When bad news spreads on social media...

During the London riots I witnessed naive, racist and stupid status updates on my Facebook and Twitter. The rumors were quickly spreading and people were made to believe. It made me realise how easy it is to spread bad news on social media.

If a company's PR failed they would suffer through their social media, that it has become really important for businesses to have a social media PR crisis strategy, else they are at risk of having their reputation seriously damaged. Nobody wants to have their friends or followers turn against them in a matter of seconds, and no company wants a communication crisis that takes lots of valuable time to fix. For example, Nestle is a brand who met a social media PR crisis in April 2010.

'Environmental protection group'- Greenpeace created a video to suggest 'Nestle uses palm oil which comes from rainforest deconstruction', which in turn endangers orangutans.

Nestle reacted by asking YouTube to take the video down... but it was a little bit too late for that! The video had most probably already gone viral and multipled on several sites. Customers and environmentalists were already aware of palm oil use.

The Facebook fan page was attacked by consumers (which at the date of writing is 241, 772 fans) and newly invented images portrayed the company as 'killers'.

Nestle had struck a disaster! The Facebook page was overwhelmed with negative comments, that as part of their strategy Nestle should have responded to each negative comment, and gave customers the information they were looking for. This would have shown Nestle are caring and attentive to the needs of each consumer.

They should NOT have been in denial and asked YouTube to take the video down. Instead they should have been open and honest with their customers in order to retain credibility and prevent further damage.

My advice to Nestle would have been to use this as their PR crisis strategy:

• Respond to every negative comment in a human tone.
• Ask consumers if they would like more information via Email.
• Update social media with what they are doing to solve the problem.
• Pushed consumers to their corporate website where they have more information on the subject.
• Arranged to meet Greenpeace and discuss all points to come up with a joint statement.
• To address the key issues and have a video posted on Youtube in response to the Greenpeace video. 

Have you had a social media PR crisis? What was your strategy?