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causemedia’s blog on social media for social good.

Crisis Management: Surviving a Social Media Disaster

Submitted by tamrah on February 24, 2012 - 4:15pm
Sometimes your social media efforts can backfire. An errant tweet, neglected profile, ignored comment, or negatively received campaign, can all lead to ill feelings toward your organization. Just recently, nonprofit Susan G. Komen for the Cure faced a serious social media backlash after deciding to pull funding from Planned Parenthood (Komen reversed its decision as a result of the public backlash). Online conversations are hard to control – especially negative buzz. You can, however, control how you handle negative press about your nonprofit. Handling a crisis can be stressful, but proper planning and management will ensure that your organization (and your organization’s social media presence) lives on. Here are four tips for surviving a social media disaster.  
 
1. Turn to your social media crisis communications plan
Planning for the worst is the best way to ensure that you’re prepared. Every organization should have a crisis communication plan specifically for social media. This plan should cover who’s responsible for posting and responding to online comments on behalf of the organization during a crisis. All other staff members should be advised to avoid discussing crisis situations on their personal social profiles, as staff can sometimes become unofficial spokespeople for an organization.
 
2. Confront the issue head-on and right away (if there’s actually an issue)
Ignoring negative comments and deleting posts will only escalate the issue and make your organization look guilty. Respond quickly, directly, and publicly. If you made a mistake, be honest and admit it. Apologize and let your followers and the public know what you’re doing to correct the mistake. Don’t argue or participate in personal attacks – it will only further damage your organization’s reputation.  
 
3. Monitor real-time conversations about your organization
Regularly monitor real-time conversations so that you can quickly identify and resolve potential issues. Three useful tools to track user-generated content are Google Alerts, Social Mention, and Trackur.
 
4. Learn from your mistakes and move on
Mistakes happen. Once you've addressed the issue, apologized and learned from your mistakes, move on. Don't let a negative incident distract you from building advocacy for your cause. Remain an active participant in your social community and continue to build a loyal following.
 
Social media is a powerful communication tool – you can’t control what information is spread about your organization online. Surviving a social media disaster is possible, but will take time and a large amount of effort on your part. Has your organization experienced a social media disaster? How did you deal with it?

 

Are Your Social Media Efforts Working?

Submitted by tamrah on February 10, 2012 - 10:33am
Many for-profit and nonprofit organizations are blindly engaged in social media – unaware of whether their activities are actually helping meet their goals. There is no standard way to measure social media performance. However, not tracking your efforts can lead to wasted time and resources. So how do you determine if your organization is using its time and resources wisely?
 
First, define your objectives. What are your organization’s overall goals (non-financial and financial)? Your objectives should be specific. For example, does your organization want to generate campaign awareness? Raise money for your cause? Recruit volunteers? Sell tickets to an event? Your social media efforts must have purpose.
 
Once you’ve defined your objectives, identify what data you can use to measure your performance. Performance data should be actionable, relevant, and practical. How you define success may change along the way depending on your results. Here are some common ways to tell if your social media efforts are working.
  • Comments, shares, tweets/retweets
  • Influence and sentiment
  • Positive/negative mentions
  • Press mentions
  • Website traffic
  • Page views and bounce rates
  • Click-throughs
  • Email newsletter opt-ins
  • Volunteer registration
  • Donations
  • Subscribers, likes, followers, fans
Whatever data you decide to track, make sure you start small. Also, don’t waste time analyzing data that doesn’t measure your social media performance as it relates to your overall objectives. For example, if your goal is to sell tickets to your annual gala, the number of Twitter followers you’ve gained in the past week is irrelevant if none of these followers purchased a ticket.
 
As we all know, social media isn’t free – it requires time and resources to do well. If you’re like many nonprofits, you have limited resources and time to devote to social networking. That’s why it’s important to make sure that your efforts are working. If you’re not seeing results, don’t keep doing the same thing. Revise your strategy. Keep in mind that you may not see results right away.
 
How do you measure your organization’s social media efforts? Please share your methods below.