When The Friendly Skies Suddenly Turn Hostile

Nora Jacobs, SVP, Hennes CommunicationsIf you watched mainstream news early this week, or had your news feed set to the right coordinates, you no doubt saw that United Airlines became the latest victim of a Tweet storm on Sunday, after attendants on a flight from Denver to Minneapolis refused to allow two girls to board the plane because they were wearing leggings. If you Googled “United” on Monday, the story popped up from numerous news sites as the Number One search return, so I won’t recount the details or the resolution here.By the time you read this, there will have been countless more social media missteps that have captured the public’s attention. In the overall scheme of things, this was a minor faux pas. No one was injured, no property was destroyed and no one was arrested. But you can bet there were a lot of people at United’s corporate offices in Chicago, along with some agency staff as well, who didn’t get much time to watch Big Lies, Little Lies on HBO Sunday night. And of course, the incident gave competitors a wide opening to gain some exposure, such as this tweet from Delta’s corporate account:The truth is, it only takes one employee, in one moment, to make one decision with the potential to create a HUGE reputational threat for the organization that employs him or her. Often, it’s an innocent mistake – much like the one committed by United’s flight attendants. Unfortunately, in the world of Twitter, where there is no context and no perspective, very few people wait for the facts to come out. Instead, organizations often are the victims of an instantaneous pile-on where even the best communications staff is unlikely to be able to present all the facts before the story goes viral. So, what’s the solution? In the instantaneous world of social media, is there anything an organization can do to preserve its reputation when an event materializes out of nowhere on a Sunday afternoon?If you’re looking for a way to provide all the facts to shut down a controversy before it takes on a life of its own, the answer is probably not. Realistically, for an organization of any size, it’s virtually impossible to investigate an active situation, confirm the facts, create a credible response in 140 characters AND get management’s approval before the story is taken away by Twitter’s omnipresent arbiters of public opinion. However, there are a couple simple steps we can suggest that will allow your organization to maintain its credibility, appear responsive AND hold its own in the online conversation while that bigger investigation of the facts takes place.

• First, empower your social media staff with some generic responses now that will allow them to immediately engage on Twitter as soon as your monitoring team learns something is amiss.
• Post the response to your official account to acknowledge the situation as soon as you learn of it.
• Most important, make sure you’ve prepared a range of responses so you can reply appropriately depending on the perceived severity of the situation. In essence, this first reply should let followers know that you are aware of what appears to have happened and are investigating/following it.
• Promise to provide more information when you know more.

If the outrage continues, avoid becoming defensive or resorting to corporate-speak. This is the time to acknowledge concerns that others may have, and also the time to reiterate that you are investigating the situation. Promise again to provide more information when you know more.When you’re finally able to report the facts (or at least what you can learn within an hour or so), again match your tone to the event. Serious injuries and/or loss of life require one voice; literal application of a corporate dress code to two teenagers requires quite another. You may have many hours or days of social media interaction ahead of you, but taking just these couple quick steps will have given you the abilty to be part of the conversation early and will have shown your stakeholders that what others think about your organization is important to you. [author]About the Author: Nora Jacobs, APR is senior vice president of Hennes Communications, one of the few firms in the U.S. focused exclusively on crisis management and communications. With more than three decades of agency and corporate experience, she has counseled top executives at companies, associations, nonprofits and professional service firms throughout the country on reputational issues and problems ranging from accidents, environmental concerns, product failures, criminal matters and activist attacks to reorganizations, management transitions and downsizings. She has a strong portfolio of client work in consumer and industrial products, healthcare, biotechnology, education and economic development, and has completed extensive coursework for the National Incident Management System.[/author]