At sensitive times, you need to consider your contents. If companies are ignorant with their surroundings by keep posting harsh promotion and insensitive contents, it is not impossible that they will lose a lot of customers and prospects. Here are five suggestions for managing branded content during sensitive times.
1. Conduct a Meeting Between Partners and Staffs
Most organizations now have staffs such as community/social media managers and agency partners who are running their social and owned properties (Facebook, Twitter, WordPress etc.). When a sensitive story breaks, they must themselves act like a news organization and huddle together the teams responsible for putting out content. Call an “all hands” meeting to discuss the impact of story and devise a real time strategy for immediate steps moving forward.
2. Arrange an Appropriate Response
Once a sensitive situation is in play, your organization is now faced with a question: do you stay silent or speak out? It’s always best to “do the right thing” however, if they acknowledge what’s going on (in this case with Sandy Hook) they had to be prepared to steward any conversation good or bad that came along with it. When determining if it makes sense to make a statement during a sensitive situation, it’s best to do the right thing but be prepared for what may follow. If you’re not prepared, then your organization has a bigger issue.
3. If You Have Any Auto-Posting Features, Disable Them Temporarily
Auto posts (scheduling content and posting later) are now a reality for how brands communicate at scale, and the technique isn’t going away any time soon. However during a sensitive situation there is no way to better damage your brand’s equity and reputation than allowing auto posts to continue as if nothing is happening. There’s a simple solution: ask your content team to temporarily disable them until further notice. It’s absolutely fine to take a break and back to point no. 2, it’s the right thing to do.
4. Review Content Calendar
Many brands and businesses now run content calendars to help them plan in advance for posts, marketing, communications etc. If your organization does this—check your content calendar to see if there are any scheduled communications that could come off as tone deaf or inappropriate due to the situation at hand. Reschedule evergreen content for another time and remove “at risk” content. In short, proactively manage your calendar or it will manage you.
5. Watch For Any Sensitive Contents / Postings
No matter how vigilant you try to be, there will always be situations where a communication is already out in public for whatever reason, maybe the publisher wasn’t aware of the news. This is where the public can be your best ally, by alerting you to the issue and as long as you are listening, you’ll have the opportunity to correct the mistake. Do it transparently and over-communicate . If you end up deleting an offending piece of content which was not intended to offend—be sure to explain the steps you are taking.