. Whole other conversation. We’re gonna need a lot more time for that one.
Michelle: Oh man. Oh golly. Is there any, realm of our work where it isn’t. Isn’t a thing, but let’s, let’s answer Rachel’s question.
Yeah. Because I think this is a timely question of course. So I’ll read it. But, can you address the cheeky responses that companies are now making in response to social [00:28:00] crises? Hollister, like Coldplay astronomer. Is that a good approach?
I love it. I love when brands have a personality, but I also think you have to know, it’s like we were saying, it’s very situational, right?
We don’t wanna be cheeky and funny if Michelle’s coming to us with an issue, right? We wanna take her seriously. But I do think having that personality in your content, leading up to the, so that’s what I was saying earlier about building the community before the crisis happens. When you have that kind of personality with your community and you’re cheeky, you’re fun, you are answering their questions that aren’t, bad or, negative sentiment with like fun, cheeky answers or cute little emojis, like a smile or a wink or a whatever, right?
Whatever the brand guidelines call for. I think that’s good because. We’re humans. We, bond with each other based on emotions. I did my undergraduate thesis on this, and basically what it says was, [00:29:00] there’s four levels of self-disclosure, cliches, facts, opinions, feelings. As you can imagine, we don’t really build trust or feel close to someone.
If all we do is talking cliches and facts. If you look at most branded content on social, it’s mostly cliches and facts. The brands that have the big communities that are willing to go to bat for them when a crisis happens, right? The ones who are stepping in are doing so because the brand with their content, not the crisis stuff, but just with their everyday content on social.
Talk a lot about opinions and feelings, both sharing that as the brand and then asking for customer’s opinions and feelings. It all happens in the emotions. So I think again, totally fine to have that personality and to work on those opinions and feelings. Sharing your own as the brand, getting your customer’s opinions and feelings, but then in crisis mode and situationally [00:30:00] knowing when to hold back on being cheeky or funny.
Michelle: Yeah. Yeah. No, I, and I think it is a, it takes a lot of skill to be, clever and like some of these social media managers or teams are, are just, it’s, they’re, they’re, I think it’s, it makes it fun. people, they get a lot of attention and some of them, the standout ones really. Are great at what they do.
Yeah, look at Patagonia. If you wanna see a brand that’s still very professional, but uses a lot of emotion, feeling opinions in their content, look at the brand Patagonia. So it’s not like a Wendy’s, it’s not being snarky and cheeky and all of that, but they use a ton of really, good. it’s a case study for any brand, opinion and feeling type content.
It literally just helps. Them get closer to their buying audience, not their audience, but the people who actually will buy from their brand.
Michelle: Yeah. So they know their [00:31:00] audience really well, and I always, they
do. They really do.
Michelle: Was that the one that had, there was a commercial that was so great.
Maybe it was them, I don’t know. Maybe it was REI. There’s, some somebody that I, in that space that I thought, it. That did a really great job and I said it to my friend who like climbs is a rock climber and like a runner and like it really resonated.
Brooke: That might have an
REI that you’re talking about with that.
A mountain commercial. Yeah. Yeah. No, Patagonia just knows that there are, people are outdoorsy. They know that they’re, they are support climate change that they wanna help with climate change. And so they post a lot of opinions and feelings about the environment, the earth nature. They get people super involved.
They hit in that emotional spot and then you can see what happens with their market share and stock prices and company prices and all that kind of stuff. Like they’ve just continuously done a very good job hitting that emotional note on social.
Michelle: Yes, and it’s like I said, it’s really, it takes a lot of [00:32:00] skill and then, it’s, I just don’t think social media’s for the faint of heart, and me PR really isn’t either.
But, but yeah, you have to always be, on, you have to be paying attention and that’s hard to live your life on online all the time. So it’s, so let’s talk about, we talked about how, about how PR and social can work together. and I do, I just feel like in general there just needs to be more of a connection and not so many silos across the board.
