18 Take-Aways From 3 Great Social Media Crisis Plans: Boingo, the Red Cross and Fontaine Santé

You know what I love more than a good crisis? A great social media crisis plan! I love when brands take the right steps to protecting themselves, and I love to watch them come out of a crisis in record time and with even more loyal fans then they had going in! It’s a rare sight, but I’ve most definitely seen it on more than one occasion (and even helped to create a few, not to toot my own horn! ;) )

I’ve had a great time this week writing about some of the smartest brands out there and how they overcame their potentially disastrous social media crises with mind-blowing results.

This week, the smart brands I’ve elaborated on are Boingo, the Red Cross and Fontaine Santé, and in each case there were some clear-cut strategies and techniques that YOU can use to strengthen your own social media crisis plan.

Let’s close the week with 18 of the best take-aways from each of these brands and their successful social media crisis plans:

1. Keep up on your social media monitoring
2. Know the signs of a crisis, and be able to detect those red flags
3. Have a social media crisis phone-tree in place
4. Never forget your first response
5. Waste no time in taking necessary drastic measures
6. Internal communication is essential throughout a crisis
7. Address the situation head-on. No beating around the bush or making excuses
8. Show the humans behind the brand and humanize the situation
9. Know how to leverage the powerful help of your loyal and still-happy customers
10. Always act with your customers’ best interest in mind
11. Understand the power of a sincerely apology
12. Release a detailed official response
13. Answer questions with an FAQ
14. Always make it a two-way conversation
15. Thank your loyal fans for their support
16. When possible, turn the negative situation into a positive campaign
17. Never loose sight of your day-to-day message or brand values
18. Prove that you’ve learned your lesson

These take-aways are some of the most essential parts of a solid social media crisis plan, and being a fabulous reader of my blog, there’s not a single excuse why you shouldn’t be prepared, at the very least, with these 18 essential take-aways!

What I would love even more than watching any-old brand come out of a social media crisis with flying colors, is to watch YOU overcome a future social media attack even more quickly and with higher results than the fantastic examples we’ve seen here this week.

That said, let me leave you with this:

What are you doing to protect your brand from a social media crisis? How many of these 18 take-aways were you already prepared with (whether it be knowledge or plans), and how will you take action and implement the rest of them? Be sure to share your answers with me below!

photo by: Caro’s Lines