2012 Social Media for Nonprofits Conference breakout session with Britt Farrar with CarMax and VCU

1. Crisis Communications &
Social Media
{ Britt Farrar, APR
Dec. 6, 2012

2. Uh-Oh!

3. Victim Accidental Preventable
• Natural disasters • Technical –error • Human error
• Workplace violence accidents • Organizational
• Rumors • Technical –error misdeed
• Product tampering product harm • Management
• Company’s operations misconduct
called into question
Types of Crisis

4. Social Care

5. • Influence
• How many followers?
• What else are do they
discuss?
• Engagement
• RTs?
• Responses?
What is a crisis for you?

6. Put social media policies in place:
• Employee guidance
• External procedures
Protect yourself.

7. • Who is listening for your organization?
• When are they listening?
• What tools are you using?
• What is night and weekend coverage practices?
Listen.

8. Monitoring tools

9. • Who can respond on behalf of your
organization?
• How nimble is your approval process?
• Do you already have an established presence
on the major social media platforms?
• What are the worse case scenarios?
• Do you have standby messages in place?
Have a plan before you need it.

10. • Put all the information in one place.
• Be sorry.
• Allow complaints.
• Take it offline.
• Follow the rule of three.
Participate.

11. • Build brand ambassadors in your
customers.
• Build relationships with industry
influencers.
• Arm your employees with
training and accurate information.
Strength in numbers.

12. • 11.2M website hits in one day • $250,000 donation from Mayor
after the Kansas game Bloomberg
• 7,500% increase in use of #vcu • Influencers rallied around the
on Twitter organization
Crisis can be opportunity.

13. Big Bird, Big Win

14. Questions?
{ Britt Farrar, APR