Not only when it comes to a crisis, but just in general. I feel Social can amplify earned media on the P for pr and like we can take into account what social’s doing. And a lot of times I feel like sometimes those, Teams are not talking to each other
Brooke: Yeah. As much
Michelle: as they could be. So I would just encourage, more of that because Yeah, we don’t wanna be in a little silo.
Brooke: No, and I think that is the problem that marketers are facing is, marketing’s over here [00:33:00] and social might be over here, and customer experiences over here, and products over here, and sales is over here. It’s not helping us. I think this is why we’re facing some, marketing crises ourselves because everything’s so disjointed and everything’s operating in a silo.
If we all just come together and focus on the customer, I think we’d all survive these hard times a lot better, and when it’s not hard times. grow exponentially.
Michelle: Yeah. I love that point too, because for pr no, sales is really important too. And customer service. ’cause they are, they’re hearing from actual customers.
They know immediately. Yeah. What are the issues And then sales know about, which customers are happy and what are, which new customers would make a great case study or a good, reference for media or whatever. So I just feel like again, Every, everybody, and I understand like everybody’s got their head down, everybody’s overwhelmed and it’s hard to do this, but I just feel like, yeah, we could [00:34:00] be a lot more effective if we were all kinda, working, having together regular check-ins.
Yeah. Somehow,
I dunno. Yeah. I’m with you. that’s my big goal is to just get more of these teams working together with voice of customer data as the, guiding light, I’ll call it.
The CARE Model for Managing a Social Media Crisis
Michelle: Yeah. I’m going to ask you to talk a little bit about, the care model for managing a social media crisis.
Yeah, so we have this framework and this is the framework that we use with all of our customer care clients. So our social media, customer care clients, and care stands for conversation, acquisition, retention, and engagement. so when we’re talking specifically about a social media crisis, all four show up, right?
Conversations are happening, they’re not good. We’ve got acquisition. Probably not happening as [00:35:00] much, but we’ve got a lot of retention happening. Retention means conversations where retention is at stake. This is where we start to see those friction moments with customers or those potential churn moments with customers.
and then engagement just means. Obviously in these crises, which we’ve mentioned, you’ve gotta engage with these people to try to mitigate what’s happening. So all four show up, but the most important one is the R in care, which is retention. Because a crisis is ultimately a trust problem. We look really closely at those retention conversations, and then the intent.
Signals within those conversations. So we’re asking ourselves questions like, where are our customers expressing friction? was it a checkout issue? Was it a pricing issue? Did the product not work as promised? Right now we’re going into brand promise being broken, right? Another trust issue. Then we’re [00:36:00] looking at who’s.
At risk of churning, who is that customer? Is it a first time customer? That’s not good. Is it a long time customer? That’s really not good. We don’t wanna lose any of our customers, but understanding who the customer is and the customer lifetime value for that person really can light a fire under people.
As far, like I was giving you that celebrity rant, that this is a real story, by the way. It was a celebrity. Who was a top customer of one of our clients who was on an absolute tirade on social, we are not banning, blocking, hiding. This person, number one, they were a celebrity, right? They have massive influence.
We can’t just be like, oh, delete. So we had to fix it and we had to. Everything we could to fix it quickly, because again, just the influence they had, but also the money that they spent as a customer. So who’s at risk of churning and then what are the themes that are driving negative sentiment? And this goes more into, if it’s not just [00:37:00] Michelle complaining, but people have glbb on like the kit, situation, and many people are, complaining.
What are the themes driving negative sentiment for kit? It was pricing. They were really hurting the free level and the lowest level tiered customers, and they basically were like, there’s nothing we can do. So sorry. Too bad. So sad. Hopefully you can find a solution that isn’t too bad, so sad, but during a crisis that r and care, that retention piece becomes like a neon warning sign for the brand because the crisis really isn’t about that volume, of conversation, which a lot of brands can get stuck in.
oh, there’s this many people complaining. It’s less about the volume and more. About loyalty risk, especially when we’re talking about Michelle or the customer who’s a celebrity or whomever it is, complaining and then [00:38:00] amplifying that through social channels. So if your retention signals are tanking, the R and Care, you don’t really actually have a PR issue, you’re gonna have a revenue issue.
