It starts with one snarky tweet, or maybe an angry post in the /r/rage subreddit. The next thing you know, your inbox is choked with Google alerts, your company is trending on Twitter (and not in a good way), Buzzfeed is snickering at you, your PR director is blowing up your phone, and your boss needs you in the conference room right now.

The Internet vigilante justice mob has gotten out its pitchforks and torches, and is out for blood…yours. So, what do you do now?

In Part I of this series, we looked at a few of the more spectacular social media fails in recent memory. Now, it’s time to talk about what happens when trouble turns up on your brand’s doorstep. With the viral nature of the socialverse, even small missteps have the potential to spiral up into a full-blown social media crisis. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t defuse the situation or better yet, turn it into an opportunity for engagement with your target audience.

When faced with a horde of noisy barbarians at the gate, it’s natural to go on the defensive; we instinctively want to put up walls and man the barricades. But when the social media snowball gets rolling and it’s aimed right in your direction, giving into a siege mentality can do significant harm. An overly defensive response – or worse, no reaction at all – can impart lasting negative perceptions of your brand, devaluing it in the long run. Is the company hiding something? Unwilling to admit when a mistake has been made? An irresponsible corporate citizen that can’t be bothered with public opinion?

The U.S. Air Force aims high with its Web Posting Response Assessment strategy

By being proactive rather than reactive, you both short-circuit the crisis cycle and turn it into an opportunity to forge a deeper connection with your intended audience. How? With a carefully considered strategic crisis management plan developed in advance. Hammering out a well-crafted blueprint for dealing with social crisis situations ahead of time, and keeping that plan in your back pocket until it’s really needed is a wiser move than coming up with something on the fly. This forward-looking preparation will help you get out in front of things and better weather the coming storm. And who knows better about strategic planning than the U.S. Military?

The U.S. Air Force has a great tool in place for its personnel – a twelve-point plan, creatively named the “Air Force Web Posting Response Assessment”. It clearly defines a strategy for responding to and managing perceptions in the blogosphere, and even categorizes bloggers by type. Having this plan as a resource for its airmen and airwomen takes the guesswork out of the equation; when a problem arises, they can quickly and easily refer to this tool and then respond accordingly.

Your social media plan should encompass all elements typically found in crisis management plans: who will be on your crisis team, what resources you have available, when to put the plan into action, and how you will respond to a given situation. It should have a clearly outlined communications component that takes into account the fluid, real-time nature of the socialverse, as well as long-term plans for tracking and analyzing the impact of both the event and your brand’s response. While your social media crisis plan should be crafted to reflect your brand’s goals and values, Interprose uses the REACT method to help its own clients formulate tailored strategies closely aligning with their unique culture and principles:

R –  Recognize there’s a problem. Read, read, read what’s being posted about your brand on key social platforms. Research what’s being said about your company, your brand, and its personnel. Register for Google Alerts so you can see developments in real-time.

E –   Execute your social media crisis strategy, engage all of the appointed crisis team members, escalate the problem to the highest leadership levels in the company if needed, and expend the resources necessary to mitigate the problem.

A –  Analyze the situation, and act carefully and logically. Avoid the temptation to shoot from the lip. No knee-jerk reactions!

C –  Counter any developments with a strategic response. Capitalize on opportunities for meaningful dialog with your target audience, whether via email, a blog post, tweets, or timely Facebook updates.

T –  Trolls…don’t feed ‘em. Target your response to those who matter – thought leaders, key stakeholders, and your primary audience – and do so in a timely fashion.

By using a methodology like REACT, you should be able to create a social media crisis management plan that will help you, your company, or your brand cope effectively when disaster strikes. The socialverse can be a wild and wooly place but if you’re smart and more importantly, well prepared, it can also be a great communications platform. Establishing a social media crisis management plan before trouble comes calling will help your brand to not only survive, but also thrive.

Now, go forth and be social.

You’ve seen them on reddit, Slideshare, Twitter, and Facebook. You’ve probably rolled your eyes, laughed ruefully, and shook your head, wondering why, oh why, would anyone post something so stupid on (insert your favorite social platform here)? Didn’t they know what would happen? Didn’t they stop to think before they sent that tweet or posted that update? Didn’t they know any better?! Oh, the outrage!

It’s easy to point, laugh, and tsk your tongue when the crisis befalls someone else, but step back for just a moment…what would you do if it were you or your company in the crosshairs of the Internet vigilante justice mob? Would you be prepared for or able to deflect the slings and arrows of a rampaging social horde calling for your CEO’s head on a pike?

Things happen, social media fails happen. Frequently. Social is an ever-changing, ever-evolving maelstrom that can waylay even the most seasoned and intrepid social practitioner. You’d think by now, with social media slowly edging past that awkward, gangly teenager phase, companies and brands would have a clearer understanding of how this stuff works. There are 1.27 billion Facebook users, Instagram has more than 200 million users, at least 241 million users are tweeting their hearts out, and in March 2014 alone, some 115 million unique visitors visited 5.38 billion pages on reddit. At this point, businesses should “get” social media, right?

Wrong.

Social media failures remain a common, everyday occurrence. Who could forget Amy’s Baking Company’s epic tantrum, Justine Sacco’s Twitter misstep, or Self Magazine mocking a cancer survivor’s running tutu as “lame”? But for the purposes of this post, probably the greatest example of how what you don’t know about social can kill your brand, is the “#AskJPM” debacle.

JP Morgan declares defeat at the hands of the Internet vigilante justice mob

Just as a refresher: someone at JP Morgan (JPM) thought it would be a good idea to host a live Twitter Q&A with Vice Chairman, Jimmy Lee. The idea behind this was that he’d offer career advice to budding capitalists…a great idea on paper, but a recipe for disaster in the real world. The #AskJPM hashtag was immediately hijacked and the company was hectored by a tsunami of snarky tweets like “What’s it like working with Mexican drug cartels? Do they tip?”, “Do you have a secret jail in your offices so your executives get at least one chance to see the inside of one?”, and “Is it easier to purchase a congressional representative or a senator?” Eventually, JPM declared defeat at the hands of the Internet vigilante justice mob, canceling its Twitter chat, and crawling back to its boardroom, most likely whimpering the whole way.

So how did a good idea go so very wrong? While this is just speculation, it looks like a case of miscalculation on the part of JPM’s team. JPM appears to have seriously misjudged public sentiment, and went ahead with its Twitter chat despite not having an executable social media crisis management plan in place. The resulting backlash is every PR person’s nightmare scenario, and could have long-term implications for JPM’s overall brand value.

But it didn’t have to happen this way.

There will always be pitfalls and potholes on the road to social media glory, and you can’t possibly foresee or even plan for every potential scenario. Inevitably, you, your brand, or your client will experience some sort of challenge – or heaven forbid, a full-blown crisis – in the social arena. However, your level of preparedness for these unseen obstacles is what will determine whether the experience becomes a minor footnote in the annals of Internet history or the gold standard for what not to do in social media, ever.

In Part II, we’ll share some ideas about social media crisis planning and lay out a series of actionable steps – what we at Interprose like to call the REACT plan – that companies and brands can use to navigate their way through a social media crisis. Until then, stay social…but stay safe.

H/T to Natalia Rojas for her amazing “Faces of Facebook” app. Check it out!