PREPARING AND DEALING WITH SOCIAL MEDIA NEGATIVITY AND ACTIVISM

JOEL TURNER – HEAD OF CONTENT STRATEGY

• Lead Blueclaw’s Development/Design & Online PR/Social Media teams

• Have worked in PR and Comms for nine years – the last five of which have had a strong digital dimension

• Co-owned a boutique Online PR and Social Media agency for three years

• Have worked on a range of communications projects and campaigns, including dealing with Crisis PR and Reputation Management.

SOCIAL MEDIA ACTIVISM

• At its best can bring about significant political and social change

• Social media has changed the ability of consumers to highlight poor corporate practice

• Self-publishing via social media and a liberal society lead to a plurality of opinions and viewpoints

• Important to separate principled opinion (Protest), self-interested agitation (Complaint), and planned and targeted communication (Campaign)

• Need to take into account social, political and consumer motivations

• PR earns its stripes and gains new skill badges.

THE RISE OF ‘SLACKTIVISM’

• ‘Slacktivism’: a trickle can quickly become a flood

• Activism can be as simple as a ‘Like’ or ‘Retweet’

• Opinion or cause may not be strongly supported

• Self-interest can be painted as consumer/social/political activism

• Hard to distinguish if some opinions or viewpoints are really widespread.

WHO ARE SOCIAL MEDIA ACTIVISTS

Complainer

• Feel frustrated at a lack of response via conventional channels

• Savvy enough to know that complaining on social media will gain attention.

Protester

• Strongly held political views brought to bear on brand

• Well-organised, but unlikely to have considerable mainstream support.

Campaigner

• Consumer-focused

• Interested in rectifying wrongs and helping others to do so.

PROTEST V COMPLAINT V CAMPAIGN

Protest: Link to petition with 190,000 signatures

Complaint: Concerns about customer service

Campaign: Helping others with a common customer service issue

COMPLAINT > CAMPAIGN

• Complaints can snowball into campaigns, particularly if they go unanswered, or are unsatisfactorily resolved

• The issue can easily be spotted by a Campaigner and latched upon

• Typically this role was assumed by consumer rights media outlets (e.g. Which?) but now anyone with a blog, social media accounts and a little time can be just as powerful.

Complaint

Campaign

PROTEST > CAMPAIGN

• Protests can turn into consumer activism Campaigns

• Consumers conflate issues and make ‘ethical’ purchasing decisions

• Recent examples include Nestle and Amazon boycotts.

Protest

Campaign

WHY WOULD THEY TARGET YOUR BRAND

• Trust in Energy sector among consumers is at 59% (Edelman Trustbarometer 2014), by comparison 70% have trust in the Technology sector, and 51% of respondents expressed trust in the Media and Banking sectors

• Ofgem said it found that 43% of customers did not trust energy companies to be clear and honest about prices

• Poor publicity:

• Energy prices and price collusion• Energy sources (e.g. Fracking and

Nuclear)• Scare stories regarding energy

security.

WHAT IS THE IMPACT?

• Reputational damage on social media

• Negative media publicity if activism is covered by mainstream media

• Negative search result listings can damage consumer perceptions of the brand

• Brands can fall into a spiral of negativity – every piece of communication is negatively portrayed.

PREPARING FOR A CRISIS

• Delineate who is dealing with different types of activism – Complaints/Protests/Campaigns at the earliest stages

• Consider the impact across channels

• Search – increase your search footprint, take up more real estate for key search terms. New site sections, new web properties, social media profiles etc

• Develop reactive responses – social media updates, press statements.

HOW TO SPOT ACTIVISTS

• Active monitoring (Brandwatch, Radian 6)

• Across social media• Across the internet at large• Keywords – not just brand, keep expanding.

• Cross-channel identification

• Something happening off-line could become a problem on social

• Keep an eye on reaction to company news and announcements

• Use CRM data from call centres.

• Track sentiment

• Imperfect, but can alert you to problems• Try to trace the source of negative

sentiment.

HOW TO INTERCEPT

• Research context and customer

• Fully understand the issue and context.

• Coordinate across teams

• Integrate media relations, social media and digital marketing functions – sharing intelligence via briefings.

• Prepare your response

• Can this be handled via engagement? Or do you need to pursue a different approach?

HOW TO ENGAGE

• Carefully consider when and how to engage

• Preparation is key – 15 minutes on Twitter and 60 minutes on Facebook

• While it seems counter-intuitive, it could pay to monitor the situation and do nothing

• Don’t start an argument, just deal with the facts at hand – armed with some strong collateral

• Don’t ‘counter-broadcast’

• Do seek to move the debate away from the channel if possible – is this the right forum? Will you be successful?

HOW DO WE SET THE AGENDA?

“If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.”

CONTENT AND DATA PLAY A ROLE• Payday and short-term loans sector has

been pilloried in recent years

• Media, government, charities and campaign groups have all attacked the sector

• Wonga leads the industry and has opted to be open about certain aspects of its business

• OpenWonga provides stats on customers and its business, as well as offering case studies and testimonials

• Questions of openness, honesty and a lack of responsiveness are often core issues for activists

• Creating a resource that goes some way to counteracting these perceptions.

CONTROL FEEDBACK

• First Direct Lab gives the brand an opportunity to control feedback on products and services

• Similar to feature requests and road maps for applications

• Comments are taken and then features are considered and implemented as appropriate

• Not been a huge success – but the concept is sound.

BRING FAQs TO LIFE

• ‘Ask & Answer’ resource developed by Thomas Cook to deal with customer Q&A

• Every new question adds to a searchable archive

• Produces a resource that is far more comprehensive than a regular FAQ section

• Reduces customer services load and creates a great ‘crawlable’ asset for search engines - also provides solid content ideas to improve services and marketing

• Internal search is always a great way of understanding customer frustrations – both on-site and in general terms.

BUILDING ADVOCATES

• Events: make individuals feel special via briefings, visits and other real-world activities

• No person is too insignificant: anyone can cause a real problem for your brand, don’t forget that

• Be entertaining and fun: how can we encourage consumers to positively experience the brand and understand the issues

• Content should not be one size or shape: think about how you can adapt your content to various audiences.

QUESTIONS

@joelturner joel.turner@blueclaw.co.uk