I think this is exactly what happened to Kit. I would be so curious to know how much revenue they lost during that whole. Crisis, how many people churned? and, my, final thought here on the R and the care framework is. If you use social listening, not just many brands are doing listening and responding in a very reactive way.
They’re waiting for people to come to them, right? They’re waiting for people to come to them and complain or post a comment on a piece of their content, complain. They’re not looking outside of what’s being said to them. About what’s being said about them, right? People are talking about brands all the time, but they’re not necessarily tagging the brand, mentioning the brand on social, right?
So social [00:39:00] listening, combining social listening, which helps you be proactive and find all of those conversations when people haven’t mentioned or tagged your brand. With this kind of real time engagement that we’re talking about, that’s how care really helps. You understand and wrap your, hands around the crisis and, Do does such, does that in such a way that you can help impact loyalty, like keeping people, retaining people, not just, okay. We answered every single negative complaint that came through. I hope that makes sense.
Michelle: Yeah, no, I think it does. and I, will, back to the kit thing. Kit, I’m always curious, what is the, how does it shake out, like down the road, like ano, like month to three out.
Six months out. Like how does it, what does it really do? Yeah. And I sometimes, I’ve looked at that for things, but, as far as crisis [00:40:00] management goes, ’cause it can have long term impacts, but I’m just always curious like if that’s, how that’s working out for them,
yeah, I wrote about this in my book, but I don’t know if you remember when Nike partnered with Colin Kaepernick.
To do a campaign for Nike. Yes. And Colin Kaepernick, if, you don’t remember, was the one who would, kneel during the anthem. He was basically protesting the treatment of African American players within the NFL. So Nike, it was a risky move. They partnered with Colin Kaepernick to do this campaign and what we saw on social.
Was people burning their Nike gear. People saying they were never going to, buy from Nike again because they couldn’t believe that they, the brand would align themselves with Colin Kaepernick and all these things. But what happened in reality is their stock took a tiny dip in the beginning and then shot up like over 20%.
You know why? Because. Just like Patagonia, they know [00:41:00] who their audience is. They know who their buying audience is. So the people who they know buy from them most often were really aligned with that messaging and what they were saying in that campaign, and bought more from Nike in the long run. So I think.
You can make risky moves like that as long as you know your audience inside and out, because they created their own crisis. But on the other side of that was a huge increase in revenue.
Michelle: Yeah. I feel like sometimes it’s not about you can’t please everyone, You, really have to decide, and probably should be leading into, like who is your buyer?
So
yeah, Knowing your audience is one thing. Knowing your buying audience is a very different thing, and I think Patagonia and Nike and some of these brands that we, look at as like the, [00:42:00] premier examples know their audience, but they also really know who they’re buying audience is so they can take these risks and still come out ahead.
Michelle: Yeah. I agree that, we sometimes, and it’s overwhelming again in the moment, so if you haven’t thought through it, and a smaller business probably hasn’t always, for a big business like a Nike or a tote or whatever, they, probably have all kinds of, plans and resources.
They have more resources.
They, yeah, they do. But anybody can do this. I’m telling you, you could be a small brand and you can still get to know your audience and your buying audience really, well. Especially, and it won’t cost you the resources that like a Nike or a Chipotle have. with the tools we have now and with ai, oh my gosh, there’s, almost no excuse.
Michelle: I just, I think a lot of companies just don’t think it’s gonna happen to them. [00:43:00] that’s my experience is they just don’t, they’re not really, they think, but see now there’s just so many ways that you can get tripped up and it’s, not even you, it might not even be something that you do, it might not be your fault.
there are situations where it’s just a misunderstanding or whatever, and then it can just blow up really quickly. So I feel this is. This is a part of what they need to be doing to plan and prepare and, in the event that something, does happen. and like I said, there’s just so many situations.
that would, I’m sure that I’ve talked about that on an episode with a guest in the past, but it could be every week we could be talking about, crises and. Slipups. in this
day and age, literally you are, you should have no lack of content for crises happening ev all everywhere, but even on social media, it’s, really a daily occurrence, sadly.
