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Social media governance policies

Q&A: Reviewing and responding to online comments about your brand?

I would be interested in any case studies or examples of controlling social media discussions, especially in a case of negative flow.

I am working with many companies in health sector, and many health and looks treatments etc. create a lot of social media input. Experiences, questions, complaints etc. Also in some cases competitors are creating negative input.

One of the companies has faced a couple of non-satisfied customers that are creating a lot of noise in social media. I was asked to give some ideas. I know many cases where writers with their real names have entered to give answers etc. Can you give some interesting cases.

Smart Insights Answer: Create a flow chart!

Hi and thanks for your question.

I suggest drawing up a comment response flow chart like this one for Dell which was presented by Kerry Bridges who manages social media communications for Dell in Europe. She presented this at the Econsultancy Masterclass – see writeup of other talks. You can download Kerry’s talk if your an Econsultancy member.

@RichardSedley, one of our expert commentators at Smart Insights reminded me that this is only a derivation of the widely shared USAF response diagram.  It’s still excellent though.

You can review other social media governance frameworks at the Social Media Governance database. And Econsultancy also had a great post about this: 16 social media guidelines used by real companies.

See whether you can spot the difference between the USAF and Dell examples!

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  • http://twitter.com/charliesaidthat Charlie

    Interesting that Dell don’t have share the success on their chart.

  • http://www.richardsedley.com Richard Sedley

    These kind of flow charts are often underestimated in their value to organisations. In my experience proving that you have this sort of process in place can be a vital reassurance to senior company execs who hold the purse strings on future investments in social media.

    However one of the things I feel is missing from these charts is how you incorporate a more general, aggregated buzz monitoring into the flow. Sometimes you don’t need, or want, to assess individual +ve or -ve comment, but instead you need to understand and react to those comments as part of a trend.

    For example back in March of this year Nestle’s share price took a hit as a result of the publicity surrounding a negative viral campaign. [This is an excellent write-up on Nestle's social media troubles by Asa Bailey (@viralagency)]

    I’d suggest that somewhere near the start of these flow charts we need to add a component that asks ‘Is this part of a trend? Rising or falling?’ ideally with an action related to sentiment monitoring (many buzz monitoring tools now provide sentiment analysis and while it can be a bit flakey I think this is a scenario where it is perfectly suited).

    Has anyone seen anything that incorporates this approach into a PR framework or flow chart?

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