For the issue of crisis management, we followed the model of the same Cosenza, that identifies crisis on social media as “a problematic situation, arising on the net or either amplified by social media giving rise to negative coverage by traditional media and losses that can be either financial, or of credibility.
How does “Cosenza” Model works
To handle eventual crisis, according to the model introduced by Cosenza, it might be useful having some guidelines, that every employee must learn and know how to relate to everyday life. In the case of particularly sensitive situations, these guidelines will be followed in order to define the best action to be taken. For example, it is important to assess the degree of harmfulness of the content (is it an inference without foundation or the result of a mistake made by the company?), understand where it is developing (is it confined to a forum or is it coming from a blog?), know who is spreading it, (i.e. establishing the credibility of the speaker and his level of influence), understand how it is developing (the contagion has moved from one media to another) and how it is spreading (the speed of diffusion in terms of blogs that speak about it or comments appeared on social networks).
Extrema Ratio
In the most serious cases, it is essential to act as set out in the specific platform policy and remove the content damaging the corporate image, explaining the gesture to the community and appealing to what is required by public policy. When facing a coordinated attack, the closure of comments may be considered, explaining the reasons. If the criticism is legitimate, it would be necessary to activate a crisis procedure with a team previously created and decide how to respond, in the shortest possible time. In case the crisis originated from an excessive reaction of the community manager, the best way to dampen is to admit the mistake and apologize to the community.
Pietro Semeraro
Transl. by Margherita Basile
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