Insulating Your Business Against a Social Media Meltdown

Though it may seem far-fetched in an age of always-on communication, your organization’s digital properties, like your website or Twitter handle, can be taken offline by accident or interference. Here are three examples from 2011:

• In September, a group of hackers gained control of NBC’s popular Twitter account @NBCNews, and began broadcasting false news reports that included an airplane crash in Manhattan.
• In August, the British Prime Minister mused aloud about whether it was right for the government to shut down social media, which were perceived as being an organizational tool for rioters in London.
• And in January the Egyptian government turned off access to the Internet in Egypt altogether in an attempt to halt the protests in Tahrir Square that eventually felled the regime.

While no-one expects their own organization to experience this, a significant disruption to your business in any variety of guises can strike at any time, without notice. Are you prepared and ready to respond if your company’s Twitter account is compromised? What if your company servers go down for an indefinite period of time, taking your website offline at a critical point? If an earthquake or natural disaster knocks out power to your computer systems, will you be able to access your social media and digital properties to provide updates?

Planning ahead and preparing for any eventuality when it comes to managing your company’s digital and social channels of communication, and your access to them, in times of crisis or uncertainty is absolutely crucial.

By diversifying your communications and taking advantage of multiple properties, you’ll not only begin thinking about your brand or corporate story in a more integrated and holistic way, but you will also be prepared if disaster strikes.

Lessons Learned

Here are six rules for crisis communications contingency planning to ensure that if your social media channels are compromised, you can still get your message(s) out to your stakeholders.

1. Stay Secure: Do everything you can to minimize the risk of your properties being hacked. Ensure you maintain security around access to your social channels by keeping track of everyone who has the password, ensuring a secure password is set and by changing that password regularly.
2. Have a distributed team – In a crisis situation, some of your team may not be able to access your social channels. Your crisis contingency plan should ensure that more than one person and department are briefed on crisis guidelines and have access to logins and passwords for key social channels.
3. Pick up the phone – Relationships are the bread and butter of communications, so keep direct lines of communications open with key stakeholders. If your top tier media, shareholders and influencers aren’t already on speed dial, don’t be afraid to pick up the phone if you are cut-off from your social channels. Keeping your stakeholders informed of the situation will encourage them to update their networks, providing you with one more opportunity to get your message out in a crisis.
4. Go mobile – If the power is out in your building, or your office servers are down, your team should still have the ability to update your social channels from a cell phone, smartphone or tablet. Before a crisis situation materializes, ensure that your team can access brand and crisis guidelines from their mobile devices, and have all logins and passwords already active.
5. Tweet from the top – If you don’t have the resources to manage multiple, active social channels, maintain a low-profile Twitter account for a senior executive. If your main brand channel is compromised, having somebody who can speak with authority on behalf of the organization will be key.
6. Know your networks – Make sure your team knows how to contact representatives from Twitter, Facebook, and any other social networks your organization relies on. The faster you can get a dialogue going about restoring access to your channels, the faster you’ll be able to take complete control of your messaging again.