Michelle: I know
[00:44:00] I was watching the Campbell soup, right before Thanksgiving. The, the comments from the Campbell Soup Executive Oh, from the rebrand. no, it was about, he was talking about how soup is for like poor people. Oh, what? I missed that one. It was right when everybody was making their green bean casserole with the Campbells, with the cream of mushroom soup from Campbells.
Oh, no,
I missed that one. Seeing
Michelle: it was a, it was a deposition that, went public somehow. I don’t, know the details of how it got out there, but then it was like the timing was just. again, like obviously you should not say those things ever in any, the mic is always odd. Like you, no, this
is what I’m saying.
Screenshots, audio clips, all this stuff that we have now that lasts forever. So the whole thought of it’ll go away tomorrow. Nuh, no it won’t, because that audio clip exists, or that video clip exists, or that screenshot exists. So they now have receipts and they [00:45:00] can use those receipts.
Michelle: As long as they want.
For executives, this is so much better to like, just think before. we try to prepare them, but sometimes they just, they’re not, they just, I don’t know. People don’t think before they, say it. Yeah. you don’t, there’s no way to control what you think, but you don’t have to say everything that
is in
Michelle: your head.
yeah. Agreed. Like silence is. Really bad on some things like we’ve been talking about, but it’s also really good in other ways. I think silence before a crisis. Crisis. Golden silence after, during a crisis. Not golden,
Michelle: but please don’t create a crisis. That doesn’t need by what you say. don’t, yeah, don’t, we don’t, you don’t need any, help in that area.
You just, there’s enough things that can go wrong without you creating a crisis of your own. So just, [00:46:00] I just, they say play and prepare. Think it through, just, like sometimes you’re gonna be maybe caught off guard, but you don’t again. You can pause for a minute and think about what you wanna say.
Just like posting, and again, with employees and there’s no way to control, what they’re doing. But like what, here’s a question. What about the, the layoffs that happen? You know that people find out about sometimes on social media or sometimes on a Zoom call there and then people will post that, those types of things.
How did what’s, what do you think about that?
Yeah, I don’t love it obviously as a business owner, right? That gives all of us. Thought and pause, but these things happen. we have to be honest with ourselves. We’re a lot of companies, my clients, many people who I’ve talked to throughout this year are in a hard spot this year.
It’s been a hard year for a lot of people, Layoffs are imminent. I was talking to two friends of mine yesterday at two [00:47:00] completely different companies, and they both told me at these. Different companies. One’s a media company, one’s a social media company that layoffs were coming. so you.
The, these are decisions that these business owners have made to help try to Right the ship at the business. The way they handle those layoffs is going to be critical because those employees will likely share, and how much they share is obviously up to them. But we’ve all seen the employees share the actual, like breaking up with you layoff zoom meetings.
Brooke: Which
I don’t agree with. That’s, it happens, there’s, it doesn’t matter if we agree with it or we don’t. We know that it can happen. So you need to make sure that your i’s are dotted, your t’s are crossed, things are tied up with the bow. You’ve spoken to legal, you’ve spoken to your PR or communications expert on your team.
If you don’t have those people, find someone like [00:48:00] Michelle or find a fractional or an outsourced person so that you have it all tied up so that anything that you say. In writing or in that meeting, verbally is the right thing. You’re saying it the right thing. And I think also, I’ve been through this situation myself, unfortunately, saying less is better.
The less you say, the better you stick to the script. Because
Brooke: yeah,
you can get yourself in trouble by even just trying to say look, I really love you Michelle, we don’t have the money. I can’t pay you Like it. You just have to stick to the script. You have to keep it.
Transactional, and I know that sounds terrible.
