My presentation from the SMI Social Media in the Utilities Sector conference, which took place on April 3rd, 2014.

1. PREPARING AND DEALING WITH SOCIAL MEDIA
NEGATIVITY AND ACTIVISM

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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?

14. 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?

15. HOW DO WE SET THE AGENDA?
“If you don’t like
what’s being said,
change the
conversation.”

16. 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.

17. 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.

18. 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.

19. 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.

20. QUESTIONS
@joelturner joel.turner@blueclaw.co.uk