Social Media and Negativity: Crisis Management in Marketing

This essay delves into the pervasive issue of social media negativity and its impact on businesses, examining how quickly crises can escalate due to the vast reach of platforms like Facebook and Twitter. It highlights the dual nature of social media, which, while beneficial, can also damage reputations. The essay discusses the two types of corporate crises: performance-related and value-related, and provides examples of brands facing social media backlash, such as Amazon and MTV. It emphasizes the importance of a proactive crisis management plan, including recommendations such as minimizing organizational loss, educating employees, developing a social media strategy, pausing product promotion during a crisis, establishing a response timeline, maintaining transparency, and ensuring consistency. The essay also stresses the need for careful content management and consideration of diverse cultural perspectives to avoid negative impacts on a business's brand.

Running Head: SOCIAL MEDIA AND NEGATIVITY
Social Media and Negativity
Author’s Name
Course Name and Number
Instructor’s Name
Date Submitted

Social Media and Negativity
Social Media and the Negativity
There are over 2 billion users of social media channels and platforms today. Social media has
thus redefined the communication mechanisms that are adopted by organizations across the globe.
With the integration of social media in majority of the business functions, the transmission and
consumption of information shared on these platforms is often unpredictable. Social media on one
hand has proved to be a boon for organizations, while on the other hand it has tarnished the
reputation of many, due to the smallest of mistakes made on major social media channels such as
Facebook, Twitter etc. Hence, the crisis of any organization can be transmitted to the entire world
within a few seconds (Gillespie and Lee, 2013). According to Salminen (2017), there are two types
of corporate crisis i.e. performance related crisis or value related crisis. The performance related
crisis are often aligned with the financial performance and the value related crises can be related to
the mismatch of the values of the organization and the message being transmitted on their official
social media handles.
In a recent post, Amazon was noted to tarnish the frequent change in logo of Zomato to
which the company responded with a light humour. Similarly, MTV posted Birthday wish saying
“Have a great year ahead”, to an artist who died in the 1980s. To this, many social media viewers
criticized the company for the mistake that they made. In such circumstances, Schroeder et al.,
(2013) propose that every organization must have a crisis management plan ahead of them. Some of
the key recommendations for crisis management communication include:
 Activities should ensure that minimal loss is caused to the organization while response is
posted on social media.
 A crisis management plan should be developed wherein all employees and individuals who
are a part of the organization must be educated on the instances where comment should be
given and where not.

Social Media and Negativity
 The social media manager of the company must share a company wide strategy and share
knowledge about certain topics that must be avoided.
 Promotion or selling of products or services should be paused for a few days
 A timeline for response to the criticism should be made.
 Transparency is the best foot forward. The company must offer its apologies for the mistakes
made and pull down a specific post that might be causing a high amount of damage to the
reputation of the organization.
 Consistency in all responses should be maintained. There is limited knowledge on which
other postings can be scrutinized and lead to a social media viral post (Civelek, et. al., 2016).
Apart from the afore-mentioned strategies, it is crucial that the organization in focus implements the
best practices of crisis management to avoid negative effects on the business. Therefore, the social
media of every organization must be managed in a very critical manner. The content and images of
the official page must be double checked before the postings are made. The perspective of all
cultural, religious or gender backgrounds must be taken into account before it is released (Salminen,
2017).

Social Media and Negativity
References
Civelek, M. E., Cemberci, M. and Eralp, N. E. (2016). The Role of Social Media in Crisis
Communication and Crisis Management. International Journal of Research in Business and
Social Science. Vol 5(3). Pp 111-120.
Gillespie, I. and Lee, S. I. (2013). The Role of Social Media in Strategic Communication and Crisis
Management. Brigham Young University.
Salminen, J. (2017). The Role of Social Media in Corporate Crisis Communication. Aalto University
School of Business.
Schroeder, A., Pennington-Gray, L., Donohoe, H. M. and Kiousis, S. (2013). Using Social Media in
Times of Crisis. Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing. Vol 30(1-2). Pp 126-143.