Proactive Social Media Risk Management – a Guide

SOCIAL MEDIA RISK MANAGEMENT
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29 JUNE
08:30 – 11:30AM

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The reactive scenario
As a consultant I often get called in once a social media crisis has already hit. My job is then to perform damage control, always chasing after the people who have been able to set the negative agenda – looking for ways to unite disparate internal voices into a strong external message. Most of the time the best we can achieve is an intermediate re-establishment of the status quo, a digging of ditches and battle-lines, waiting for the next skirmish in a long stalemate.

I wish it were mostly different, that companies would call when nothing pressing was happening – that they would ask for help creating a proactive social media risk management strategy.

The proactive social media risk management guide
In the name of some free help then, let me offer up a condensed guide:

1. Create a long-term social media strategy and secure top-level executive support for this strategy. If you are in charge of managing social media at your company, this is your most important task.Without a well-known and agreed upon strategy you will always be caught out and always stay in reactive mode. Chances are you will not stay in your job very long.
2. Make the social media strategy part of the company DNA. As long as social media is considered something your company does ‘after the fact’, you will always struggle once a social media crisis has hit.Social media communication planning must be part and parcel of every external-reaching company activity (and internal ones too).Making social media part of your companies DNA must be something you set out to do from the moment you are interviewed for the position. If you sense that there will be resistance to this approach, you must consider turning the job down.
3. Build a team and ways of working that will actually work. Based on your extensive experience as a communications professional you should know that you are only as good as the team you build and the process you put in place.A one-person team is not a team. Social media needs care and attention, which translates into a lot of groundwork, a lot of posting and strategic positioning. This can only happen if you are able to delegate tasks to a highly trained team. Everyone should know what is expected of them on a daily basis. You need to stay on top of the bigger picture.
4. Keep thinking strategically, not tactically. The minute you lose sight of the bigger picture you get lost in tactical battles. Every decision you make should refer back to you long-term social media strategy and support your long-term goals.When you get asked by senior management to account for what you have been up to, you can then always refer each campaign or each tweet or post back to what you agreed together – and you can show that building a social media position and brand is hard work that requires resources and diligent support.
5. Always keep an outside perspective. Many social media professionals get caught up in internal company speak and start pushing meaningless jargon out to an indifferent external audience.Your stakeholders don’t care about how well or how floridly you are able to describe what you do in your internal memos.Therefore: speak and act in ways that are immediate understandable to someone who doesn’t know anything about you.
6. Think image. It’s a cliché, but a very true one: a picture speaks a thousand words. If you are able to envision what the image and feel of the company’s social media brand should be, you should articulate that precisely and make sure everything you do adheres to it.The long-term effect is something much more powerful and effective than any amount of arguments you can think of.And stay proactive

If you want a good example of a proactive social media risk management strategy in action, take a close look at what Nestlé have achieved with their Digital Acceleration Lab.

Want to find out more about social media risk management? Make sure you sign up to the DSMLF meeting on 29th June and join your peers for a lively debate on the matter.

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