How to Manage Brand Conflicts on Social Media

It's a good feeling when you're trending on social media for the good but entirely a different ball game when your brand is all over the internet for the bad reason. As a brand, putting your business out there for the whole world to see means you've to do more than posting, engaging, or analyzing your metrics. So if you own a brand online, then you should consider how to manage conflict on social media.

Now, the idea is not to wait for an incident or conflict to happen before you start finding the right solution. It's important to develop a policy or a guide and actions to be taken when there is a conflict to help avoid it or mitigate it if it happens. Instead, the best plan is to prepare ahead. If you have team, then you should involve them as well and communicate their responsibilities or expectations in such situations. You don't want to leave it to assumptions.

The idea of managing conflict online can be easily overlooked but brands have had their reputation tainted online because of how poorly they managed conflict. Let's talk about systems to put in place to help you avoid or mitigate conflict on social media.

1. Draft a Social Media Policy

You should have a social media policy that spells out the expectations mostly to your team members if you've one or depending on the size of your brand or industry. They need to understand guidelines on how to conduct themselves when using social accounts. To break it down your social media policy should cover the following subjects.

Copyright Guidelines - you don't want to assume that your employees know how copyright applies online. You need to spell it out and make them understand how to use and credit third-party content.
Confidentiality Guidelines - you should point out the kind of information that can be shared publicly and the ones that should be covered.
Privacy Guidelines - be clear on how interaction with clients should go and when to direct some conversation to a private chat.
Brand Voice- know if you want to sound formal or relaxed and stick to it. That way you'll have a unified brand voice that your audience will identify with.
Secure your account - you should secure your account not just from hackers but to control access. You shouldn't share your password with several people in case they leave you'll be able to revoke access.

2. Take Action

While this may seem like the right thing to do- be smart about it. Some conflicts don't need an immediate response. You should allow the crisis to die down first because you don't know how it's going to pan out. A late response will be appropriate where there is too much tension and whatever you say at that time might trigger more friction.

And other times the best time to take action will be immediately after the incident presents itself because your silence will be understood as unconcerned. You would want to respond immediately if you are tagged for a product that didn't deliver what you promised it will. I've seen this a lot of times on Instagram. And where it took time for the brand to respond they were seen as fraudulent. So whatever you do, by all means, take action.

3. Apologize

This is necessary whenever there is a need for it. Do it genuinely and almost immediately. You'll need to direct it to the person or brand it was meant for.

4. Offer Solutions

Be open to sharing solutions on how the conflict can be resolved. This might not be done on the post that started the conflict, it's better when you send a direct DM to the person concerned. At the end of the day, you'll need to be proactive in handling conflict on the streets of social media and let your goal be a win-win situation so that all parties involved are satisfied and happy.