With many attractive attributes, such as vast reach and low costs, it’s not surprising that experts estimate that over 80% of marketers use social media (Whiting and Williams, 2013). However, not all corporate social media is successful and some activities can even be damaging as companies have very little control over messages once they are published (Aula, 2010; Xia, 2013).
Despite this, risks to reputation cannot be eliminated by abstaining from social media, as it is also a powerful tool for consumers and organisations alike to raise their concerns and campaign against practices they disagree with (Aula, 2010; Mills, 2012), such as the video below which Greenpeace created to encourage Lego not to renew their contract with Shell.
Greenpeace Youtube (2014)
Careful social media management is essential, not only for promoting brand reputation, but also for protecting it. So how can organisations ensure that they don’t fall foul of social media?
Chelliah and Field (2014) claim that these risks can be minimised simply by designing and implementing a corporate social media policy which covers a number of topics.
Who Publishes Content
While conversations about an organisation cannot be controlled, an organisation is still in control of the messages it communicates. However, once a message is out there it can be difficult to retract so it’s important that an organisation is sending out the right messages.
This leads to the key point made by Chelliah and Field (2014) that controlling who publishes content is an essential item to outline in a social media policy. Different types of social media channels may require different skills, have different purposes and therefore different messages (Chelliah and Field, 2014). Organisation’s need to ensure that the team controlling these channels are correctly trained and accountable (Chelliah and Field, 2014).
Failing to control access to publishing can result in some high profile mistakes, such as Chrysler’s tweet containing an expletive (Rigby, 2015).
Privacy and Confidentiality Policy
The Data Protection Act (1989) states that data relating to an individual, including both customers and staff, is kept safe and secure, so it’s imperative that information of this kind does not reach social media. Furthermore, there will be internal information in any organisation that may not be ready for the general public and it is important that publishers know what kind of information they can share and what should be avoided.
Style Guidelines
Trust is an important aspect of successful electronic commerce (Eastlick and Lotz, 2011), and can be developed through consistent branding of all touch points of an online presence (Chen and Dibb, 2010). Style encompasses multiple aspects including tone of voice, issues discussed and visible branding and guidelines for each of these should be outlined (Chelliah and Field, 2014).
Brand Promotion and Protection
To minimise risk of reputation damage it is important for an organisation to keep their reputation realistic (Aula, 2010). This requires managing expectations of customers, something that can be managed through policy guidelines regarding responding to and interacting with social media users (Aula, 2010; Chelliah and Field, 2014).
For example, research suggests that consumers respond more positively to organisations that meet criticism apologetically than defensively (Xia, 2013). This is the approach which Malaysia Airlines took to handling complaints that their tweet
“Want to go somewhere but don’t know where?” (Malaysia Airlines, 2014; cited in Smith, 2014)
was both inappropriate and insensitive in the light of the MH370 flight disappearance. This also raises the final issue to consider for social media policies.
Be Proactive and Aware
Not only is it important than organisations are seen to be proactive and responsive to topical issues to reduce risk of reputation damage (Aula, 2010) but monitoring internal and external environments and adjusting social media plans in real time can help to prevent innocuous messages being misinterpreted as inappropriate or insensitive (Zhang and Vos, 2014). This is definitely something that Malaysia Airlines may be able to implement in order to prevent such offense and reputation damage in the future.
For more guidance on creating a social media policy for your organisation read Zhang and Vos’ (2014) article on challenges of social media monitoring at http://bit.ly/1zfZTVV.
References
Act of Parliament (1989) Great Britain Parliament. The Data Protection Act 1998. London: HMSO
Aula, P. (2010) Social media, reputation risk and ambient publicity management, Strategy and Leadership, Vol. 38, No. 6, pp 43-49
Chelliah, J. and Field, J. (2014) Managing the risks of social media: Ways to ensure that online behaviour is always appropriate, Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 22, No. 5, pp 39-41
Chen, J. and Dibb, S. (2010) Consumer trust in the online retail context: Exploring the antecedents and consequences, Psychology and Marketing, Vol. 27, No. 4, pp 323-346
Greenpeace Youtube (2014) ‘LEGO: Everything is NOT awesome’ [Online] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhbliUq0_r4> [accessed 28th April 2015]
Mills, A. (2012) Virality in social media: the SPIN framework, Journal of Public Affairs, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp 162-169
Rigby, R. (2015) ‘What exactly constitutes a sackable offence?’ The Telegraph, 26th March 2015 [Online] <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11495113/What-exactly-constitutes-a-sackable-offence.html> [accessed 28th April 2015]
Smith, O. (2014) Malaysia Airlines asks fliers: ‘Want to go somewhere but don’t know where?’
Whiting, A. and Williams, D. (2013) Why people user social media: a uses and gratifications approach, Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp 362-369
Xia, L. (2013) Effects of companies’ responses to consumer criticism in social media, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Vol. 17, No. 4, pp 73-99
Zhang, B. and Vos. M. (2014) Social media monitoring: aims, methods, and challenges for international companies, Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 19, No. 4, pp 371-383