But because of the world we live in, we know that those things will be taken out of context, will be posted everywhere and can lead to bigger problems for a company who’s obviously already having problems if they’re having to lay people off.
Michelle: Yes.
Less is more. That is off. [00:49:00] Often the advice, I know that flies in the face of what we were talking about earlier, but like sometimes it’s really, yeah, stick to the script. It really is situational. Yeah.
Yeah. It’s all situational. We cannot blanket statement our way through these types of real issues. Like these are real s.
Grimy issues that business owners have to work through and everything is situational. And if we try to just Put a copy paste on all of it. We’re, we really are setting ourselves up for a crisis. Then
Michelle: back to the customization, back to the, we have to take, the situation, and consider the, actual people or person involved, in your response, before you, yeah, you just, I don’t know.
it’s, I don’t know. The advice is it. Again, it’s based on the situation. ’cause yeah, they can’t really express their [00:50:00] emotional side with a layoff. Yeah. Situation. But otherwise especi, you wanna
I know it’s hard. It’s hard. This is, I feel like this is what we should be taught in school sometimes other than like long division people are probably gonna get come for me for that one.
I just hate math, but I feel it’s easy as an employee, which I’ve been, and my many times more, I’ve been an employee more often in my life than I’ve been a business owner. But I never saw the other side. I couldn’t understand the other side like, why are you taking that away?
Or, why did you lay that person off? Or Why am I getting laid off?
There’s always a reason. It’s never without reason. Even if you’re the most amazing employee within the company, maybe you’re also the most expensive. And so it’s funny to see it from both sides now as a business owner and just how delicate that whole ecosystem and situation is.[00:51:00]
Final thoughts on managing a social media crisis
Michelle: Yeah. is there, what else? Is there anything else that you wanna talk about or share before we wrap up?
No, I think, Conversations on social, focusing less on content and more on having the conversations through social media with your audience, which is going to probably consist of your current customers and some of your Wouldbe customers, right?
They might become a customer, is key. If you can really start to focus on. It’s creating content that gets that conversation going, that’s centered around opinions and feelings, not cliches and facts, and build that community when, and if you get to a point where a crisis pops up, you will have built that moat.
Around your brand. You’ll have people who come in and help protect you in those situations, but you can’t get to that until you start having these [00:52:00] daily, and I know that sounds scary, but daily conversations, that’s what they’re there for. It’s called social media for a reason. This is social.
Cliche, but we forget about the social part. We’ve been using it as a distribution platform. distribute the content, distribute the con. we’re all in that content. None of us are focused on the conversations. If that’s the one change you make with social next year is focusing on conversations more than content, I think you’ll be.
Better positioned to have a crisis. Not that I want you to, but you will be better positioned if one comes along.
Michelle: I love that tip. and I think, obviously in B2B, I mean we’re, I’m focused on LinkedIn a lot for clients and I feel like that is advice that I’ve been trying to give to them too, is yes, you wanna post and share however.
The magic kind of happens in the conversations, right? com and commenting that’s, how to con the conversation, engage engagement, so somebody comments. Yeah. Yeah. You need to come back and, and obviously on, [00:53:00] most of the time on LinkedIn with, for my clients, it’s not a negative.
Crisis situation. It’s just a, it’s just, somebody saying something and then they, it’s a, it’s an opportunity for them to build a relationship and trust and, that’s how that works. So I think that’s a great tip.
Yeah, think of, can you think of care, conversations, acquisition, retention, engagement as like a hamburger conversations?
You gotta have those, right? We have to post conversational content to get those conversations happening. We can’t get to the acquisition and the retention understanding unless we’re having those conversations. But that other bun is engagement. Just like Michelle said, you can’t just be like, everybody come to me and have conversations.
You actually have to go out and engage, right? And have those conversations so that people come back over here, follow your brand, and join in on those conversations that you’re trying to get people to engage with. So it really is, yes, it’s like a, flywheel. But it also compounds on each other really.
Starting with [00:54:00] conversations, acquisition, retention, engagement. Is how it works. So that’s my second soapbox moment I think.
Michelle: Don’t use AI to comment, please. Oh my gosh.
Please, no, we can tell, help you figure out how you wanna say your words. ’cause sometimes I’m like, I can’t say this succinctly.
Help me and it’ll help me. But like the thought and the comment itself is mine.
Michelle: Yeah. And I think we’re missing out now on those authentic conversations and I can tell when people use AI to comment. it’s okay, they commented, that’s nice, but
it’s not good. But
Michelle: please don’t,
it’s really not good.
Yeah, it’s terrible. It’s really noticeable. I see. Rachel has one more questions. Oh, question. So less is more, sometimes less is more. But how should we keep it real on social without sounding scripted? Don’t script it. Don’t script it. yes, for your, what we call rules of [00:55:00] engagement. We have those scripts that are AP approved by legal, but we still.
Take those scripts. And personalize. So even if you have the script, I’m not saying that’s bad because we literally have thousands of scripts between all of our clients. But we are personalizing that script we’re on based on the situation and who the person is. So is Michelle a first time customer?
This is important. She just bought, she opened her wallet to us for the first time, so we have to be, think about that in our response. If Michelle’s been a customer for 10 years and has a customer lifetime value of a hundred thousand dollars. We’ve gotta figure out how to shape that script into a personalized response for her because the way I respond to first time customer, Michelle, and customer lifetime value of six figures, Michelle is going to be very different.
But I can still follow the legal script guidelines even though I’m [00:56:00] personalizing the other part of that response.
Michelle: No, I really like that because again, it’s like you don’t wanna just use canned responses and posts and things, but I think it’s good to have something, for people to work from.
’cause obviously not everybody has, is gonna have the experience or, know, exactly how to handle. and it’s important, to not expose yourself legally. you have to be careful with that too. Yeah, again, it’s very nerve wracking.
Yeah, it’s, nuance. It’s not hard, but it is very nuanced, right?
And digital body language is so important. Looking at the way the person, again, we’ll keep using, we’ll keep picking on Michelle, but if Michelle isn’t using exclamation points and emoji, I’m not gonna respond using exclamation points and emoji, right? I need to mirror the digital body language of Michelle.
Michelle: Yeah. No, that’s a good point too. Boy. There’s just a lot to it. So if you find someone who’s talented at this, [00:57:00] make sure you. Compensate them appropriately and keep them happy. Keep them, keep them on your team.
Brooke: Yes,
Or reach out to
me and I’m happy to help
you.
But, thanks so much for having me, Michelle.
I think this has been great. it’s a much needed conversation and I have a feeling we’re gonna be talking about these things more and more, honestly.
Michelle: Yes, and we’ll have to do this again because I think, it’s, really, I feel like there’s just not enough back and forth between social and pr, but I’m obviously, I’m very focused on it and, would love to build those bridges.
So I appreciate you spending time today, and I, you have such great advice. I hope everybody follows you. I put your site, I put your LinkedIn. I appreciate the questions today and, thank you so much for being here. Brooke, I really appreciate your time.
Brooke: Thanks.
Michelle: I’ll be back in two weeks for the last episode of the year with Bill Byrne.
We’ll be talking about 2026 PR trends and I hope to see everybody then. And I just wanna thank you so much. Have a good day. [00:58:00]
Brooke: Bye y’all.
About the host: Michelle Garrett is a B2B PR consultant, media relations consultant, and author of B2B PR That Gets Results, an Amazon Best Seller. She helps companies create content, earn media coverage, and position themselves as thought leaders in their industry. Michelle’s articles have been featured by Entrepreneur, Content Marketing Institute, Muck Rack, and Ragan’s PR Daily, among others. She’s a frequent speaker on public relations and content. Michelle has been repeatedly ranked among the top ten most influential PR professionals.
Learn more about Michelle’s freelance PR consulting services here. Book a no-obligation call to talk about your needs here. Buy Michelle’s book here.
